If you’re serious enough about wanting fresh coffee that tastes great, you’re likely to buy green coffee beans and roast them at home rather than purchasing roasted beans (or ground coffee) at the supermarket. Because green beans are coffee in its raw form, they are as fresh as you can get – so this is a really popular choice among hardcore coffee drinkers!
Roasted coffee does not have a very long shelf life. By the time coffee has been roasted, packaged, and made its way first to the store and then to your kitchen, it’s already lost some of its freshness. If the coffee is pre-ground, then you can pretty much say goodbye to freshness as soon as you open the packaging and brew your first espresso – keeping it in an airtight container will help retain some of the flavors, but as soon as it’s open, the coffee starts to absorb air, moisture, light and warmth. These are not friends of coffee! That’s why a simple rule of thumb when it comes to keeping coffee fresh is to only have as much ground coffee as you can use within a few days (or a few weeks at most).
Of course, the best way to do this is to buy beans rather than grounds. Grind it as you need it, and your cappucino or mocha will be fresh and tasty every time! But even roasted beans don’t keep for very long – at least, not when compared with green ones. When you’ve purchased a lot of green coffee beans, all you really have to do is put them in a tightly sealed container and keep them somewhere cool and dark, roasting a small batch at a time as you need them.
So what do you do with the batch of beans you’ve just roasted? Well, first you grind some and brew yourself a nice cup of java, obviously! While you’re sipping a café au lait from your demitasse, find a suitable container for the rest of your fresh roasted coffee beans. Ceramic is the best choice – avoid using plastic or metal containers if you can, as these can contaminate the beans and spoil their wonderful flavor. Just make certain that it has an airtight seal, and then choose a good place in which to store it. A pantry shelf is usually a good choice, as it should be dark and cool in there, which is the best way to keep destructive moisture away from the roasted coffee beans.
Do not, under any circumstances, store your coffee in the refrigerator!, freshly roasted Coffee beans absorb odours, and refrigerators tend to store up an awful lot of strong smells from other foods. All that will happen to your coffee is that it will soak up all those odours and spoil the flavour, so don’t do it. Ideally, you should only roast as much coffee as you will use in under two weeks, as this will be fine if stored in the way advised here. But if for whatever reason you have too many fresh roasted coffee beans, you could store them in the freezer until you need them. There are a lot of debates about storing coffee in the freezer, and it’s certainly not the best option. However, it’s better than wasting good coffee, and there’s less chance of moisture forming inside the container than there would be in the refrigerator. Don’t refreeze them once they’ve thawed, as the moisture created by this process will spoil the coffee.
The key to storing fresh roasted coffee is to do so in small quantities that will be used within a couple of weeks, keep it in an airtight container, and store it in a cool, dry place away from strong odours. That way, your coffee should stay fresh and tasty for long enough for you to use it all!
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