The correct storage of your coffee beans is critical in ensuring you always have the freshest and best tasting coffee you can get. On this page I will look at the few key things in making sure you are keeping your coffee in the best way you can.

Coffee has a few big enemies when we are thinking about storage:

• Moisture
• Extreme temperatures
• Light
• Time

Light: This is much the same as storage for most of the fresh products you buy, coffee should be kept in a dark environment such as your pantry. Being exposed to large amounts of direct light can speed up the spoiling of oils in the coffee.

Extreme Temperatures: A common myth out there is that you should keep your coffee in the fridge or freezer. This is completely untrue, in fact if you are doing this you have already spoiled all of that coffee. The reason here is that coffee doesn’t do well in extreme temperatures, and while the thought that keeping coffee in a fridge or freezer does combat the constantly changing temperatures of your home, its still a big no-no. If you think about coffee beans as a little vessel that carries the delicious oils which you extract when you brew your coffee, if you store your coffee in the fridge the oils in your coffee will solidify. This process is not reversible so when you take the coffee out to use they do not return to their normal state which will result in a ‘not-fresh’ brew. The other thing about storage in the fridge and freezer is that the extreme temperatures will draw moisture to your coffee – think about what happens when you take a cold drink out of the fridge into a warm environment, you get condensation which leads us into Moisture.

Moisture: Coffee is not soluble in water, this is why when you brew your coffee you are left with the grounds at the end. However they are very good at absorbing moisture, in-fact they attract moisture. For this reason you need to keep your coffee in an airtight container. This will solve the problem of moisture in the environment. Even if you do keep it in an airtight container you still must store it at room temperature though.

Time: Coffee only stays fresh for a limited time once it has been roasted. In their green state they have an almost indefinite shelf life. However once roasted they need to be immediately put into a bag at the source of roasting that is not vacuum packed and has a one way valve. These are two things to look for when buying your beans.

Coffee puts off carbon dioxide after it has been roasted and this acts as a shield to protect it from oxygen. If you purchase a vacuum packed bag of coffee you immediately know that the beans are stale becuase they don’t have the carbon dioxide around them to guard them, or they have been sitting a long time before packaging and are no longer putting off carbon dioxide. The other important thing to note is that I would suggest avoiding supermarkets for purchasing your coffee beans – for the simple reason of you don’t know how long those bags of coffee have been sitting on the shelf or in the warehouses. Also after you have purchased your beans they really only have about a 2 week shelf life once removed from their initial packaging.