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Coffee has a major natural enemy.
If you can limit the amount of time that coffee interacts with its natural enemy the longer your coffee will last!
Fresh coffee is what you’re after right?! Stale coffee isn’t good and isn’t worth the price you sometimes pay.
Oxygen is the enemy of coffee.
Oxygen, speeds up the rate at which coffee goes stale.
It oxidizes the oils, gases, and flavors that are naturally occuring in coffee.
Now preventing oxygen from contacting your coffee is impossible unless you were to go to great and expensive lengths.
The best way to keep your coffee as “fresh” as possible for as long as possible is to use airtight containers, store your coffee in bags or containers without any kind of valve.
The reason I say fresh in quotations is because coffee will begin oxidizing once it’s been roasted from trace amounts of oxygen in bags, in storage bins, in the cooling tray after it’s been roasted.
“Fresh” just means we’re trying to keep all the things that make great tasting, fresh coffee, taste that way.
The longer we can preserve that the the more enjoyment you’ll get from your coffee.
Most people take 3-4 weeks to go through a 1lb bag of coffee which is perfect timeline to avoid any staleness.
But say you buy MORE than just 1lb of coffee at a time.
What about those other bags of coffee?
Well, you can always leave those bags sealed and toss them in the freezer.
Like most things that experience freezing cold, things slow down, which means the oxidation process of coffee is going to slow drastically. Keeping that freshness present until you’re ready to start working on that bag.
The absolute best way to keep your coffee fresher, longer, aside from the things mentioned above…
Is to buy whole bean coffee.
You’ll also need a coffee grinder of course.
But whole bean coffee makes it harder for oxidation to take place.
The oils, flavors, and gases are held in the bean far better than ground coffee.
The reason…
Ground coffee exposes more of each coffee bean to oxygen.
It decreases the surface area that the oils, gases, and flavors have to work through to evaporate.
This decreases the “life span” of the coffee in terms of freshness.