Bean Coffee
Bean Coffee
How To Store Your Coffee
Whether you roast your own coffee or buy it at the store chances are you have more than one serving on hand at a time. This means you have to store your coffee.
Which also means you have to know how to store your coffee. Bad news, there is a lot of bad information on coffee storage. The good news, coffee storage is a simple process and the trick is there really is no trick to storing coffee.
So how should you store your coffee? You want to store your coffee in a cool dry place and out of direct sun light. Use an airtight container preferably one with a one-way exhaust valve.
Coffee lets off carbon dioxide after roasting until the moment it is cupped. Drinks like espresso actually give off carbon dioxide during and after being brewed. That is what the crème on top of the espresso is, but I digress. You can purchase coffee storage containers that have these built in or you can built one yourself.
Okay, so you have your storage container purchased or improvised. You have placed your coffee beans in a safe cool dry environment. How long will they stay fresh? The important thing to remember is coffee is an art not a science (although there is actually a lot of science surrounding it). I have heard experts say you can store whole bean coffee anywhere from a month to six. I do not recommend buying more than a week's worth of coffee at one time. This is mainly because the coffee you buy at the store has already been sitting on the shelf for a week and it might have been sitting in storage at the roaster for a month before that. I recomend a local coffee roaster, their coffee does not sit around as long and you get the added bonus of supporting your local economy. If you roast your own coffee, I would not recommend roasting more than a week's worth either but you can wait to start the clock until the beans flavor has matured. This is anywhere from 12 hours to 2 days depending on the blend and roast profile.
If you are storing ground coffee, don't, but if you must I would not keep it more than 15 minutes in open air or maybe a day if stored properly. Ground coffee has more surface area exposed which makes it a much better medium for brewing, but also means it goes stale much faster.
*the following has been modified with permission from Erudite Coffee.
About the Author
Sir Dydimus is a former coffee shop owner and author of the coffee blog Erudite Coffee.
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