HB wrote:The NY Times article appears to make inferences based on non-taste observations. Anyone know of blind taste tests demonstrating that frozen beans deliver "tastier" coffee as the article claims?

I've been vacuum sealing & freezing my roasted coffee since late 2007. For quite awhile now I've been keeping my daily use coffee in a non vac sealed jar in the freezer. I keep a scale on the freezer & just measure out the dose & put the beans back in the freezer. When I get a new shipment of roasted coffee in I'll leave it in the bag to age for x number of days then remove a portion to leave out on the counter in a jar to follow through the aging process & vacuum seal/freeze the rest.

A number of times over the past few years I've been struck by a noticeable improvement in a coffee after I started using it out of the freezer compared to the portion I used prior to freezing. This certainly is not a blind test, just my observation.

In my 8 years of freezing beans I've yet to see condensation appear on beans used right out of the freezer but even if it did happen why is this considered bad & spraying water on your beans to reduce static is recommended?

(Peripherally related)

Perger blog post from a few days back on Barista Hustle:

The Year of Freezing

I believe freezing coffee (both green and roasted) to drastically increase shelf life will be elevated to widely accepted -if not common- practice within the year. It definitely works, but until now there's been precious little evidence and far too much prejudice for it to break through. Freezing, in combination with vacuum or nitrogen flushing, stops coffee aging in its tracks. The possibilities created by this are rather compelling...

If freezing coffee does gain mass appeal & Perger gets credit I'm switching to tea!

The good news is there's a thread about warming up your beans to increase mouthfeel and taste! So maybe we can all switch to doing that to avoid you switching to tea

Also related:

https://strivefortone.com/2017/01/03/fr ... -not-peas/

HB wrote: The NY Times article appears to make inferences based on non-taste observations. Anyone know of blind taste tests demonstrating that frozen beans deliver "tastier" coffee as the article claims?

I have no doubt whatsoever that the idea of grinding frozen beans has been tried over and over again by many since modern refrigeration became widespread. If it had proven to be a boon to taste improvement, we would have all been doing it for many decades.

I read this frozen bean grinding deal as a pie in the sky idea.

jesse wrote:(Peripherally related)

Perger blog post from a few days back on Barista Hustle:

Nitrogen flushing dehydrates. Additionally, I can't see us all rushing out to buy Liquid Nitrogen (LN2) Dewars.

In my view, bean mass humidity would need to be preserved, not added to and subtracted from.

JohnB. wrote: In my 8 years of freezing beans I've yet to see condensation appear on beans used right out of the freezer but even if it did happen why is this considered bad & spraying water on your beans to reduce static is recommended?

It happens even if you don't see it. We run a big humidifier to keep the house at 35%-40% relative humidity because of our climate of very low humidity levels, down to low single digits, much of the year here in the Sonoran Desert, but particularly in early months of the year prior to our annual Arizona monsoon season in summer.

Dry air is a culprit of static electricity problems. My grinds and clothing exhibit no static cling and we don't have to contend with static electricity zaps at home.

Charlene wrote:It happens even if you don't see it.

Maybe but so what if it does? Again, spraying water on them doesn't seem to affect the taste negatively so how could you imagine that some minute, unseen amount of condensation would??

rmongiovi wrote:Whatever happened to the "ice is a rock, and so grinding frozen beans is bad for the burrs" argument? Did that get debunked?

There isn't enough moisture in a roasted coffee bean to even consider them truly frozen like ice. Think of them as damn cold beans when first pulled from the freezer.

JohnB. wrote:Maybe but so what if it does? Again, spraying water on them doesn't seem to affect the taste negatively so how could you imagine that some minute, unseen amount of condensation would??

Dry off a stainless steel pitcher for steaming milk and freeze it. Two hours later, take it out of the freezer.
Do ice crystals form on it? if, so that is moisture condensation that is flash frozen coming from room humidity.

JohnB. wrote:There isn't enough moisture in a roasted coffee bean to even consider them truly frozen like ice. Think of them as damn cold beans when first pulled from the freezer.

Typically, there is approximately 15% moisture content (give or take) in roasted beans from what I have read, all things being equal.

Can you prove grinding frozen beans tastes better?

The upside is this is an experiment we can all make at home ourselves. Try it and let me know what you think.

Edit: The upshot of this study was to improve size homogeneity of grinds. Anyone who has ever soaked a dry sponge in water or soaked beans over night in water will tell you it makes things swell up (with water).

Charlene wrote:Dry off a stainless steel pitcher for steaming milk and freeze it. Two hours later, take it out of the freezer.
Do ice crystals form on it? if, so that is moisture condensation that is flash frozen coming from room humidity.



Typically, there is approximately 15% moisture content (give or take) in roasted beans from what I have read, all things being equal.

Can you prove grinding frozen beans tastes better?

The upside is this is an experiment we can all make at home ourselves. Try it and let me know what you think.

You are comparing the condensation on a steel pitcher to what you'd see on a roasted coffee bean??
As far as whether frozen beans taste better or not I just passed on my own personal experiences. I don't really care one way or the other as I'm sold on freezing already just for the storage benefit alone but I think there might be something to it.