Thank you for what is the most thorough analysis of cold storage for coffee beans that I've seen! I've been storing my beans in the freezer for seven or eight years now after conducting my own taste experiment storing two pounds of beans: 1/3 in an airtight opaque container at room temp (~68°F), 1/3 in original bag inside ziploc in freezer, and 1/3 in resealable vacuum bag in freezer. I tasted a cup of manual brew rotating through each of the three storage groups, one per day. Room temp storage staled much quicker than either method of freezer storage, and the beans in the reusable vacuum bag stayed fresh the longest. After a time I gave up on vacuum bags, however, due to expense and valve seal failures, since they are not designed for freezer temps. I currently store in coffee bags sealed tightly in the freezer inside ziplocs, and will try taping off the degassing valve and see if that improves longevity. [FYI, I do start my pours at 1-2°F warmer to compensate for the colder grounds.]
I just started freezing my coffee over the last couple of months and it has made a huge difference. It used to start tasting stale after the first week or so but now it tastes fresh for the whole month. I have begun buying 2 lb bags now instead of 10-12oz bags, then portioning it out into 1 week portions. I put each week into one of my old coffee bags (cut down on waste instead of using a bunch of freezer bags) and then put all 5-6 portions into a big, one gallon freezer bag. Once a week I pull a new portion out and now they always taste fresh! Great video, it's nice to hear someone who is very respected in the coffee community trying to come up with ways to improve coffee for people at home in easy to accomplish ways.
@@akuto2905 nowdays people spray water on their beans before grinding to reduce static and other sciency reasons haha so i wouldnt worry about condensation . (except for bigger batches but that is why we portion it up in containers with not much air in them once full )
I do something similar, but I don't take individual doses from the bag in the freezer and then put it back. I divide my coffee into ~150g doses, sealed in Ziploc bags with as much air removed as possible. Then I use them one at a time, storing only the current one in the cupboard while the rest stay in the freezer. I go through a bag in a week or two, depending on how many different coffees are in the rotation at a time. This way I can keep a lot of coffee fresh without having to worry about freezer burn from repeatedly opening the frozen bag.
It's been 1 years since I put my coffee beans on the fridge and the result is amazing, can keep flavor & aroma much more longer. I live in Indonesia so this method very helpful. Thanks for the scientific explanation
I started with Vac sealing single dosing. Then life changed a bit and I went this method of freeze in the bag with the seal taped over. I haven’t looked back. Over many months and lots of coffees I didn’t notice any drip in quality or flavor.
I just completed my own experiment with freezing coffee. I used 2 methods: 1) I kept it in the same bag the coffee came in, and stored in a ziplock freezer bag (getting out all the air I could). I didn't think to tape shut the valve as you mentioned and sure it would be important to do if using this method. I pulled some coffee out after 3 months and it still was good. Not so much at 41/2 months. It seemed to take in the smell of the bag and freezer odor. The coffee also diminished in quality enough to stop that experiment. For my freezer, have it out by 4 months. 2) I vacuumed sealed and froze in individual portions brewed in. That method seems to be better. There is a little decline in quality, but not bad enough that I left some in to continue it for another month or until it gets too bad. 3) I also vacuumed sealed individual portions and put in a plastic bin room temperature. This came out the best thus far (after 41/2months) than freezing, and I prefer this method.
This is a good experiment; I have done similar ones over the last year to verify the merits of freezing. But yes, I agree that the coffee can get a certain "freezer odor" if not careful with the the packaging.
Froze a dose of an expensive Anaerobic natural a couple of months ago. I stuck 15g in a resalable zip lock bag from IKEA. Took it out the other day, ground it straight away and had the most delicious cup from it. Even better than it was a week off roast. I was blown away.
For many years, I've bought coffee beans in bulk, then divided it into 16 oz glass canning jars for freezing. I let each jar come to room temperature before opening. I don't freeze again. I keep the jar in a cabinet until finished.
I have stored my coffee beans in the freezer for decades and it does preserve the coffee. I do however bring my coffee up to room temperature before I grind and brew. The taste of brewed frozen beans is different, milder and the beans do grind more evenly but I like the origin taste which returns when you thaw your beans.
imma experiment with your observations, i have never ground cold coffee yet and basically just make sproovers with 19.5 grams at a time, so for my process, i feel like the ground coffee will already be at ambient temperature by the time i start brewing. so i'm wondering if the grinding cold somehow inhibits flavour compounds somehow??
thank you, i just got decaf beans and they stale much faster than regular coffee but i could NOT be bothered with individual bags and test tubes so i'm grateful you've done the work and let us know!
The Late Michael Sivetz (passed away 2012) invertor of the fluid bed air roasting machine was an advocate of freezing coffee and at - 40 degrees coffee stops degassing and thought in the future coffee would be in the freezer section of stores.
Thank you for this video! I’ve watched many before advocating for freezing your beans, but hadn’t been convinced. Your easy method though I think makes perfect sense. So far I’ve noticed no drawbacks, and I can store more different types of coffee for longer
@ The Coffee Chronicler I've been storing coffee beans in my freezer for about a year now, and have had pretty good results. It was a little tricky at first ( especially with darker roasts ) but I think I've gotten the hang of it. Funny you bring up putting the whole bag of coffee in the freezer: I've thought about trying that, but I've only got so much room in the freezer. I use tightly sealed Ziploc bags, and a few mini mason jars. Good video! :)
Hi Just wanted to add something to the conversation (Oh and thanks as always for al the great and helpful info! ) So I have started freezing my coffee bags from the roaster So to get the air out prior to freezing I squeeze the bag into a Fellow Atmos Vacuum Canister and extract the air out ,,then release the button to open ,and the bag is extracted of air very close to vacuum sealed ,then quickly add tape over the vent hole and freeze. It's a fast easy vacuum seal ! for freezing
I have been vacuum sealing for years. I will now take your advice and place each unopened bag with tape in the freezer. Thanks. So much great coffee out there, but I only have at most two doubles a day. Nice to stash away our favorites for future brewing!
Specialty coffee on my side of the world is a very pricy luxury, so I've been experimenting with freezing for about a month now and its definitely been much much lighter on my wallet, because now I can buy a month or two supply when I have a bit of disposable income, keep it frozen and then just top up a bag at a time every month to keep stocked and not have to worry about wasting X amount of money on beans that will go stale before I finish the first bag. The method I use is honestly even simpler, as I just throw the bag into the freezer as is, finish the bag I'm currently using, take the new bag out, let it defrost while still sealed overnight and then open it the next morning, minimizing the chances of condensation forming on the beans themselves. Haven't noticed any off flavours that have managed to bypass the CO2 valve yet. I've been considering pressing out oxygen and taping up the valve, to prevent problems in case of a valve failure, but I haven't run into problems thus far.
