Some coffee beans are polished to remove the silver skin. This is done to improve the green coffee beans appearance and eliminate a byproduct of roasting called chaff. It is decried by some to be detrimental to the taste by raising the temperature of the bean through friction which changes the chemical makeup of the bean.
Green coffee is fairly stable (approx. up to 1 year) if stored correctly. Most often it is in a Jute sack kept in a cool, clean, and dry place.
All coffee, when it was introduced in Europe, came from the port of Mocha in what is now modern day Yemen. To import the beans to Europe the coffee was on boats for a long sea voyage around the Horn of Africa. This long journey and the exposure to the sea air changed the coffee's flavor. Later, coffee spread to India and Indonesia but still required a long sea voyage. Once the Suez Canal was opened the travel time to Europe was greatly reduced and coffee whose flavor had not changed due to a long sea voyage began arriving. To some degree, this fresher coffee was rejected because Europeans had developed a taste for the changes that were brought on by the long sea voyage.[citation needed] To meet this desire, some coffee was aged in large open-sided warehouses at port for six or more months in an attempt to simulate the effects of a long sea voyage before it was shipped to Europe.
Although it is still widely debated, certain types of green coffee are believed to improve with age; especially those that are valued for their low acidity, such as coffees from Indonesia or India. Several of these coffee producers sell coffee beans that have been aged for as long as 3 years, with some as long as 8 years. However, most coffee experts agree that a green coffee peaks in flavor and freshness within one year of harvest, because over-aged coffee beans will lose much of their essential oil content.
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