How to Store Coffee at Home and Keep it Fresh for Longer
Many people usually start their day with a cup of coffee. Now that so many work from home, they can’t stop by their local coffee shop or have a cup of coffee with their co-workers. Taking action is necessary at this point.
How Coffee Goes Stale
Roasting green coffee beans cause millions of chemical reactions, drastically changing the beans in a short amount of time. The sugars turn into caramel, the smells are released, and the flavor deepens.
As soon as the coffee is roasted, the carbon dioxide that had been contained inside it begins to escape swiftly. As the gas pushes its way to the bean’s surface, it brings some of the natural oils with it. The optimal shelf life of roasted coffee is only approximately two weeks. When coffee is properly packaged, oxygen is kept out while CO2 is released, but oxidation begins as soon as the bag is opened, and the beans go stale.
Many coffee drinkers don’t care how they store their beans beyond leaving them in the original packaging. Although the freshness and longevity of your beans may depend on how you keep them, you may want to reconsider your current storage method.
The freshness and flavor of your morning brew depend on how you store the beans, whether you keep them whole or ground, and whether you keep them in the fridge or the freezer. Cup & Bean aims to answer the question, do coffee beans go bad? In short, it can, and here are some of the best tips for keeping your coffee fresh for a long time…
Pay Attention To The Coffee Bean’s Roasting Date
If you want to choose the freshest, best-tasting coffee, you must know when coffee beans were roasted. It can be hard to figure out what a roast date is and how it differs from an expiration date, especially since there are so many different ideas and suggestions.
When making coffee at home for the first time, it can be hard to know how fresh your coffee beans are. Coffee usually has both a roast date and a best-before date, which is different from most other foods (in some cases). Unlike other foods that go bad, coffee won’t make you sick if it’s a little old. But if you want great coffee, you should know there is a window of time when the coffee is at its freshest. So, if you want to buy fresh coffee, you should pay close attention to when it was roasted.
Avoid The Refrigerator
Try to avoid storing coffee in the fridge. (Surprising I know.) It can soak up all the smells in your fridge and could make your cup of coffee taste worse in the end.
Also, you should never put coffee in the fridge because the humidity and moisture there will ruin them. The temperature constantly changes when you put your coffee in and take it out of the refrigerator every morning. This can cause condensation and breed microorganisms you don’t want in your coffee.
Store Your Coffee In An Airtight Container
To give your ground or whole coffee beans the longest shelf life, store them in a dark, sealed container. They should be kept somewhere dark, cool, and dry. Coffee doesn’t like temperatures, humidity, air, or light that are too high or too low. It means that if you want your coffee to taste great, you need to keep these four things away from it.
Coffee beans should ideally come in a vacuum-sealed bag with a freshness valve. When coffee beans are roasted, they give off carbon dioxide. If they are sealed in a regular package, the coffee beans will keep giving off CO2, which could cause the package to break. CO2 can leave through the freshness valve, but oxygen can’t get in. It also guarantees that the coffee is freshly roasted.
Avoid Grinding All Your Coffee Beans At Once
Ground coffee is harder to keep fresh because it loses its taste much more quickly than coffee beans when it comes in contact with air. If you don’t drink a lot of coffee daily, it’s best to buy ground coffee in small amounts (packs of 250g or less). Better yet, buy a small coffee grinder to grind your beans whenever you want a fresh, flavorful cup of coffee.
Coffee that has been ground can be stored for up to four weeks. Of course, this is only true if both are stored in the appropriate location and container. You should also not ground coffee in bulk. Coffee beans resistant to oxygen are transformed into fine powder during the batch-grinding process. Since you opened the bag to grind the grounds, they are all more exposed than before, but the grounds in the bottom of the bag, where oxygen cannot easily get, still have a chance. However, they won’t be very fresh by the time you get to them.
Check out my post on how to create a fun and festive holiday coffee bar here.
Shop My Favorite Coffee Products