I've done this (freezing coffee beans) for decades and caught a lot of flack for it from (in my view) people who have no clue. Every point you've made I made in my justification. I did my undergrad degree 30 years back in biochemistry (which of course comes under the category of organic chemistry). Apparently people who don't even know what a volatile organic compound means know more than me. With respect to usage I pour my needs into an airtight bag and so it thaws without condensation before I put it in my grinder. If you wanted to test the level of condensation you could use a scale and measure the weight over time because the water will add mass to the beans (or not if it doesn't)
Great video. Keep up the good work Asser! I regularly freeze coffee and I have also found that it generally comes out tasting nearly as good as when I put it in.
Great I'll do this for my beans I upgraded from c3 to C40 and was excited to taste difference In my beans sadly I recently got covid and I can't taste any notes from pour over coffee taste so this would be great to keep my beans fresh as I wait to regain my taste back :) thx for the simple approach!
Thank you for the method you show in this video. I have just started my experiment with freezing beans. I have just bought few 250 g packs of freshly roasted coffee. My favorite Indonesia Sumatra Lintong Gr.1 TP, Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Kochere Grade 2, Kenya AA Tekangu Karogoto and Brazil Fazenda Pedra Grande pulped natural Yellow Bourbon. I've used a tape to seal the valves as you show. These coffees are very fresh, they were roasted 2 weeks ago and I stored them about a week in a room where is 12 degrees Celsius. I will be letting you know about my experiment month by month. Usually I buy such amount coffee my wife and I can drink in a month but after my last order my wife decided to switch back to an instant coffee. So I have nothing to loose. Cheers, keep up the good work! 😎👌.
@@coffeechronicler thanks so much! I forgot to mention that my freezer is -30 degrees Celsius. It's much lower than freezers integrated with a fridge which normally they're -18 degrees Celsius. So again Asser, thank you for the tips in your video, you save my precious coffee. I will let you know how's it going with the experiment.
@@coffeechronicler it's been two weeks since my experiment. Today I brewed Kenya AA Tekangu Karogoto using Hario V60 02 with 4:6 Tetsu Kasuya method with the first pour bigger than the second one to get more acidity notes from the coffee. During blooming phase it was releasing lot of gas. Smelled wonderful during and right after grinding. Tasted great as it would be two weeks from roasting. But it's been a month since it was roasted. In the mean time during these two weeks I was using also Sumatra Lintong and Brazil Yellow Bourbon. In V60 and also made an espresso with the latter. Each of the coffee was amazingly fresh! Thanks again for your simplified method for freezing coffee, Asser. I will be posing updates about my experiment monthly. So the next update will be in a two weeks and then four weeks later. Cheers!
@@coffeechronicler it's been 6 weeks since my experiment. I'm just enjoying a Sumatra Lintong mug brewed in Hario V60 using 4:6 Tetsu Kasuya method. The coffee tastes the same as in the time it was put into the freezer. Your coffee beans freezing method is amazing, simple and efficient. No problems with condensation as I take out coffee bag for a short time to weigh a dose and put it back to the freezer immediately.
Thank you. I’ve stopped single dosing out the freezer and was about to spend a lot of money on a vac sealer machine until I seen this video. Now I’ll just throw the original bag of beans in the freezer inside a ziplock with the valve taped off. Cheers!
I’ve been hot air roasting single origins for 20 years, and experimented with freezing whole beans as a contingency measure. I take freshly roasted beans (still degassing) exclude all the air (by rolling and sealing in a Ziploc, or using a vacuum sealer), allow it to “plump up” into an inert CO2 “balloon”, & freezing. When needed, the still plump bag is taken out of the freezer & allowed to thaw, before opening and using/storing in a dark airtight container. I find this preserves the flavours, but halves the effective shelf life to 4-5 days.
Have never tried freezing it, but I kept coffee in the fridge especially in the warm summer moths. It's great. My only concern usually is food smell as coffee have this characteristics to absorb anything quickly. But yeah, a nice seald bag + regular jar/tupper works great! So yeah, cheers on the good video!!
@@coffeechronicler If you buy f.ex 1 kg speciality coffee and freeze it and then prepare a weeks use and keep that in the fridge. I Just store it at room temp for now and you don't mentioned fridge and only focusing on freezing it.. My workflow would work best for having easy access to daily dosing, freezer upstairs and i'm lazy.. My tastebuds are for now pretty bad, with a lot of instant abuse and store bought like Christgau thats roasted 3-4 months are okai for me, but the taste is pretty subpar..
I've been freezing coffee beans using the vac seal bags for a few years now, but it might be worthwhile to try your approach to freeze the entire coffee bag. I hope this will work for me since freezing the vac seal bags is laborious and having to weigh the amount of beans for each bag can get a little cumbersome. Thanks as always.
Asser, thanks for the thorough video. I think it's worth noting that: just as living in humid/hot places accelerates coffees decline, it also accelerates and intensifies the process of condensation on cold coffee reminded from the freezer. Your method of storing whole bags of roasted coffee in the freezer and quickly removing doses may work quite well in Denmark, but here in Miami, FL where even air-conditioned homes are at best 60% humidity for much of the year, condensation is rapid and intense when freezer-temp coffee is exposed to ambient air. For us, it's pobably worth putting up with rummaging through a disorganized collection of sealed single-dose tubes rather than whole bags.
I am currently using ziplock bags and create a vacuum with a straw. Very easy and more controlled than coffee bags (which valves can be defective and stay open both sides) also it’s more eco friendly as you can reuse them.
For me, I live alone but buy beans in bulk as it's cheaper. I live in South Africa which is quite warm so I freeze any opened bags. I just use a Ziploc style bag, remove any excess air before putting it into the freezer. This has been working well for me so far.
I'm sure the zip lock bag works well, but don't forget that coffee is often sold in nitrogen-flushed bags that create a very beneficial storage environment. So if I have several bags I want to freeze, I'll just tape the valve and put them in the freezer. That way, they get exposed to even less oxygen.
What I did for a couple years now is just ordering my coffee in 250g bags. I freeze all of them unopened and always just use one. After about a week, when the bag is empty I let the next bag I want to try out unfreeze over night and not open it before it is completely unfrozen. That way no moisture has any chance of building up that has not been in the beans prior to freezing already. I can not switch coffees every day that way, but I think it is the most practical and effective way of keeping the beans fresh. So basically there always one resealable bag outside of the freezer and I just have to remember to unfreeze one bag over night when the other bag is running low.
My experience- I did have and use a vacuum sealer at home for my coffee. I learned that they make reusable ziplock baggies that you can use with the vacuum sealer- I use those now, so less environmental impact. If I vacuum seal and freeze and entire bag of coffee, then I will take the bag out of the freezer and let it come to room temperature before opening it. I’ve opened it straight out of the freezer. The coffee I brew at that time was great, but then the next day, the same coffee wasn’t as good. I think this has to do with condensation if you let the air get to it as it defrosts. If single dosing, then grinding frozen is fine; some research points to it being even better as the beans supposedly break/grind more uniformly when ground from frozen state. Anyway- that’s been my personal experience so far.
