Five Minute Masterclass: Storing Coffee

COFFEE IS FOR LIFE, not just for Christmas. So don't make the mistake of neglecting your coffee once you've paid for it.

There are plenty of enemies of flavor lurking out there. Nothing would make them happier than to ruin your coffee experience.

Your coffee beans start their life on a tree that’s taken at least four years to grow. The best fruit is selected and harvested twice a year, dried in the sun for weeks, raked, turned by hand and covered in rain and at night. The beans are hulled, polished, sorted, graded, bagged, loaded, shipped, tasted, cupped and roasted. Roasting turns the green beans brown and unlocks their fragrant caffeol oil. Now it’s a race against time to get bean to mouth before the flavor deteriorates.

So a lot of care and attention goes into your morning coffee. As coffee lovers, we think of it as our responsibility to capture all that love and freeze the moment in time.

Know your enemy

Plenty of factors that contribute to coffee losing its pep. Peak brewing time is between 3 days and 3-4 weeks following roasting. After that time, these enemies tend to get the better of your brew, making it taste lifeless and like cardboard.

Let's take a look at these fearsome foes one-by-one.

Moisture and Oxygen

It might sound obvious but you need to keep this pair of reprobates away from your precious haul. Increased moisture and oxygen leads to raised enzymes and microorganism activity which literally feed and multiply on coffee. Keep these little devils fed and they'll thrive, ruining your brew in the process.

Light

Just like our skin burns when we over-do it at the beach, sunlight and artificial light wrecks coffee. This type of spoiling is known as photodegradation and it strips pigments, fats, proteins, and vitamins. The end result is discoloration, off-flavors, and plummeting nutritional value. Yuck.

Carbon Dioxide

Coffee beans naturally emit carbon dioxide (CO2) after roasting which tastes unpleasant in your brew. Ideally, you need to give coffee at least three days after roasting for the majority of that to disperse before you brew it.

But that process of CO2-release doesn't stop there, it continues right through to brewing. So storing coffee in an airtight container is a mistake as trapped CO2 builds up, taking the edge off the freshness and flavor-spectrum as it goes.

To keep your coffee happy and ready to reward you every time, get hold of a container with a CO2-release valve. A container just like our flavor-saving canisters in fact.

Keep it whole(some)

Once you grind, or somehow break a coffee bean open, the surface area increases dramatically, exposing it to air. This speeds up the staling process so that lovely coffee smell and flavor is lost quickly.

Side note: Instant coffee manufacturers artificially add the coffee smell to their jars to give the illusion of freshness. Rascals.

In any case, the message is clear - only grind the coffee when you need it.

Conclusion

Coffee needs to be kept dry, away from oxygen, light and carbon dioxide. Buy little and often. Grind it as you need it. Use it after 3 days and a within 3-4 weeks of roasting. Incidentally, Gator canisters have a date wheel to help you track when it was roasted, bought or when you need to use it by. Just saying.

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