Tips for Storing Coffee

To maintain your coffee’s freshness and flavor proper coffee storage is essential. Whether storing ground coffee or coffee beans, certain principles need to be followed in order to ensure that coffee maintains its peak freshness and taste.

Coffee Storage Tips

One over-arching principle is to be remembered in the storage of coffee.

Air is the enemy of coffee. Coffee begins to lose its flavor six hours after roasting. The more coffee comes into contact with air, the more flavor it loses.

For the sake of the coffee’s freshness and flavor, some general rules need to be followed.

Don’t store coffee beans in glass canisters. These let air in.
Don’t freeze your daily coffee supply. The moisture will cause the flavor to deteriorate.
Don’t keep your coffee next to an oven. Heat will also cause coffee to lose flavor.
Don’t keep coffee in the refrigerator. Refrigerators have many odors in them, and coffee absorbs all these odors. For this reason, used coffee grounds make great odor fighters in the fridge.
Store coffee in air-tight containers.
Keep your coffee in a dark, cool place.
Buy only enough coffee that will be used in one to two weeks. After this time, the exposure to air will take most of the flavor from the coffee.
If the coffee is not used within two weeks, then it should be put in the freezer.
Once coffee is taken out of the freezer, it should not be put back in. The contact with moisture will cause it to lose its flavor.

Tips for Storing Green Beans

Coffee drinkers do not buy green (unroasted) beans, but roasters do. For those who roast coffee, storing coffee is a little different. Most of the time, coffee arrives in 150 pound bags. These beans can be stored for years as long as they are exposed to heat or moisture. Some even say that coffee is better with age.

For storing green beans, one should:

keep the bags on boxes or shelves that are off the floor, and
when opening the coffee bag, open it with one string. The string will open the bag. Don’t use scissors.