Coffee Corner: How to Store! {Sarajane.} |

It’s been a little while since I wrote about how to buy great coffee. If you want to see that post you can find it here. Basically, I broke it down into 5 tips: 1. Go to the right places. 2. Know how roasted it! 3. Make sure they’re not black and oily! 4. Look for the ‘roasted on’ date. 5. Pay more than $10/lb.

I was happy to receive e-mails from a few of you saying it was helpful. My hope for Coffee Corner is to create a building block of coffee tips for you. Starting from the beginning and eventually getting on to how to brew. Step one was buying the right beans. That’s the root of it all. The next step in the process is making sure you are storing your beans correctly! There’s nothing worse than paying more than $10/lb for coffee and then letting it go stale!

The enemies to your coffee’s freshness are 1. air 2. heat 3. light and 4. moisture. You must do everything you can to avoid those factors! Good news for you, I’m going to tell you how.

1. Do NOT under any circumstances put your coffee in the fridge or freezer!

This is a HUGE misconception. There are 3 main problems with doing this:

1. It allows moisture in! This immediately starts to deteriorate the coffee!
2. It allows moisture in! This invites ugly things like mold into your daily supply of coffee. Not cool.
3. Your coffee will act as a deodorizer for the fridge. Meaning it will suck up all the bad scents your fridge has. Good for the fridge. But, it’ll be so sad when your morning coffee tastes of onions and day old left-overs.

2. Keep it in an airtight container.

The number one enemy to your coffee’s freshness is air. You want to allow as little air in as possible. So, whatever you choose make sure it’s seriously air tight. I want to hear it make a noise when you open it!

3. Store it in small batches.

If it’s possible for you, store your beans in as small of batches as possible. The less times you have to open the container’s they’re stored in, the better.

4. Keep it dark!

As much as I’d love to use coffee beans as decoration, storing them in a pretty container on your counter isn’t doing the beans any favors. Allowing that much light in, is destructive. You have two choices: either store them in a dark container or store them in a clear one inside a dark drawer.

5. Keep it cool!

Don’t store your beans in a cabinet near your stove, refrigerator, or on a wall that meets the outside. I recommend storing your beans on an inside facing wall away from any appliances that would get hot to the touch.

6. Use within a week if possible!

If you are buying your beans within 2 weeks of them being roasted, you are going to want to use your beans within a week of buying them. For some of us, that’s really difficult. But, that’s the goal. It’s not the end of the world if you can’t finish them in two weeks. But, for ultimate freshness 1 week it is!

7. Grind Directly before brewing!

For the ultimate in freshness, grind your beans within seconds of using them! Seconds!

The breakdown:

To make this simple for you, I will tell you exactly what to do now…
Store your beans whole bean, in a ceramic container {like the one pictured below}, nowhere near any hot appliances, attempt to use within a week, and grind your beans within seconds of brewing your coffee.