This is the best practice, and I have followed a similar protocol for a long time. I will also follow it for very rare or high-end beans I plan to keep for a long time. But with this video, I wanted to get people to experiment with a more relaxed approach to their everyday bags. I hope you will give it a try!
I would love to know what brand resealable vacuum bags have been working for a great many uses before having the seal fail as the reusables that I have tried fail after only a little use. Please advise.
@@brentromanAfter trying three of those (expensive) Food Saver brand bags which held their vacuum for only a day or two I have given up on this brand and have found them to be unreliable just like all the Food Saver vacuum canisters which also eventually fail.
been vacumming freeze my beans since forever; just took out a bag which was roasted Nov23 & its Jun24 now; 7mths beans! still producing good crema when pulling shots on my GS3
Thanks for the video! I'm in Queensland, Australia. Got me thinking, I'm always buying a kilo bag which lasts me 3 to 4 weeks. I usually get the beans freshly roasted same day, but do let them rest for a bit as I think it's best to enjoy them after at least 5 days. I'm now thinking to get a vacuum sealer and maybe seal packs of 250 grams out of that kilo bag. Do you think I can freeze these bags on day of roast or should I let them rest at room temperature first? Don't think freezing it would interfere too much with the beans needing to be rested for longer than usual?
i can't imagine grocery stores will spend the money on a fridge to store dried coffee regardless of the taste benefit. perhaps small roasters could have a fridge or a freezer to store their bagged coffee though :) i do think that if you freeze any potential condensation on coffee repeatedly then you could end up having some negative "frostbite" kind of flavours to it. but for me, i go through 454 grams in about two weeks so in that short time i don't perceive any substantial negative potential in doing this. love the way you share your information :)
I store 200gr of coffee beans in ziplock bags (doubled) taking out as much air as possible. I add a note in the outer ziplock bag with the coffee name and roasted-frozen dates. Out of the freezer, it goes into a kilner jar. I let the bags air dry before being reused to limit environmental impact. Makes for a simple process too and gives me some flexibility.
After pan roasting my green coffee to the desired doneness, I would vacuum seal about 300 g to 150g with food vac system and freeze my beans and it is my humble opinion that this mellows the bean to produce a more subtle and pleasant flavor. But that's my opinion
I've seen a few YT videos where they go straight from freezer to grinder, so I wouldn't bother thawing for small doses but probably would for 3-4 days worth of beans EDIT: only in very humid conditions. Having significant condensation on beans for days is not good and it only takes 10 min to get to room temp.
When I roast, I do minimum of 3x500g batches for myself to get decent use of the thermal cache in the roaster. That's too much for one person, so I vacuum seal each roast batch into two packets. Each packet can be defrosted easily to room temp in 30 min so there's no risk of condensation forming on the beans when breaking the vacuum seal and transferring to a container. The process works well, and the coffee stays fresh.
I used to freeze my coffee as single doses in centrifuge tubes, but it became a hassle. I wanted to do it as soon as I got my coffee to maintain the freshness, but if I was busy the day my coffee arrived, the bag sat there and I worried about losing freshness. I also worried about the bag sitting open all that time while I dosed (usually 907g/2lbs at a time) which could take half an hour. And the result took up a lot of room in the freezer. This January, I bought an atmos jar. Now I fill my atmos with about 5 days worth of coffee and freeze the rest in the bag. When I run out, I fill the atmos again. Now I have coffee at my coffee bar and I don't need to go to the freezer every day.
Great video. I also recommend reading Manchester Coffee Archive's blog post about freezing coffee. I learned a lot from it. It includes experiments, processes, observations and what seems to work or not.
What happens if I freeze a vacuumed pack of 250g coffee beans and take it out after a month but don't put it back in the freezer ever? I sometimes take it out from the freezer, let it heat up to room temperature then break the seal and put it in a random coffee bag and drink it for a week or something. Would it affect the taste? Should I worry about drinking it in a hurry after taking it out of the freezer? Condensation worries me.
Condensation will only happen when the beans are colder than the dew point in your atmosphere. Since your bags are sealed, simply take a bag out of the freezer and let it warm up to room temperature before you open it. No condensation! (Unless your indoor climate gets so humid you start getting condensation on everything at room temperature.)
Also, I don’t worry about condensation too much. I return my beans to the freezer after every use. Any water that condenses on them while I have the bag out will simply freeze when I put it back in the freezer. A tiny bit of ice on the beans seems quite unlikely to harm them. If the beans that are headed to the grinder are slightly damp, that does not concern me so long as the grinder works well. In a couple of minutes, the ground coffee is going to be swimming in hot water anyhow.
If you live anywhere that has ANY sort of humidity do not open your bag directly out of the freezer or you will let moisture in no matter how quickly you do it. Moisture forms on the outside of my bags within seconds of being taken out of freezer and while it’s a little muggy sometimes, Melbourne, Aus isn’t well known for humidity.
If you have an unopened bag that you intend to store for a long time, just tape up the valve. Squeezing and rolling up tight only applies to bags that are opened.
Great video and really good points. Question, does sealing the valve actually do something? I thought those were designed to allow CO2 to go out and they prevent stuff from coming in, since they’re one way valves. Thanks! Keep up the good work!
Hi, great video. So to understand it correctly because maybe I am doing it wrong. Say i have 250 g of coffee. 125 g of these I use while the other 125 I freeze them. Once the coffe outside the freezer is consumed I would take out the whole 125 g that are in the freezer and wait 2-3 hours until use. Is this correct or should i only take out the amount I want to brew. I store the coffee either in their coffee bag or in some bags i hvae that can be vacuumed (is this a word?)
Condensation is a factor of dew point, it happens when a cool surface is exposed to warm air and the cool surface heats up crossing dew point temperature.
@@coffeechronicler they do play a factor in the sense that those features affect how quickly or slowly an object changes it's surface temperature. The relative humidity of the environment probably plays a bigger role since RH% is proportional to Dew Point.
@@coffeechronicler The biggest factors are the temperature of the material and the water vapor concentration of the air, most often expressed as the dew point temperature. If a material is below the dew point temperature is is nearly certain to condense water from the air. If above, it won’t condense water. There are some details but the object temperature and water vapor concentration of the air are the biggest factors by far. If you go camping in humid summer weather, as I have, very often at night the temperature of both the air and objects will fall below the dew point overnight. When you wake up in the morning, literally everything in sight, unless it is heated, will be covered in dew: water that condensed out of the air overnight. Sometimes the air itself will be filled with tiny droplets of condensed water. We call that fog.
Hi, interesting video, will give it a try! Do you grind the frozen beans or do you let them come to room temperature beforehand? If the second option how long do you usually wait from freezer to grinder? Thanks
Haven't tried glass containers, but would suspect that condensation might be more of an issue with those. But of course, this is a not concern if single dosing.
