Well, I am confused. I had stopped vacuum packing due to posts at our forum. I went back to vacuuming as the roasted beans seem to have better aroma upon opening the jars and as I read at HB it is all right to vacuum. Honestly I don't have the science knowledge to know who is correct so I am not disagreeing with anyone here. I'll wait for more responses and I thank all of you. I do not roast beans.

I've been vacuum sealing my roasted coffee since 2007 & have yet to suck the flavor/oils/ect out of the beans. Beans continue degassing once removed from the freezer even after being in there for months. Vacuum sealing is known for preserving flavors & extending freezer storage time.

^ same here. Glass canning jars & lids along with a Foodsaver with their canning jar lid adapter (I use wide mouth but they also make a regular size adapter). It works.

bronsht wrote:Well, I am confused. I had stopped vacuum packing due to posts at our forum. I went back to vacuuming as the roasted beans seem to have better aroma upon opening the jars and as I read at HB it is all right to vacuum. Honestly I don't have the science knowledge to know who is correct so I am not disagreeing with anyone here. I'll wait for more responses and I thank all of you. I do not roast beans.

One possibility is that there is a difference between using a typical consumer grade vacuum sealer versus a system that pulls a much better vacuum. The science guys who worry about lost volatiles might be assuming the latter while most home vacuum sealing is done with the former.

I had been vacuum sealing coffee in bottles for years (doing it, not duration of storage) before freezing and found that while a small loss of crema might be noticable, the flavour/flow profile remained stable for much longer than in non-vacuumed beans. Freezing is easier and lasts longer but the grind profile is different - I haven't had good results defrosting prior, however.

There are degrees of vacuum. It's not a binary state of vacuum, off or on.

While it is a scientific fact that actual 'high-vac' will induce molecule out gassing, the vac levels of these vacuum storing devices is not very high compared to say, a scanning electron microscope pulling 1 x (10 to the (-7)) Torr, rather, it's just lowered air pressure. There is still 'air' in there, it's just not as dense a population of gas molecules as there is at environment atmospheric pressure.

I have been using a Weston for about three years now with out any problems..
https://www.amazon.com/Weston-65-0501-W ... B00GD7PU5O

I use one of these:



https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Sh ... 8eeccd9e74

It's a beast, but I use it for lots of other stuff too, like sous vide cooking.

I borrowed a Foodsaver a few months ago and vac-sealed two portions of recently roasted (2 days post roast) beans and put them in my frost-free freezer. I also froze two portions packaged without vac-sealing (in the original paper bags and then in a ziplock freezer bag).

After three months I took out one of each type of portion, let them warm to room temperature, and then I cupped them, blindly. Two of each type, four cups total.

I had a hard time telling the difference between those four cups. I knew two of them were vac-sealed and expected those to be slightly better in terms of aroma or lack of staleness, or something. I eventually picked the two cups that I thought were marginally better. They turned out to both be the non-vac-sealed samples. Probably just random chance.

So this wasn't a very convincing exercise, albeit just one meager data point.

I still have more beans from these two portions so I can repeat this. And I have another of each portion type in the freezer. I can wait until 6 months or a year and taste those. And I can probably borrow that vacuum sealer again and try another coffee. I'm not ready to buy a vac sealer.

For what it's worth.

I have the VacMaster VP115, predecessor of this model and basically the same. The VP120 is also available from Amazon with Prime free shipping for $25 more.

The price is considerably higher than a FoodSaver or other extrernal vacuum machines, but the bags are much less expensive. That's because they don't have to be quilted. I'm still working through my original order of bags from 2+ years ago. The chamber sealer also allows sealing liquids, which external vacuum sealers can't do (though even with a chamber sealer you have to be careful not to overfill the bag and not to seal hot liquids, which boil violently in vacuum.) The thing is built like a tank.

Sometimes I wish I had the next model up, which has a taller cover that would allow me to seal standard Ball jars, but mine is tall enough to seal the wide-mouth (squat) Ball jars.

If it had just been for vacuum sealing coffee, I might have gotten a cheaper external vacuum machine, but I'm also very much into sous vide cooking, which was actually the reason I bought the machine. I use the machine for sous vide at least twice a week, and also use it to seal leftovers and other foods for freezing and storage (like the unused half of canned cat food, which is a daily thing). The machine lets you stop the vacuum and seal any time after you start the cycle, which lets you go from just sealing the bag to a partial vacuum for delicate items to a full-blown vacuum for max protection.