vs.
Okay, so you all know I am not the biggest coffee drinker in the world. I do enjoy coffee quite a bit, but I drink it more like a social drink and not as regularly as many people do. I have seen a bunch of information on how to store coffee, some of it is contradictory, so I went on a mission to find the best information I could on coffee storage. If you are like me and don’t use your coffee as regularly as other people do, then you may want to read the rest of this article.
I went to my favorite source on food science, Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, and found out what I could. I also read as many independent sources as I could from Martha to Cook’s Illustrated. The general consensus is the longer your coffee sits out on your counter the worse it is for it. McGee, like many other food writers, suggests storing your coffee in the whole bean form. This seems to be the best way to get the most freshness. Whole beans work better for storage than ground coffee from a science point of view. As McGee states, “One reason the whole beans keep as long as they do is that they’ve filled with carbon dioxide, which helps exclude oxygen from the porous interior. Once the beans have been ground, room-temperature shelf life is only a few days.”
Cooks Illustrated did a big test on storing ground coffee this month. They found that ground coffee stored on the counter for two weeks had a bitter flavor. They found frozen grounds (stored in ziplock bags with the extra air pressed out) worked better, but they worked best when allowed to come back up to room temperature.
So, what’s the best way to store coffee? Well, the best way would be to buy whole beans and store them in the freeze in a container with all the air pressed out. When you are ready to grind the coffee, take it out of the freezer and allow it to come up to room temp. and then grind it and brew. If you don’t want the hassle of whole beans, use the same technique with ground coffee and you should still be able to brew a decent cup of joe.
I drink coffee every day. Gotta have it. I haven’t studied it as hard as you have , but I find this works well enough for me: I buy whole bean. Won’t consider ground unless it’s Starbucks/Peet’s/etc and on sale for a riduculous price. Once a week (or as needed), I grind enough to mostly fill a specific container I have. It’s a small canister with the rubber seal around the edges and a metal cage around that (like a Grolsch bottle). That will keep my coffee fresh “enough”. However, I also put a great deal of half and half in my am joe, so one could argue that I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference….
Comment by EY — February 28, 2007 @ 5:42 pm
Thanks for the comment. I think you are right that most people probably couldn’t tell the difference with cream and sugar. Coffee is a funny thing, people feel very strongly about it, most of the time. Not being a huge coffee drinker, I always wondered about storing it properly.(But I guess the reality is that I drink mine so slowly it probably wouldn’t even fare well in the freezer)
Again, thanks for reading and commenting. I always love to hear other people’s thoughts on my posts.
Best,
Nicky
Comment by Nicky — March 1, 2007 @ 11:26 am