If you love your coffee with floral, fruity, or any other subtle flavors, do your best to keep the beans protected from light, oxygen, and big changes in temperature. MacDougall also recommends cleaning your coffee grinder at home regularly. The next morning, baristas refill the containers with properly stored coffee beans. But wait, if it’s good enough for the coffee shops, why isn’t it good enough for my home kitchen? “A good coffee shop will empty all grinder hoppers every night, clean the hoppers, and store the coffee in sealed containers,” says MacDougall. It can also cause oil to build up inside the grinder,” says Phillips. “Most grinders aren’t airtight so storing coffee in your grinder hopper will cause coffee to go stale more quickly. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but this means that the coffee grinder you’ve got with the built-in storage isn’t actually ideal for storing your beans. “If you don’t have a container that’s light proof as well as airtight, you’ll want to store these containers in a place that's consistently dark, like a cupboard or a pantry.” “Mason jars, repurposed bottles, or a sealable plastic bag can also be used,” says Phillips. As long as you plan on using your coffee within about a month, MacDougall tells me that pretty basic storage will do just fine.įor those of you who go through beans regularly enough to buy fresh every two to four weeks, any airtight container will do. “Keeping coffee fresh means adhering to three principles: Decrease air movement, limit temperature fluctuations, and avoid exposure to sunlight,” he explains. So once you’ve got your coffee beans home, how should you store them? “The two primary enemies to coffee freshness are oxygen and light,” says Michael Phillips, of Blue Bottle Coffee. What’s the best way to store coffee beans for lasting freshness? Fortunately, your roaster will only put whole beans out for sale after they’ve had a chance to rest after roasting, and most roasters print the “Roasted on” date on the bags. The darker the roast, the longer it needs to degas. After roasting, the coffee needs time to degas, otherwise you’ll end up with bad, overly bitter tasting coffee. You read that range correctly-there is such a thing as “too fresh” for coffee. “We think that the ‘optimal freshness window’ for coffee is between two days and four weeks post-roast for filter brews, and one week to six weeks for espresso,” says MacDougall. While storing in the freezer can prolong the life of your coffee, the beans stay fresh for a good amount of time if stored at room temperature, and how long that is depends on the roast level. How long will coffee beans last at room temperature? MacDougall also says that this is a fine method if you’re buying in bulk to save money, but that you may want to weigh the effort against the savings.

“I personally have a freezer collection of small vacuum-packed doses of my favorite coffees from years past that I’ll get out when I want to experience them again,” Graff says. If this sounds a bit over the top, that’s because it is-both MacDougall and Graff explain that this method can really be reserved for really special coffee. So how can we prevent chicken-flavored coffee? “If your freezer smells like that rotisserie chicken you froze last week, then that smell will make its way through that barrier and into your coffee,” says Dakota Graff, director of coffee for the Arkansas-based roastery, Onyx Coffee Lab. Some coffee bags, particularly the paper ones, make poor barriers against moisture and smells. That means storing beans in the refrigerator is definitely a no-no, since so many fridge staples give off moisture (think produce, the condensation on a milk or juice jug that's been sitting out, etc). According to the National Coffee Association (NCA), coffee is hygroscopic-it absorbs ambient moisture from the air. Storing coffee in the freezer isn’t necessarily bad, but there’s a right way to do it. But the whole experience made me wonder: Should coffee ever go in the freezer? And what’s the best way to keep it fresh if you’re not going through a 12-ounce bag every week? I talked to a few coffee roasters and other industry professionals to get to the bottom of it.

Coffee bean food menu