@@coffeechronicler the glass containers only hold. 60g and are usually used up in a day, ive not noticed degradation in quality or that condensation hangs around for very long.
Interesting video! I currently use airscape containers and my coffee (which I've roasted myself) is used up within 4-6 weeks so I'm doubtful I'd notice a huge difference from freezing.
Thanks, James! Yes, I mainly recommend freezing if you experience staleness, but it's worth trying the experiment, even if you want to keep some small doses around for longer.
A poor man's vacuum sealer: put your beans in the Ziploc submerge the Ziploc in water until just the opening and close it Water will push out any air in the Ziploc 👍 PS great video!
This was really interesting to consider and I may give it a shot at some point if I brew more than one bag at once - When freezing coffee, does this count towards resting freshly roasted coffee? (i.e. would freezing the coffee kinda keep it “too fresh”?) Also, would you simply grind it straight out of the bag fresh or leave it to come up to room temp?
Hi Lorraine, I would freeze at the peak flavor window, so around day 7-10, since degassing/resting is also slowed by freezing. Simply grind directly from the freezer, it works great.
Keep in freezer, just take out the amount you need each day and then close the bag by rolling the opening of the bag down so no air gets in and then close with a bulldog clip or clothes pin and put back into the freezer. Keeps fresh for at least a month without loss of smell or flavour.
Keep in mind that your lungs create a vaccuum. I zip up a bag almost all the way and then suck the air out before zipping all the way. I do this for vegetables etc. I haven't tried with coffee because somehow I got the impression that unless you need to store it for a very long time, keeping it at room temperature was better. A myth, I guess. My inclination would be to remove more than a single dose at a time--maybe a week's worth--and let it thaw before grinding. I realize grinding frozen can be advantageous in terms of particle-size distribution, but I wonder if there's a disadvantage as well or at least something to take into account. I've read that the grind size will be finer for frozen coffee at a given grinder setting. If I'm going to take out more than a single dose at a time, would you recommend thawing before I open, given that if I opened it right away, it would just be my first dose that I'd be grinding frozen? I guess I should experiment myself.
There’s no controversy for me. I always freeze my beans. A 1 pound bag of coffee lasts me about two weeks. If I don’t freeze them, the beans are very significantly stale and rancid before the end of two weeks. End of discussion.
The coffee beans I buy come in laminated multilayer bags designed to keep the beans fresh during room temperature storage. Those bags keep the coffee fresh for a couple weeks in the store, but once I open the bag, there is no way to keep oxygen out. The bag, closed reasonably securely with the metal closure band that comes with it, seems to do well enough at keeping food flavors out and coffee flavors in. There is not a practical way to keep oxygen out, so I don’t fret over that. Keeping the beans cold slows oxidation better than makeshift efforts to exclude oxygen. Even though I buy my beans in a supermarket, they are roasted by a local roastery. I know they are delivered to the store frequently, not sitting in a warehouse or on the store shelves for weeks.
@@airmax2136 @clammyclaude 1/3 of the fatty acids in coffee oil are doubly unsaturated linoleic acid. This acid is well known for going rancid in other plant oils, such as canola, flax seed, soybean, etc. The reaction is an oxidation and certainly is slowed by cold storage. According to Raba, Diana Nicoleta et al. “The influence of high-temperature heating on composition and thermo-oxidative stability of the oil extracted from Arabica coffee beans.” PloS one vol. 13,7 e0200314. 11 Jul. 2018, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0200314 “lipid fraction of coffee is stable when the beans are heated at high temperature; the heating process does not induce major changes in the fatty acids composition of oil extracted from roasted coffee beans, compared with the oil from green coffee beans.” There are, of course, many other compounds in coffee which may be subject to oxidation or other reactions that create unpleasant flavors. These may vary with roast level. The coffee I buy is not very darkly roasted. It does not have the characteristic oil exudation of really dark coffee. It is not, however light roast. It would be best described as medium roast. If your coffee does not stale or become rancid during room temperature storage, or if you are not bothered by these flavors, then there is no reason for you to cold store it. For those who find that their coffee does develop unpleasant flavors during room temperature storage, knowing that cold storage significantly slows that process without causing other harm, is useful knowledge. Coffee, the beverage, is a remarkably diverse product. There is not one best way to perform any of the many steps in its production.
Without equipment to do a good inert gas purge, trying to exclude oxygen after you have opened a bag of coffee beans is pretty futile. The people who do vacuum bagging may be able to reduce oxygen by a factor of 10 or so, if they are lucky, but that really leaves plenty of oxygen to react with our precious flavor compounds. Cold storage is, for the vast majority of us, the most accessible, simplest method.
Rosslyn coffee in London actually has a "secret" menu where they have rare, deep frozen, vacuum sealed coffees available for purchase. I had a really interesting cup of Eugenoides there last summer.
Thank you for what is the most thorough analysis of cold storage for coffee beans that I've seen! I've been storing my beans in the freezer for seven or eight years now after conducting my own taste experiment storing two pounds of beans: 1/3 in an airtight opaque container at room temp (~68°F), 1/3 in original bag inside ziploc in freezer, and 1/3 in resealable vacuum bag in freezer. I tasted a cup of manual brew rotating through each of the three storage groups, one per day. Room temp storage staled much quicker than either method of freezer storage, and the beans in the reusable vacuum bag stayed fresh the longest. After a time I gave up on vacuum bags, however, due to expense and valve seal failures, since they are not designed for freezer temps. I currently store in coffee bags sealed tightly in the freezer inside ziplocs, and will try taping off the degassing valve and see if that improves longevity. [FYI, I do start my pours at 1-2°F warmer to compensate for the colder grounds.]
Thanks for the kind words! And interesting to see that experiment, we have basically ended up with the same conclusion
I just started freezing my coffee over the last couple of months and it has made a huge difference. It used to start tasting stale after the first week or so but now it tastes fresh for the whole month. I have begun buying 2 lb bags now instead of 10-12oz bags, then portioning it out into 1 week portions. I put each week into one of my old coffee bags (cut down on waste instead of using a bunch of freezer bags) and then put all 5-6 portions into a big, one gallon freezer bag. Once a week I pull a new portion out and now they always taste fresh! Great video, it's nice to hear someone who is very respected in the coffee community trying to come up with ways to improve coffee for people at home in easy to accomplish ways.
That sounds like an efficient workflow! Thanks for the support, Alexander.
So when you take out 1 week portion do you let it go to room temp before using/opening the portion to prevent condensation forming on the beans ?
cheaper , greener ,tastier what more can you ask for . it also doesnt take any special equipment . best coffee tip out there
@@akuto2905 nowdays people spray water on their beans before grinding to reduce static and other sciency reasons haha so i wouldnt worry about condensation . (except for bigger batches but that is why we portion it up in containers with not much air in them once full )
I do something similar, but I don't take individual doses from the bag in the freezer and then put it back. I divide my coffee into ~150g doses, sealed in Ziploc bags with as much air removed as possible. Then I use them one at a time, storing only the current one in the cupboard while the rest stay in the freezer. I go through a bag in a week or two, depending on how many different coffees are in the rotation at a time. This way I can keep a lot of coffee fresh without having to worry about freezer burn from repeatedly opening the frozen bag.
