tekomino wrote:I would not have on the list Caffè D'arte, Seattle, WA ~ No roast date on the bags, no one way valve on the bags, they just pierced the bags first and last time I ordered

I refuse to put any of my coffee in the foil bags with valves... Everything I ship is in the traditional brown coffee bag with the liner. Anywhere in the lower 50 get's my coffee in 3 days or less and the bags breath just fine for off-gassing.

Because I'm in the desert, during the summer month's I'll vacuum seal the coffee and ship the bag separately with instructions to free the beans into the bag and store out of direct sunlight and room temperature.

My opinion, and I'll own that, is Specialty roasted coffee should rest for 3 days prior to consuming, then peak flavor lasts to day 7, good till day 10-14 and then oxidation has ruined it for people, but good for composting.

I don't recommend freezing, unless you're stationed @ the Amundsen-Scott Station where regular or timely shipments are tough to come by and freezing, well, is easy.

Otherwise shipping is fast and reasonable to buy what you need to last a couple of weeks...

My 2 cent rant.


...split from List of our favorite Roasters by moderator...

BeanGuru wrote:I refuse to put any of my coffee in the foil bags with valves... Everything I ship is in the traditional brown coffee bag with the liner.

What is reasoning behind that?

BeanGuru wrote:My opinion, and I'll own that, is Specialty roasted coffee should rest for 3 days prior to consuming, then peak flavor lasts to day 7, good till day 10-14 and then oxidation has ruined it for people, but good for composting.

Some coffees should rest for 3 days and some are good 10-14 days after roasting.

BeanGuru wrote:I don't recommend freezing, unless you're stationed @ the Amundsen-Scott Station where regular or timely shipments are tough to come by and freezing, well, is easy.

Unwarranted bias towards freezing has been long debunked on this site. You should read more and conduct tests yourself

What is reasoning behind that?

The reasoning is part old school preference but more importantly that I do get better results using the lined paper bags when shipping across the country. The paper bags consistently allow for better off-gassing. Admittedly, "burping" the beans from the foil bags upon arrival is easy enough, but they then need a rest period to acclimate to humidity.

Some coffees should rest for 3 days and some are good 10-14 days after roasting.

I think we're both on the same page here, I need to refrain from absolute positions... (Chalking this up to my process engineering tendencies...)

Unwarranted bias towards freezing has been long debunked on this site. You should read more and conduct tests yourself

Being that I operate from my dedicated coffee lab, I live the education piece - that's what I do. What I can tell you is that unless you purchase a professional vacuum sealer, the freezer will accelerate oxidation and kill expertly roasted specialty coffee. I may have leaned back toward my process engineering thoughts and made a decision to profess the absolution of freezing coffee, instead of putting out the caveat that a high-quality vacuum sealer can protect the coffee from dehydration/oxidation. The other piece I'll point out is that the best results I had were to let the coffee rest no less than 2 days post roast before vacuum sealing and freezing. You need to off-gas some, I'm not sure the scientific reason, I'll ask my chemical engineer friend to understand why that is...

I've got some 400x photos of the various freezer induced defects in my photo library, I'll need to dig those up with my cupping notes.

It looks like I need to compose a message, walk away for 10 minutes and then go back - never was good at instant responses...

thanks, Paul

Welcome to HB ...

BeanGuru wrote:What I can tell you is that unless you purchase a professional vacuum sealer, the freezer will accelerate oxidation and kill expertly roasted specialty coffee.

... But this is incorrect.

I've participated in two extended blind taste tests here and here that contradict this statement. Hundreds of home roasters freeze their roasts in mason jars or freezer bags after doing their own blind comparisons.

Sivetz holds a patent for freezing roasted beans, and George Howell freezes green beans. The scientific literature supports that freezing coffee to -40F or C commercial levels stops aging entirely. The above cited studies by Ken Fox and others show that warmer home freezers retard noticeable degradation for several months

Finally, the freezer damage you describe comes from water crystallizing. There is less than 1/2% water in roasted beans, and the roughly 10% moisture content in green beans is bound in such a way so that it does not crystallize, even at -40F or C.

I have recently started freezing. I had put them in ziplocs and then a jar in the freezer. Unfortunately after only being in the freezer a few weeks I tried some and they didn't work out very well. One tasted only of black currants after the freeze, and others seemed much more simple than they were originally. It's just my experience, but I don't think I'll be continuing to freeze my coffee anymore.

I freeze immediately upon receiving the shipment - which typically arrives three days after roast date - unless I plan to begin consuming the coffee right away. If I plan to use the coffee within a few weeks I place in a freezer grade ziploc, expel the air and then place in another similar ziploc that is also well sealed. If planning to keep for longer than a few weeks I vac-seal the original bag using a higher end consumer grade Foodsaver (not commercial.) I've had incredibly consistent results but do see a fall-off in quality beginning around the three month mark, thus I rarely keep beans in the freezer for longer than that.

Some of this is starting to sound more like sales hyperbole...

BeanGuru wrote:I refuse to put any of my coffee in the foil bags with valves... Everything I ship is in the traditional brown coffee bag with the liner.

