Freezing Coffee Beans Retains Freshness - True Or False ?
How should Coffee beans be stored, so you can enjoy the tastiest coffee from your bean to cup espresso machine One of the suggested methods is to put your ground coffee or coffee beans in the freezer. So does storing coffee in your freezer actually work What are the advantages and are there any disadvantages
Freezing is a traditional method used to preserve food and in todays modern kitchen with a fridge or freezer it is easy and convenient A diverse selection of foods can be frozen. Freezing even maintains many of the vitamins and nutritional value of a wide variety of foods. Coffee, however, isn't as likely a candidate for storage in the freezer.
Coffee Beans have four main enemies against freshness: air, heat, light and moisture.
At first, freezing doesn't seem to contain many of the offending enemies. However, appearances can be deceiving.
One problem is that the Coffee Beans are porous, and freezers are full of many strongly flavoured foods, odours and smells. The porous beans take on the flavour of the other foods in the freezer Flavoured coffees can be pleasant, but no one wants to drink seafood or garlic flavored coffee.
Due to their porous nature moisture can also be absorbed by the coffee beans. Moisture can cause deterioration and loss of flavor. The more often you take coffee out of the freezer and put it back in, the more moisture absorption takes place into the bean. If you absolutely need to freeze some coffee because you have a large excess you'd like to keep, only freeze it once. The more you take it in and out of the freezer, the more damage you do.
Once frozen these oils in the beans begin to break down. The oils contribute to the flavour of the coffee. Breaking down the oils means taking away flavour, and let's face it, a large part of a good cup of coffee is the flavour.
The freezer is not the place to store your coffee beans. The best results and to ensure coffee retains its taste store coffee in a cool, dry and air tight container away from the light and any source of heat. Freezing coffee is possible, and is best if you only freeze it once. The resulting loss of flavour and quality from repetitive freezing makes it a method of storage to stay away from.
Your best bet is to purchase only enough beans or ground coffee to supply you for 1-2 weeks. That way you will enjoy Coffee from your Expresso Coffee Maker or Coffee machine at its freshiest and best.