You're a blessing to the coffee community
It's been 1 years since I put my coffee beans on the fridge and the result is amazing, can keep flavor & aroma much more longer. I live in Indonesia so this method very helpful. Thanks for the scientific explanation
Tak for det, kaffemester Asser, du har sparet mig en masse besvær...
I started with Vac sealing single dosing.
Then life changed a bit and I went this method of freeze in the bag with the seal taped over. I haven’t looked back. Over many months and lots of coffees I didn’t notice any drip in quality or flavor.
I just completed my own experiment with freezing coffee. I used 2 methods: 1) I kept it in the same bag the coffee came in, and stored in a ziplock freezer bag (getting out all the air I could). I didn't think to tape shut the valve as you mentioned and sure it would be important to do if using this method. I pulled some coffee out after 3 months and it still was good. Not so much at 41/2 months. It seemed to take in the smell of the bag and freezer odor. The coffee also diminished in quality enough to stop that experiment. For my freezer, have it out by 4 months. 2) I vacuumed sealed and froze in individual portions brewed in. That method seems to be better. There is a little decline in quality, but not bad enough that I left some in to continue it for another month or until it gets too bad. 3) I also vacuumed sealed individual portions and put in a plastic bin room temperature. This came out the best thus far (after 41/2months) than freezing, and I prefer this method.
This is a good experiment; I have done similar ones over the last year to verify the merits of freezing. But yes, I agree that the coffee can get a certain "freezer odor" if not careful with the the packaging.
Froze a dose of an expensive Anaerobic natural a couple of months ago. I stuck 15g in a resalable zip lock bag from IKEA. Took it out the other day, ground it straight away and had the most delicious cup from it. Even better than it was a week off roast. I was blown away.
For many years, I've bought coffee beans in bulk, then divided it into 16 oz glass canning jars for freezing. I let each jar come to room temperature before opening. I don't freeze again. I keep the jar in a cabinet until finished.
I have stored my coffee beans in the freezer for decades and it does preserve the coffee. I do however bring my coffee up to room temperature before I grind and brew. The taste of brewed frozen beans is different, milder and the beans do grind more evenly but I like the origin taste which returns when you thaw your beans.
imma experiment with your observations, i have never ground cold coffee yet and basically just make sproovers with 19.5 grams at a time, so for my process, i feel like the ground coffee will already be at ambient temperature by the time i start brewing. so i'm wondering if the grinding cold somehow inhibits flavour compounds somehow??
thank you, i just got decaf beans and they stale much faster than regular coffee but i could NOT be bothered with individual bags and test tubes so i'm grateful you've done the work and let us know!
The Late Michael Sivetz (passed away 2012) invertor of the fluid bed air roasting machine was an advocate of freezing coffee and at - 40 degrees coffee stops degassing and thought in the future coffee would be in the freezer section of stores.
Thank you for this video! I’ve watched many before advocating for freezing your beans, but hadn’t been convinced. Your easy method though I think makes perfect sense. So far I’ve noticed no drawbacks, and I can store more different types of coffee for longer
@ The Coffee Chronicler I've been storing coffee beans in my freezer for about a year now, and have had pretty good results. It was a little tricky at first ( especially with darker roasts ) but I think I've gotten the hang of it. Funny you bring up putting the whole bag of coffee in the freezer:
I've thought about trying that, but I've only got so much room in the freezer. I use tightly sealed Ziploc bags, and a few mini mason jars. Good video! :)
Hi Just wanted to add something to the conversation (Oh and thanks as always for al the great and helpful info! ) So I have started freezing my coffee bags from the roaster So to get the air out prior to freezing I squeeze the bag into a Fellow Atmos Vacuum Canister and extract the air out ,,then release the button to open ,and the bag is extracted of air very close to vacuum sealed ,then quickly add tape over the vent hole and freeze. It's a fast easy vacuum seal ! for freezing
I have been vacuum sealing for years. I will now take your advice and place each unopened bag with tape in the freezer. Thanks. So much great coffee out there, but I only have at most two doubles a day. Nice to stash away our favorites for future brewing!
Specialty coffee on my side of the world is a very pricy luxury, so I've been experimenting with freezing for about a month now and its definitely been much much lighter on my wallet, because now I can buy a month or two supply when I have a bit of disposable income, keep it frozen and then just top up a bag at a time every month to keep stocked and not have to worry about wasting X amount of money on beans that will go stale before I finish the first bag.
The method I use is honestly even simpler, as I just throw the bag into the freezer as is, finish the bag I'm currently using, take the new bag out, let it defrost while still sealed overnight and then open it the next morning, minimizing the chances of condensation forming on the beans themselves. Haven't noticed any off flavours that have managed to bypass the CO2 valve yet. I've been considering pressing out oxygen and taping up the valve, to prevent problems in case of a valve failure, but I haven't run into problems thus far.
I've done this (freezing coffee beans) for decades and caught a lot of flack for it from (in my view) people who have no clue. Every point you've made I made in my justification. I did my undergrad degree 30 years back in biochemistry (which of course comes under the category of organic chemistry). Apparently people who don't even know what a volatile organic compound means know more than me.
With respect to usage I pour my needs into an airtight bag and so it thaws without condensation before I put it in my grinder. If you wanted to test the level of condensation you could use a scale and measure the weight over time because the water will add mass to the beans (or not if it doesn't)
how long should you thaw inside airtight canister before grinding?
Great video. Keep up the good work Asser!
I regularly freeze coffee and I have also found that it generally comes out tasting nearly as good as when I put it in.
Great I'll do this for my beans I upgraded from c3 to C40 and was excited to taste difference In my beans sadly I recently got covid and I can't taste any notes from pour over coffee taste so this would be great to keep my beans fresh as I wait to regain my taste back :) thx for the simple approach!
Definitely an excellent way to preserve the beans until then. WIsh you a speedy recovery, though!
Thank you for the method you show in this video. I have just started my experiment with freezing beans. I have just bought few 250 g packs of freshly roasted coffee. My favorite Indonesia Sumatra Lintong Gr.1 TP, Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Kochere Grade 2, Kenya AA Tekangu Karogoto and Brazil Fazenda Pedra Grande pulped natural Yellow Bourbon. I've used a tape to seal the valves as you show. These coffees are very fresh, they were roasted 2 weeks ago and I stored them about a week in a room where is 12 degrees Celsius. I will be letting you know about my experiment month by month. Usually I buy such amount coffee my wife and I can drink in a month but after my last order my wife decided to switch back to an instant coffee. So I have nothing to loose. Cheers, keep up the good work! 😎👌.
