Fresh Is Best. No matter how many mugs it takes you to wake up in the morning, your personal coffee turnover isn't going to be nearly equal to that of your local coffee shop, which means your beans are probably a bit longer in the tooth than the cafe's are on any given day.
Sesame seeds, despite their tiny size, are a valuable cash crop. They come from the Sesamum Indicum plant, which is native to Africa but is now found mostly throughout Asia, with Myanmar and India the largest producers.
Sesame seed is considered to be the oldest oilseed crop known, domesticated well over 5000 years ago. Sesame seeds come in many colours, the most traded variety of sesame is off-white coloured. Other common colours are buff, tan, gold, brown, reddish, gray and black.