Taste and smell the difference: fresh roasted tastes best!
Coffee starts to get stale as soon as it is roasted. This is a gradual process and unlike, for example, bread that will go moldy, there isn't an indicator other than taste and smell to tell how fresh a coffee is.
We recommend drinking up your coffee within about 8-10 weeks of its roast or package date.
Longer than this won't hurt you but also won't taste as great as when it is fresh!
Sparkplug Coffee beans are roasted every week and are blended and packed within a few days of roasting. We put the date that your order was blended and packaged on each bag. Our goal is to get the coffee to you anywhere in Canada within about a week or 10 days of roasting. (We use the packing date as a proxy for roast date because our coffees are blends and the beans are not necessarily roasted on the same day.)
With other brands of coffee, look for a roast date or the packaging date. Don't pay attention to a Best Before or Use By date because there are no standards around these. Is the Use By date 6 weeks from roast? Or (more likely) 12 months from when it was roasted? Or even 24 months? We've seen coffee with a 2 year Best By date - ick!
Taste for yourself - the fresher the better!