Good luck with the experiment!
@@coffeechronicler thanks so much! I forgot to mention that my freezer is -30 degrees Celsius. It's much lower than freezers integrated with a fridge which normally they're -18 degrees Celsius. So again Asser, thank you for the tips in your video, you save my precious coffee. I will let you know how's it going with the experiment.
@@coffeechronicler it's been two weeks since my experiment. Today I brewed Kenya AA Tekangu Karogoto using Hario V60 02 with 4:6 Tetsu Kasuya method with the first pour bigger than the second one to get more acidity notes from the coffee. During blooming phase it was releasing lot of gas. Smelled wonderful during and right after grinding. Tasted great as it would be two weeks from roasting. But it's been a month since it was roasted. In the mean time during these two weeks I was using also Sumatra Lintong and Brazil Yellow Bourbon. In V60 and also made an espresso with the latter. Each of the coffee was amazingly fresh! Thanks again for your simplified method for freezing coffee, Asser. I will be posing updates about my experiment monthly. So the next update will be in a two weeks and then four weeks later. Cheers!
@@coffeechronicler it's been 6 weeks since my experiment. I'm just enjoying a Sumatra Lintong mug brewed in Hario V60 using 4:6 Tetsu Kasuya method. The coffee tastes the same as in the time it was put into the freezer. Your coffee beans freezing method is amazing, simple and efficient. No problems with condensation as I take out coffee bag for a short time to weigh a dose and put it back to the freezer immediately.
Thank you. I’ve stopped single dosing out the freezer and was about to spend a lot of money on a vac sealer machine until I seen this video. Now I’ll just throw the original bag of beans in the freezer inside a ziplock with the valve taped off. Cheers!
I’ve been hot air roasting single origins for 20 years, and experimented with freezing whole beans as a contingency measure. I take freshly roasted beans (still degassing) exclude all the air (by rolling and sealing in a Ziploc, or using a vacuum sealer), allow it to “plump up” into an inert CO2 “balloon”, & freezing. When needed, the still plump bag is taken out of the freezer & allowed to thaw, before opening and using/storing in a dark airtight container. I find this
preserves the flavours, but halves the effective shelf life to 4-5 days.
Have never tried freezing it, but I kept coffee in the fridge especially in the warm summer moths. It's great. My only concern usually is food smell as coffee have this characteristics to absorb anything quickly. But yeah, a nice seald bag + regular jar/tupper works great! So yeah, cheers on the good video!!
Thanks Anton! Yes, a fridge at the typical temperature should already increase peak window of freshness quite a bit.
@@coffeechronicler If you buy f.ex 1 kg speciality coffee and freeze it and then prepare a weeks use and keep that in the fridge. I Just store it at room temp for now and you don't mentioned fridge and only focusing on freezing it.. My workflow would work best for having easy access to daily dosing, freezer upstairs and i'm lazy.. My tastebuds are for now pretty bad, with a lot of instant abuse and store bought like Christgau thats roasted 3-4 months are okai for me, but the taste is pretty subpar..
I've been freezing coffee beans using the vac seal bags for a few years now, but it might be worthwhile to try your approach to freeze the entire coffee bag. I hope this will work for me since freezing the vac seal bags is laborious and having to weigh the amount of beans for each bag can get a little cumbersome. Thanks as always.
Asser, thanks for the thorough video. I think it's worth noting that: just as living in humid/hot places accelerates coffees decline, it also accelerates and intensifies the process of condensation on cold coffee reminded from the freezer. Your method of storing whole bags of roasted coffee in the freezer and quickly removing doses may work quite well in Denmark, but here in Miami, FL where even air-conditioned homes are at best 60% humidity for much of the year, condensation is rapid and intense when freezer-temp coffee is exposed to ambient air. For us, it's pobably worth putting up with rummaging through a disorganized collection of sealed single-dose tubes rather than whole bags.
I've done this in tropical countries as well, but of course always good to test and see what's better for your personal workflow and taste buds.
I am currently using ziplock bags and create a vacuum with a straw. Very easy and more controlled than coffee bags (which valves can be defective and stay open both sides) also it’s more eco friendly as you can reuse them.
Smart idea. Probably not much difference in quality from vacuum sealing and more affordable.
For me, I live alone but buy beans in bulk as it's cheaper. I live in South Africa which is quite warm so I freeze any opened bags. I just use a Ziploc style bag, remove any excess air before putting it into the freezer. This has been working well for me so far.
I'm sure the zip lock bag works well, but don't forget that coffee is often sold in nitrogen-flushed bags that create a very beneficial storage environment. So if I have several bags I want to freeze, I'll just tape the valve and put them in the freezer. That way, they get exposed to even less oxygen.
What I did for a couple years now is just ordering my coffee in 250g bags. I freeze all of them unopened and always just use one. After about a week, when the bag is empty I let the next bag I want to try out unfreeze over night and not open it before it is completely unfrozen. That way no moisture has any chance of building up that has not been in the beans prior to freezing already. I can not switch coffees every day that way, but I think it is the most practical and effective way of keeping the beans fresh. So basically there always one resealable bag outside of the freezer and I just have to remember to unfreeze one bag over night when the other bag is running low.
I have been freezing my coffee for a few weeks now as suggested by a couple of my favourite roasters.
My experience-
I did have and use a vacuum sealer at home for my coffee.
I learned that they make reusable ziplock baggies that you can use with the vacuum sealer- I use those now, so less environmental impact.
If I vacuum seal and freeze and entire bag of coffee, then I will take the bag out of the freezer and let it come to room temperature before opening it.
I’ve opened it straight out of the freezer. The coffee I brew at that time was great, but then the next day, the same coffee wasn’t as good. I think this has to do with condensation if you let the air get to it as it defrosts.
If single dosing, then grinding frozen is fine; some research points to it being even better as the beans supposedly break/grind more uniformly when ground from frozen state.
Anyway- that’s been my personal experience so far.
This is the best practice, and I have followed a similar protocol for a long time. I will also follow it for very rare or high-end beans I plan to keep for a long time. But with this video, I wanted to get people to experiment with a more relaxed approach to their everyday bags. I hope you will give it a try!
@@coffeechronicler Totally!
I would love to know what brand resealable vacuum bags have been working for a great many uses before having the seal fail as the reusables that I have tried fail after only a little use. Please advise.
Ive bên using the “food saver” brand
@@brentromanAfter trying three of those (expensive) Food Saver brand bags which held their vacuum for only a day or two I have given up on this brand and have found them to be unreliable just like all the Food Saver vacuum canisters which also eventually fail.
