A: Coffee beans, like most food items, inevitably stale over time. Once roasted, coffee beans should then be used within a window of roughly two weeks before they lose a considerable amount of quality. By the time big-brand coffee beans hit the shelves at the supermarket, it most likely has been sitting in the package for months. Some specialty coffee shops may offer better quality beans, but their coffee may be roasted at their corporate headquarters on the other side of the country, and by the time it gets in your hands, it's stale. On the flip side, coffee beans need to "prime" before consumption, for a minimum of 24 hours but preferably 48 hours. This is essentially due to natural gases and oils from within the coffee bean that mature over this time. Once this time has passed, the coffee aroma and flavor are at their peak and will remain here for several days. Once coffee beans are roughly 10 days old, their quality starts to diminish. Each coffee bean differs from this exact timeline, depending of the origin, but this captures the general principles of the process. Enjoying fresh roasted coffee beans within the two-week window of freshness taps into the luscious flavors and aroma before they're lost. All of the coffee from OKIE Roasters is roasted on an order-by-order basis, meaning that once you purchase our coffee, we roast, package, and mail it to you without wasting any time with middle-men. Your coffee will arrive right when it's at it's best, ready to enjoy.

A: While roast levels are not standardized, in general there are several categories: Light, Medium, Medium-Dark, and Dark. Within these there are several sub-categories. A more thurough categorization is as follows: City, City+, Full City, Ful City+, Light French, and Full French. This is by no means an official nor an exhaustive listing. Which roast is best is personal preference. The roast level in the big-brand coffee bags from the neighborhood grocery store is usually very dark, almost always reaching at least Light French. The darker the roast level, the more the carbonized sugars overpower the origin flavors found is lighter roasts. Coffee beans are considered done as soon as they reach first-crack. This is when the coffee bean reaches an internal temperature of about 350 degrees. After first-crack, coffee beans can be roasted further to preference. Each stage changes the flavors, and sometimes just a few seconds or a few degrees can make a drastic difference in flavor of the final product. Coffee beans don't all come in the same shapes and sizes, with some being more dense or irregularly shaped. Each coffee bean came from a unique enviroment and origin, and coffee beans originate from all over the world. They all have unique characteristics in flavor, some more ideal for light roasts and others for dark. Coffee can be roasted and used from single-origin, meaning all the coffee beans came from the same place, or they can be blended, which is when multiple coffee origins are combined into a single end result. To summarize, coffee roast levels are personal prefference, with lighter roasts exemplifying notes that are unique to it's origin with more acidity and less carbon, and darker roasts showcasing notes with heavier carbon and less acidity.

A: Subscriptions are fulfilled the same way we fulfill individual orders. You can choose the subscription that works best for you, and we'll handle the rest. The appeals to subscriptions are that you get to save money, as each subscription is priced at a discount, and includes free shipping. Additionally, you also will get free shipping on any additional individual orders. You save time and money, and fresh coffee arrives at your home right when you need it.

A: Yes! You can change the blend, grind, or shipping address at any time. However, simply making a change from your account page will only affect future renewals of your subscription. If you need to make changes to your current billing cycle, you will need to email us at info@okie.coffee with your subscription ID, and we can make the changes necessary to the remaining unshipped coffee bags.

A: Okie Roasters is a husband and wife operation. We're both full-time employees, so fulfilling orders on Wednesdays is the best way for us to give our customers the freshest product possible on a consistent basis.

When an order is received, it will be roasted on the nearest Wednesday. If an order is placed on a Wednesday after 5:00PM, it will not be roasted until the following Wednesday. Once roasted, coffee is packaged immediately and shipped on the following Monday.

A: Fresh coffee releases C02, and when water hits fresh ground, it will "bloom", where the bed of coffee grounds expands upwards. If this is not taken into account, and too much coffee grounds are put into a standard coffee pot for example, it could overflow out of the coffee filter and into the pot of coffee, or even leak out of the coffee grounds compartment itself. If you are going to be using a standard coffee pot, we suggest you start by brewing a half pot to ensure there won't be a mess. From there you should be able to see how much more your coffee pot can handle. If you're looking for a classic cup, the best way to get the most out of your fresh coffee is to use the pourover method. This requires a dripper and a stovetop kettle. You can then brew coffee one cup at a time to perfection.