Storing your coffee for best results

There are popular misconceptions on the way roasted coffee should be stored and maintained. The enemies of roasted coffee are moisture, air, light, and heat. Storing your coffee away from them will keep it fresher longer. Therefore, an airtight container stored in a cool, dry, dark place is the best environment for your coffee.

Why Not Refrigerate? 

• Coffee should never be refrigerated. Since the temperature inside a refrigerator is above freezing, there is liquid water and more odors inside the refrigerator. Storing coffee in the refrigerator almost ensures that the coffee will taste stale and be flavored like last night’s dinner.

Can I Freeze Coffee?

Some people store their coffee in the freezer thinking it is going to keep the coffee fresh. Here are a couple of reasons why storing coffee in your freezer is a bad idea:

• Coffee is porous. This is a good thing for fans of flavored coffee as the beans absorb the coffee flavoring syrups and oils that are used to make flavored coffee. However, if given the chance, coffee can also absorb other things like the flavor of seafood or the moisture that your freezer produces. This moisture will in turn deteriorate the coffee and even make it taste like, well… like a freezer.
• When coffee is roasted, the beans release their oils and essences to give the coffee its distinct flavor. You’ll notice these oils are more prominent on dark-roasted coffee and espresso. When you break down these oils by freezing, you are removing the flavor.

Think about it…if coffee tasted better and fresher from the freezer, then you would buy it in the frozen food section, your local coffee shop might look more like an ice cream parlor, and our power bills would be through the roof trying to maintain a meat-locker the size of a warehouse.

Long-term Storage

• Coffee that is not going to be used within two weeks can be stored in the freezer. Special precautions must be taken when freezing coffee to ensure that the coffee stays dry and that it does not absorb flavors from other food in the freezer. Temperatures within a freezer rise and fall as the door is opened and closed. This means that moisture will be in the air, attach itself to surfaces such as the coffee and then refreeze, contaminating the coffee. The best way to prevent against this is to keep the coffee in its original packaging, then putting that packaging into a plastic freezer bag, Use a straw to suck all of the air out of the plastic bag when sealing to create a vacuum seal against moisture and other flavors.

Thawing Frozen Coffee

• Coffee should only be thawed once so don’t move coffee from the freezer and back again. If you have bought the coffee in bulk, store it in two-week amounts. Take out one two-week bag at a time, move it into the canister and use the coffee from the canister each day.

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