Great presentation. You definitely made a great case for the freezer
I agree with the freezing coffee in the store front freezers awesome idea
been vacumming freeze my beans since forever; just took out a bag which was roasted Nov23 & its Jun24 now; 7mths beans! still producing good crema when pulling shots on my GS3
Thanks for the video! I'm in Queensland, Australia. Got me thinking, I'm always buying a kilo bag which lasts me 3 to 4 weeks. I usually get the beans freshly roasted same day, but do let them rest for a bit as I think it's best to enjoy them after at least 5 days. I'm now thinking to get a vacuum sealer and maybe seal packs of 250 grams out of that kilo bag. Do you think I can freeze these bags on day of roast or should I let them rest at room temperature first? Don't think freezing it would interfere too much with the beans needing to be rested for longer than usual?
It's best to freeze when they are peaking flavorwise. So let them degas at room temp first.
Hi, can if i freeze ground coffee ? Would worth it or not ?
i can't imagine grocery stores will spend the money on a fridge to store dried coffee regardless of the taste benefit.
perhaps small roasters could have a fridge or a freezer to store their bagged coffee though :)
i do think that if you freeze any potential condensation on coffee repeatedly then you could end up having some negative "frostbite" kind of flavours to it. but for me, i go through 454 grams in about two weeks so in that short time i don't perceive any substantial negative potential in doing this.
love the way you share your information :)
great video! i just bought a slim vacuum sealer from wilfa. it`s easy to use and reduces my worries when i freeze beans.
I store 200gr of coffee beans in ziplock bags (doubled) taking out as much air as possible. I add a note in the outer ziplock bag with the coffee name and roasted-frozen dates.
Out of the freezer, it goes into a kilner jar. I let the bags air dry before being reused to limit environmental impact. Makes for a simple process too and gives me some flexibility.
After pan roasting my green coffee to the desired doneness, I would vacuum seal about 300 g to 150g with food vac system and freeze my beans and it is my humble opinion that this mellows the bean to produce a more subtle and pleasant flavor. But that's my opinion
Would I need to thaw the beans before grinding/brewing?
I've seen a few YT videos where they go straight from freezer to grinder, so I wouldn't bother thawing for small doses but probably would for 3-4 days worth of beans EDIT: only in very humid conditions. Having significant condensation on beans for days is not good and it only takes 10 min to get to room temp.
Thawing doesn't really apply to coffee beans since there's virtually no moisture inside. So yes, just grind it straight from the freezer :)
When I roast, I do minimum of 3x500g batches for myself to get decent use of the thermal cache in the roaster. That's too much for one person, so I vacuum seal each roast batch into two packets. Each packet can be defrosted easily to room temp in 30 min so there's no risk of condensation forming on the beans when breaking the vacuum seal and transferring to a container. The process works well, and the coffee stays fresh.
Hi how many days min would you say cheers
I'd suggest 7 days, and up to 14 days for ultra light roasts
How long after taking them from the freezer do you wait before grinding?
@@michaelpennington5111 right away. No problem at all.
@coffeechronicler thanks for the great video!!
I used to freeze my coffee as single doses in centrifuge tubes, but it became a hassle. I wanted to do it as soon as I got my coffee to maintain the freshness, but if I was busy the day my coffee arrived, the bag sat there and I worried about losing freshness. I also worried about the bag sitting open all that time while I dosed (usually 907g/2lbs at a time) which could take half an hour. And the result took up a lot of room in the freezer. This January, I bought an atmos jar. Now I fill my atmos with about 5 days worth of coffee and freeze the rest in the bag. When I run out, I fill the atmos again. Now I have coffee at my coffee bar and I don't need to go to the freezer every day.
Seems like a smooth workflow! Great idea.
Great video. I also recommend reading Manchester Coffee Archive's blog post about freezing coffee. I learned a lot from it. It includes experiments, processes, observations and what seems to work or not.
What happens if I freeze a vacuumed pack of 250g coffee beans and take it out after a month but don't put it back in the freezer ever? I sometimes take it out from the freezer, let it heat up to room temperature then break the seal and put it in a random coffee bag and drink it for a week or something. Would it affect the taste? Should I worry about drinking it in a hurry after taking it out of the freezer? Condensation worries me.
Condensation will only happen when the beans are colder than the dew point in your atmosphere. Since your bags are sealed, simply take a bag out of the freezer and let it warm up to room temperature before you open it. No condensation! (Unless your indoor climate gets so humid you start getting condensation on everything at room temperature.)
Also, I don’t worry about condensation too much. I return my beans to the freezer after every use. Any water that condenses on them while I have the bag out will simply freeze when I put it back in the freezer. A tiny bit of ice on the beans seems quite unlikely to harm them. If the beans that are headed to the grinder are slightly damp, that does not concern me so long as the grinder works well. In a couple of minutes, the ground coffee is going to be swimming in hot water anyhow.
Can you freeze straight after roasting
It's recommended to let the beans degas at first. So the ideal freezing time is the same as the ideal consumption time.
If you live anywhere that has ANY sort of humidity do not open your bag directly out of the freezer or you will let moisture in no matter how quickly you do it. Moisture forms on the outside of my bags within seconds of being taken out of freezer and while it’s a little muggy sometimes, Melbourne, Aus isn’t well known for humidity.
nice video! should i squeeze out the air/gas when i freeze the beans in the original bag? some say squeezing out the gas leads to a loss of flavors?
If you have an unopened bag that you intend to store for a long time, just tape up the valve. Squeezing and rolling up tight only applies to bags that are opened.
Great video and really good points. Question, does sealing the valve actually do something? I thought those were designed to allow CO2 to go out and they prevent stuff from coming in, since they’re one way valves. Thanks! Keep up the good work!
Yeah I have the same question, what do you think 2 months later?
Hi, great video. So to understand it correctly because maybe I am doing it wrong. Say i have 250 g of coffee. 125 g of these I use while the other 125 I freeze them. Once the coffe outside the freezer is consumed I would take out the whole 125 g that are in the freezer and wait 2-3 hours until use. Is this correct or should i only take out the amount I want to brew. I store the coffee either in their coffee bag or in some bags i hvae that can be vacuumed (is this a word?)
Just take out what you need and grind it right away. It actually grinds more even when coming directly from the freezer.
@@coffeechronicler so getting out all is bad? ok thank you
Condensation is a factor of dew point, it happens when a cool surface is exposed to warm air and the cool surface heats up crossing dew point temperature.
Interesting. Do you know if the weight, shape, and material play a role?
@@coffeechronicler they do play a factor in the sense that those features affect how quickly or slowly an object changes it's surface temperature. The relative humidity of the environment probably plays a bigger role since RH% is proportional to Dew Point.
@@coffeechronicler The biggest factors are the temperature of the material and the water vapor concentration of the air, most often expressed as the dew point temperature. If a material is below the dew point temperature is is nearly certain to condense water from the air. If above, it won’t condense water. There are some details but the object temperature and water vapor concentration of the air are the biggest factors by far. If you go camping in humid summer weather, as I have, very often at night the temperature of both the air and objects will fall below the dew point overnight. When you wake up in the morning, literally everything in sight, unless it is heated, will be covered in dew: water that condensed out of the air overnight. Sometimes the air itself will be filled with tiny droplets of condensed water. We call that fog.
