This might be the most boring subject of all when it comes to talking about coffee, but the question comes up often enough to address.
Nobody is born knowing the best way to think about storing coffee, so I’m going to talk you through it here.
tl;dr: Keep a week’s worth of coffee in the bag on the counter.
An airtight crock or opaque tupperware container is good too, but the more important idea is to drink the coffee before it can get stale.
Long-term storage of coffee defeats the purpose of drinking high-end freshly-roasted coffee.
Refrigeration harms coffee: don’t do it.
Have you ever seen a coffee roaster keep their packaged coffee in the fridge? Ever heard of a coffee grinder with a built-in bean cooler?
No.
Coffee shops and retail markets store thousands of dollars of inventory on regular shelves at room temperature. It’s fine for your coffee too.
BUT WHY? When you remove anything from the fridge, moisture in the air will condense on it. No biggie if it’s a can of Schlitz, but you don’t want liquid water appearing out of thin air on your coffee!
There isn’t a good way to store ground coffee.
There is no way to keep an open bag of ground coffee fresh. Keep it on the counter to avoid the above mentioned refrigeration woes and drink it as quickly as possible. Please grind your coffee just before brewing it. Thank you.
Long-term storage in the freezer is OK, but just OK.
If you buy more coffee than you can drink in a few weeks, storing some of it in the freezer is fine. Avoid removing and replacing it repeatedly if you can.
If you’ve got more questions about coffee storage, you know where to find me!
