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Whether you’re a barista noob embarking on your first foray into home brewing or a seasoned veteran looking to explore the vast universe of coffee in the comfort of your kitchen, properly storing your precious beans is an easy way to maximise freshness and flavour.
Oxygen, moisture, heat and light are your coffees worst nightmare.
The first step is to store your beans [or ground coffee] away from oxygen and light. Commonfolk uses resealable bags with a one way valve for all our 250g range. This enables CO2 to migrate out of the coffee without oxygen making its way in. If your beans didn’t come in a resealable bag with a valve any opaque or solid container with an airtight lid should do the trick.
Next step is to keep the coffee away from moisture and heat. The dark recesses of your pantry should normally do the trick. Watch out for cupboards that are stocked with fresh produce that might increase humidity. It’s also worth noting that a cupboard next to an oven or another heat source might cause too much temperature fluctuation and damage the integrity of the beans.
Never store coffee in the refrigerator.
Refrigeration actually strips the moisture from the coffee and leads to significantly faster degradation and loss of freshness. Not to mention your coffee will taste like everything else stored in your fridge and everything else in your fridge will taste like coffee!
Buy enough coffee to last you a fortnight.
Coffee tends to be at it’s most delicious anywhere between 1-2 weeks post roast date. Always purchase coffee that has a clearly displayed date of roast. Even if you follow our storage guide perfectly, your coffee will still begin to lose character as it ages so we don’t recommend drinking coffee that’s more than one month past roast.
Only got old coffee at home? Don’t stress coffee doesn’t necessarily go off it just loses flavour and turns stale. You can safely drink coffee that’s months past its roast date [we just strongly recommend you don’t].
But what about the freezer?
There’s been a lot of research around freezing coffee and the results have been promising, but they do come with a big disclaimer. Unless you can ensure that no air can get in or out of the container you store the coffee in, it will get freezer burn and lose quality.
If you do choose to freeze your coffee, our recommendation is to use a vacuum sealer that removes all of the air from around the beans and totally seals the storage pouch. We also suggest portioning each pouch into individual servings so you’re not constantly defrosting and refreezing your beans.
Freezing your coffee doesn’t significantly change the brewing process and you don’t have to defrost the beans before you grind and brew with them. It can, however, extend the life of your coffee by months and even years if done correctly.
So that’s it!
Store your beans properly and you’ll be enjoying cafe quality coffee in the comfort of your own home.
Need some beans? Shop our amazing selection.