Hi, interesting video, will give it a try! Do you grind the frozen beans or do you let them come to room temperature beforehand? If the second option how long do you usually wait from freezer to grinder? Thanks
ive been freezing for a while either in vacuum sealed bags or small borosilicate glass (baby food containers). no issues.
Haven't tried glass containers, but would suspect that condensation might be more of an issue with those. But of course, this is a not concern if single dosing.
@@coffeechronicler the glass containers only hold. 60g and are usually used up in a day, ive not noticed degradation in quality or that condensation hangs around for very long.
Does freezing help to hold in CO2 for making espresso?
Yes
Interesting video! I currently use airscape containers and my coffee (which I've roasted myself) is used up within 4-6 weeks so I'm doubtful I'd notice a huge difference from freezing.
Thanks, James! Yes, I mainly recommend freezing if you experience staleness, but it's worth trying the experiment, even if you want to keep some small doses around for longer.
A poor man's vacuum sealer:
put your beans in the Ziploc submerge the Ziploc in water until just the opening and close it
Water will push out any air in the Ziploc
👍
PS great video!
Will try that, excellent idea. And thanks, appreciate it!
vacum sealers can use bags that are reusable . you dont have to use the one time use ones that restaurants use lol
This was really interesting to consider and I may give it a shot at some point if I brew more than one bag at once - When freezing coffee, does this count towards resting freshly roasted coffee? (i.e. would freezing the coffee kinda keep it “too fresh”?) Also, would you simply grind it straight out of the bag fresh or leave it to come up to room temp?
Hi Lorraine, I would freeze at the peak flavor window, so around day 7-10, since degassing/resting is also slowed by freezing. Simply grind directly from the freezer, it works great.
@@coffeechronicler Really cool, thanks!
Keep in freezer, just take out the amount you need each day and then close the bag by rolling the opening of the bag down so no air gets in and then close with a bulldog clip or clothes pin and put back into the freezer. Keeps fresh for at least a month without loss of smell or flavour.
i get those little boxes they give ypou with medication to freeze them . i have so much because im crazy lol
Keep in mind that your lungs create a vaccuum. I zip up a bag almost all the way and then suck the air out before zipping all the way. I do this for vegetables etc. I haven't tried with coffee because somehow I got the impression that unless you need to store it for a very long time, keeping it at room temperature was better. A myth, I guess. My inclination would be to remove more than a single dose at a time--maybe a week's worth--and let it thaw before grinding. I realize grinding frozen can be advantageous in terms of particle-size distribution, but I wonder if there's a disadvantage as well or at least something to take into account. I've read that the grind size will be finer for frozen coffee at a given grinder setting. If I'm going to take out more than a single dose at a time, would you recommend thawing before I open, given that if I opened it right away, it would just be my first dose that I'd be grinding frozen? I guess I should experiment myself.
There’s no controversy for me. I always freeze my beans. A 1 pound bag of coffee lasts me about two weeks. If I don’t freeze them, the beans are very significantly stale and rancid before the end of two weeks. End of discussion.
Then.. do you defreeze them before crushing?
@@oosmanbeekawoo No. Over time I have used both a hand grinder and an electric burr grinder. Both work fine with beans straight from the freezer.
The coffee beans I buy come in laminated multilayer bags designed to keep the beans fresh during room temperature storage. Those bags keep the coffee fresh for a couple weeks in the store, but once I open the bag, there is no way to keep oxygen out. The bag, closed reasonably securely with the metal closure band that comes with it, seems to do well enough at keeping food flavors out and coffee flavors in. There is not a practical way to keep oxygen out, so I don’t fret over that. Keeping the beans cold slows oxidation better than makeshift efforts to exclude oxygen.
Even though I buy my beans in a supermarket, they are roasted by a local roastery. I know they are delivered to the store frequently, not sitting in a warehouse or on the store shelves for weeks.
Any beans that taste rancid after a while were too dark to begin with. Buy better coffee bud
@@airmax2136 @clammyclaude 1/3 of the fatty acids in coffee oil are doubly unsaturated linoleic acid. This acid is well known for going rancid in other plant oils, such as canola, flax seed, soybean, etc. The reaction is an oxidation and certainly is slowed by cold storage.
According to Raba, Diana Nicoleta et al. “The influence of high-temperature heating on composition and thermo-oxidative stability of the oil extracted from Arabica coffee beans.” PloS one vol. 13,7 e0200314. 11 Jul. 2018, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0200314
“lipid fraction of coffee is stable when the beans are heated at high temperature; the heating process does not induce major changes in the fatty acids composition of oil extracted from roasted coffee beans, compared with the oil from green coffee beans.”
There are, of course, many other compounds in coffee which may be subject to oxidation or other reactions that create unpleasant flavors. These may vary with roast level. The coffee I buy is not very darkly roasted. It does not have the characteristic oil exudation of really dark coffee. It is not, however light roast. It would be best described as medium roast.
If your coffee does not stale or become rancid during room temperature storage, or if you are not bothered by these flavors, then there is no reason for you to cold store it. For those who find that their coffee does develop unpleasant flavors during room temperature storage, knowing that cold storage significantly slows that process without causing other harm, is useful knowledge. Coffee, the beverage, is a remarkably diverse product. There is not one best way to perform any of the many steps in its production.
Cheers
perfect♥️
Thanks for the support!
Salam from Indonesian
Shouldn't I be worried about the oxygen inside those lab sample containers if I single dose it?
In theory, yes, but in practice, it works well. It seems the effects of oxygen are less severe at freezing temperatures.
@@coffeechronicler Yes, definitely. Take it from a chemist. Low temperature slows down oxidation as well as most other chemical reactions.
Without equipment to do a good inert gas purge, trying to exclude oxygen after you have opened a bag of coffee beans is pretty futile. The people who do vacuum bagging may be able to reduce oxygen by a factor of 10 or so, if they are lucky, but that really leaves plenty of oxygen to react with our precious flavor compounds. Cold storage is, for the vast majority of us, the most accessible, simplest method.
@@markholm7050 Great to have a chemist here! Hope to see you more in the comment section.
Rosslyn coffee in London actually has a "secret" menu where they have rare, deep frozen, vacuum sealed coffees available for purchase. I had a really interesting cup of Eugenoides there last summer.
Hope to see these "rare menus" a lot more!
Freidhats in Amsterdam also have there geishas in the freezer in small bags
My methode just to put coffee in air tight bag and suck all the oxygen. Taste just like freasly roasted
eating chicken nuggets is crazy
I completely agree
Sounds like some people might be getting a little over-concerned about the particulars of their charred seed juice. Maybe buy a frisbee or something.
Use a container that you can put a vacuum under, no more bags.