How to Store Coffee at Home
Summary
How to Store Coffee at Home
- You want to keep coffee cool and away from air and light.
- A cupboard in your kitchen is usually fine! Try to keep as much air out of the packaging as possible.
- You can leave it in a one-way valve bag or transfer to a vacuum canister.
- Air and light cause coffee to oxidise, heat and moisture speed that process up.
- Coffee never really 'goes off' but stale/oxidised coffee will have a slightly rancid flavour (think old nuts or a BBQ hotplate).
- Storing coffee in the fridge is risky due to the humidity.
- For long term storage you can put (air tight) coffee in the freezer - but keep it at room temp once the bag is opened.
Transcript (Speaker: Adam Marley)
(00:00):
Hey, guys. So we've been having customers ask about where they should be storing their coffee, their bags of coffee beans at home. We've got on the back here to store in a cool environment, but we've heard a lot of people have been storing their coffee in the fridge. When we say cool, we were not thinking fridge, sorry, a fridge like this one. The fridge or the freezer isn't actually ideal for storing your coffee just in a bag like this because of the moisture and some other reasons. But, yeah, basically it's not really ideal just in a standard Ziploc bag like that. You'd be much better off in a cupboard. Where's the cupboard? There. Cupboard. Here. Or some shelves, somewhere that's dark and relatively cool, not on top of the fridge or on a windowsill or something like that. Keep it away from the light. You want to minimize light, air, and heat because you want to minimize the oxidization of the coffee.
(00:56):
So you can definitely keep it in Ziploc bags like this. Just squish all the air out whenever you seal it. I know people put them in vacuum containers as well. That's great. Removing the air is really awesome. Yeah. You don't want to keep it in a bag like that or even like a Tupperware container or a sandwich bag, something like that, in the fridge or freezer because whilst, yes, it's nice and cool and that will help slow down the staling of the coffee, the moisture can wreak havoc with the beans.
(01:24):
Now, getting a little bit more in-depth, if you wanted to store your coffee for a much longer period, then you could break it down into smaller portions, or you could do the whole bag if you're willing to not put it back in the freezer afterwards, and then vacuum seal it and put it in the freezer. And then it's basically like a time capsule. It'll last ages, forever, basically, in that situation. But it has to be vacuum sealed. You can't have any environmental air in there with moisture in it. Because what you don't want is moisture condensing on the beans. So if you did it that way, then ideally you could do individual portions, keep it in the freezer. Then as you need to brew the coffee, take it out and then just grind it straight away. Don't have to let it get room temperature or anything. In fact, grinding it from frozen is really good for the coffee. That's a different post, the reasons why.
(02:11):
Or you could do the whole bag if you had too much coffee, but vacuum the whole bag. Not in these ones, they won't hold a vacuum in that. You can either have your own food vacuuming little thing. You can get it from Harvey Norman and stuff. And then you can have it in the freezer as long as you want. Take it out. Once you've opened that bag and it's exposed to environmental air, though, don't want to put it back in the freezer. Just, again, in a cupboard and keep it out of the light and squish as much air out and it should be fine. And in that situation, even without freezing it or anything, the coffee should last at least a month. And honestly, at home, we drink coffee that's two months old and it's still tasting fantastic. So, yeah, don't stress too much about it, but keep the coffee out of the fridge. Keep the coffee out of the freezer. All right. Have a good night, guys.