Is the brown bag heat sealed? If not, then either type will outgas easily enough. If it is heat sealed then what keeps the bags from over-inflating? The statement sounds like justification for use of a lower-cost bag. As long as the bag keeps the beans isolated from the air and can outgas to keep it from bursting, does it matter whether the bag has some sort of plastic or mylar lining?

... during the summer month's I'll vacuum seal the coffee and ship the bag separately..

What keeps those bags from over-expanding during shipping? I sent vac-packed bags of freshly-roasted coffee to my brother and by the time they arrived (two or three days later) they couldn't have been inflated any larger even if you had used an air compressor.

My opinion, and I'll own that, is Specialty roasted coffee should rest for 3 days prior to consuming, then peak flavor lasts to day 7,

Specialty roaster coffee, or roasted specialty coffee?
A blanket statement that is not an absolute at all. The best cup of drip-brewed coffee I ever had was a Colombian taken right out of the cooling tray , ground, and brewed.

napierzaza wrote:I have recently started freezing. I had put them in ziplocs and then a jar in the freezer. Unfortunately after only being in the freezer a few weeks I tried some and they didn't work out very well. One tasted only of black currants after the freeze, and others seemed much more simple than they were originally. It's just my experience, but I don't think I'll be continuing to freeze my coffee anymore.

Check the temperature of your freezer. Inexpensive refrigerator/freezer thermometers are available at kitchen supply stores and kitchen departments of big-box stores.

Freezer temperature is directly related to how long most food, including coffee, will last. For example, I've seen one claim that for every five degrees above 0F, the food storage time is cut in half, and that the lower the temperature below 0F, the longer the food will last before deteriorating.

Most kitchen refrigerator freezers are set by default to 0F, or 32 degrees below the freezing point of water. If I set my freezer to the lowest setting, it gets down to about -10F or so. It's been claimed on this site that dedicated freezers can get down to -40F, but I've not been able to find any temperature range specifications for these products. The only ranges I've found have been for lab freezers, which get down really low.

So, my advice is to measure your freezer's temperature. If it can be set lower, try that and see if it extends the amount of time the coffee can be used.

I've found that freshly roasted coffee can be frozen at 0F for about 3-4 weeks. It rarely holds up longer than that unless the freezer temperature is set lower (recently I set our freezer temp to the lowest possible, but don't have information on results yet.) I try to get my coffee as soon after roast as possible, anywhere from 1-3 days post roast. I freeze it immediately on receipt, and store it in the coldest part of the freezer. Most coffees benefit from some rest time after roast, which I think adds to the amount of time that the coffee will last in the freezer (i.e., it "matures" in slow motion while frozen, buying extra time in the freezer.) So don't wait for the coffee to hit the peak after roast before you freeze it. Been there, done that, and it doesn't work as well as freezing closer to the roast date.

It also matters how you package the coffee for freezing. The container must be air tight. Some members of this site just tape over the valve and throw the bag in the freezer. Others vacuum pack the beans in plastic bags or vacuum-sealed Mason jars. I use plain-old Mason jars, but pack them with as many beans as I can to minimize the amount of air present. A ziploc in a non-Mason (i.e., poorly sealed) jar won't cut it.

Many, including me, have found that coffee stales more quickly after being frozen. While fresh roasted coffee can be used for several days, a week or even two weeks (rarely), frozen coffee will go downhill much quicker. For that reason, package your coffee in portions that can be used before the beans stale. A Mason jar of coffee lasts 3-5 days for me, depending on the bean size and the dose I'm using. Five days is pretty-much the upper end if I freeze the coffee 1-3 days after roast. I generally buy 3-4 weeks of coffee at a time so that it doesn't sit in the freezer longer than 4 weeks.

another_jim wrote:Welcome to HB ...

... But this is incorrect.

I've participated in two extended blind taste tests here and here that contradict this statement. Hundreds of home roasters freeze their roasts in mason jars or freezer bags after doing their own blind comparisons.

Sivetz holds a patent for freezing roasted beans, and George Howell freezes green beans. The scientific literature supports that freezing coffee to -40F or C commercial levels stops aging entirely. The above cited studies by Ken Fox and others show that warmer home freezers retard noticeable degradation for several months

Finally, the freezer damage you describe comes from water crystallizing. There is less than 1/2% water in roasted beans, and the roughly 10% moisture content in green beans is bound in such a way so that it does not crystallize, even at -40F or C.

I completely agree with all of this.

What I was referring to, but didn't explain well, was customers freezing their coffee in brown coffee bags, or some other semi-porous containers.

I should've realized the level of competency here and adjusted my messaging accordingly. I'm too conditioned for what I refer to as the Matrix (movie) effect. Someone who has been drinking coffee from a can all of their life (plugged into the matrix), who found specialty roasted arabica varietals(took the Red pill) and discovered a whole new truth/World about coffee. Apparently a much tougher task for me to adjust.

I went back last night and read all of the threads here on freezing coffee for espresso, very interesting.