# Bean storage times.



## daf123 (Sep 20, 2010)

My first post so please be gentle with me!

I have just purchased 3kg of coffee from an online supplier that was recommended on this site. The coffee is excellent by the way! All three bags are the sealed bag variety with escape valves.

It will probably take me around 6-8 weeks (possibly less as I'm overdosing on the stuff at the moment as it is soooo good) to drink the lot.

(1) In the past I used to keep beans in the freezer but this seems frowned upon here. Unfortunately I have a very warm kitchen (Aga) so where should I store them if not in the freezer?

(2) If I was to store them at 'room temperature' how long will the beans last in sealed bags?

I'm sure the info is somewhere on this site but after 30 minutes of searching and typing in security words I thought I'd give this method a go!

Thanks in advance.

Daf.


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## Glenn (Jun 14, 2008)

Welcome Daf

Keep them stored in their bags, in a cool dry place and do not open until you need to.

They will store for a few months but try and consume as quickly as possible

Squeeze out the gas every few days for the first week to 10 days (until the bag stops expanding)

What brewing method are you using?


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## daf123 (Sep 20, 2010)

Cheers Glenn. So I should be OK for two months -sounds good.

I drink strong black coffee using a filter machine. It seems to work for me and I get a better flavour than I would with say a Starbucks or a Cafe Nero or a Costa Coffee Americano. I know that if I used an espresso machine to extract the coffee an added hot water to it I'd probably get a better flavour due to the high pressure heat extracting more of the oils/ flavours. I may look into it Christmas time!

It's a grinder I'm after next. I've been using a blender type grinder (I can here the tutting in the back there ;-) wich has produced a reasonably consistent grind for me but I have to make batches which means some of it may be over a week old before I use it. I need an on demand grinder and have seem a couple recommended on here for around £100.


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## marbeaux (Oct 2, 2010)

Glenn said:


> Welcome Daf
> 
> Keep them stored in their bags, in a cool dry place and do not open until you need to.
> 
> ...


If we don't have a cool dry place to store coffee is it practical to store in the frig rather than a freezer?


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## liquidmonkey2000 (Oct 4, 2010)

According to some pretty extensive tests carried out by Ken Fox on Home-Barista.com freezing seems to have little or no discernible effect on the beans for at least 2 months.

http://www.home-barista.com/store-coffee-in-freezer.html

This has convinced me that anything I have heard previously about freezing being bad is just one of those anecdotal myths that seems to surround coffee making.


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## HLA91 (Jul 16, 2010)

I would wait until a good number of poeple have done it and reported the results before I would try it.


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## liquidmonkey2000 (Oct 4, 2010)

> I would wait until a good number of poeple have done it and reported the results before I would try it.


If you read the associated comment a lot do agree with the results. http://www.home-barista.com/feedback/coffee-to-freeze-or-not-to-freeze-t3540.html

I would always favour scientific methodology over anecdotal here-say. You hear a lot of "oh! you should never ever do that" that is almost never backed-up by any kind of emperical research.


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## Pan (Oct 20, 2010)

I've been storing Grinds (not Beans) for a Cafetiere/Plunger in the freezer for almost 20 years.

Every 4 weeks I've been driving 12 miles into town, and getting 1.5-2lbs of beans coarse ground then bagged into quarters. These go straight in the freezer, and a new one gets pulled out every 4-5 days and emptied into a sealed pot for me to use. When I was living and working out in Nigeria for a while I even took 10ilbs of ground coffee out with me in my suitcase.

Now I know you'll probably say I'm de-sensitised to it, but I can still detect a minor variation in the pot as a few small grounds from a blend that was run through the shops commercial grinder before mine.

And yet I have never detected any staleness in my coffee.

Apples and Pears perhaps, as espresso is probably going to be less tolerant but certainly in my experience - and using the same blend for 20 years - freezing is just fine.

Peter


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## marbeaux (Oct 2, 2010)

Interesting information. As I don't drink much coffee and yet waste far too much, I'll try storing the beans in a freezer removing only sufficient for each brew. Allow them to come back to room temperature and then grind them


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## ChiarasDad (Mar 21, 2010)

I read that Ken Fox freezing experiment some months ago, and found it encouraging enough to try it myself. I found freezing very useful, within limits, and am sticking with it.

I used to buy beans slightly more often than every two weeks, because in most cases I really don't like espresso pulled from beans over 10 days old, and at two weeks generally found it outright nasty. That's with reasonably good storage practices, well sealed with excess air squeezed out, and so forth. Constantly trying to decide when to order my next batch of beans so they'd arrive before I ran out -- taking into account my usage, a roaster's non-roasting days, and potential delays in the post -- was an ongoing nuisance as well as being a bit expensive in shipping charges.

I now buy roughly a month's worth of beans at a time. Any bag I'm not opening in the next day or so goes in the freezer (bottom drawer of an ordinary household fridge/freezer, not a serious chest freezer as in the Home-Barista experiments). I don't feel that the bags that have been frozen for two or three weeks are any less good than the bags that I open fresh. (On average, in fact, I would say that my enjoyment has increased, since I am no longer trying to stretch the last day or two out of an aged bag before the next one arrives.)

There are a few bags that I've left in the freezer longer. This was by chance rather than as a matter of experimental design, so I wasn't methodical. But the really old bags were not good. If I remember accurately - which I admit is questionable - a bag that was 8 weeks old was drinkable for a couple of days after opening, but was marginal at best. Anything older was rubbish. That's why I only buy about a month's supply at a time. (Per the Home-Barista results, some aging in the freezer is expected, but my results are worse than theirs, presumably because their freezer is so much better.)

Your mileage/freezer/palate may vary, of course.


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## HLA91 (Jul 16, 2010)

It does sound very tempting, I think I will probably give it a go, HasBeans come in the one way valve bags and obviously the valve is a liability so should I wrap the bag up again in another bag or tape over the valve then wrap it just to make sure moisture entry is minimised?


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## vintagecigarman (Aug 10, 2009)

No scientific tests, no data, only my personal experience of trying freezing beans a few years ago, and it certainly didn't work for me.

But coffee's such a subjective thing that it's worth a try, and if it works for you, great.

Personally, I'd sooner roast every other day (sometimes every day). Just over a half hour from start to finish, and, imho, well worth the effort.


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## ChiarasDad (Mar 21, 2010)

The Home-Barista testers taped over the valves, I believe. I don't do anything with the bags if they're sealed foil, and if they're paper then I wrap tightly in a plastic bag before freezing.


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## TimStyles (Jul 22, 2008)

A few months?! 4 weeks - absolute maximum.


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## love-coffee (Apr 26, 2011)

My advice is to read this link, I follow their advice religiously ... http://www.tea-and-coffee-emporium.co.uk/TC_coffee.html#For%20best%20result


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## DonRJ (Apr 3, 2010)

I am very fortunate in having an old school, proper pantry in my little old house. For example, beer placed on the pantry floor in the height of summer is perfectly cool for drinking. Needless to say, I store my beans in the aforementioned pantry and feel no need to freeze them for the relatively short time that they remain there before consumption..


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## RolandG (Jul 25, 2010)

daf123 said:


> I know that if I used an espresso machine to extract the coffee an added hot water to it I'd probably get a better flavour due to the high pressure heat extracting more of the oils/ flavours. I may look into it Christmas time!


Sorry to go briefly off topic, but I'd suggest not going for an espresso machine if you like americanos/long drinks. I think of it like orange juice - americanos are like orange juice made from concentrate, filter is freshly squeezed orange juice







Some manual pour-over methods are well worth an investment though!


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