GC7 wrote:Obviously the first protocol is relevant to coffee but ice crystals are not a problem. Frost-free freezers are a potential problem due to as correctly mentioned dehydration. If you have a chest freezer I think its more important to make it non-frost-free then it is to have it a bit colder. -20 or -40 will have not too much of a difference for the storage periods we generally keep coffee.

I guess it might depend on how you are packaging the beans for freezing. I vac bag all my roasted coffees using a Foodsaver & then store them in an upright Frost Free storage freezer set to 0°F. My longest "test" to date was a bag of a dark roasted blend that I didn't really care for that spent 6 months in my freezer. Since I was making a large batch of coffee liqueur recently & needed 4 cups of espresso I figured it was worth a try. The vac bag was still holding its vacuum after 6 months, I was able to achieve a normal shot volume in the 25-30 sec range grinding within my normal espresso grind range & the shots all produced about the same crema that I would see in shots pulled from beans with 5-7 days rest. The flavor was pretty much as I remembered it, over roasted, but perfect for the dark coffee flavor I wanted in the liqueur.

I've been freezing my roasted beans for over 2 years now in the same freezer set to the same temp with very good results. Maybe the vac bagging makes the difference or maybe you really don't need to keep your freezer set to -20 to -40°F to achieve good results??

John

Everything you wrote makes perfect sense to me. I love my vacuum foodsaver unit too. With "non-living" coffee flash freezing is the way to go and any internal ice crystals are not necesarily bad and might be necessary to preserve internal moisture levels of "fresh" green coffee.

Six months or more of storage does not surprise me either. As I posted somewhere else with chemical reactions (degassing or otherwise) the rate is cut in half with every 10* cooling. Going from room temperatures of 70* to your 0* freezer would cut rates by about 128-fold. That is significant nad perhaps six months freezer storage equals two days at room temperature. There are certainly roug estimates as I don't really know the nature of all the coffee chemisty involved here.

CDMTech wrote:I would tend to put this in a perspective of fresh versus frozen. A good point that I use is that if you had people coming to visit and you were going to make fish for them would you rather have fresh fish just caught or something that has been in the freezer. Personally I think most would prefer fresh unfrozen and that is the same concept I rely on with my espresso.

Ray

And this isn't really true, either, in my experience.

Where I live, in Idaho, I can buy very high quality and very fresh wild salmon. The species I like are Sockeye (aka "Red," or "Blueback") and King (aka "Chinook"). These fish have specific seasons and for the great majority of the year, are not available fresh, although one can always buy "fresh" farmed salmon.

The farmed stuff, in addition to damaging the environment that the wild fish live in (and damaging their runs), are detestable, with a mushy texture and uninteresting flavor. I never knowingly eat farmed salmon.

The wild ones, if properly handled and frozen quickly after being harvested, can provide exceptional eating year round, when their runs are not open.

ken

Although I frequently freeze beans and for me, espresso from frozen vs fresh beans may not taste too different, no respectful Chinese seafood restaurant will ever steam previously frozen fish. As sashimi fish, there is also a taste difference in frozen vs fresh, like o'toro or tai. In other more commonly available seafood in the US, there is a pronounced difference in frozen vs fresh shrimp, clams, oyster, or crab.

Just picked up a few dozens of Kumamoto oysters from Hog Island. I cannot imagine ever freeze them.

There is no choice Fresh vs Frozen. However, some don't have the choice as there are no local roasters and I sympathize with the situation. However, if I was doing the roasting myself, I would (theoretically) roast only as much as I could consume within the fresh period, and not opt to roast a huge amount to freeze for future dates.

By US law most crabs consumed in the states have been cooked and frozen before reaching the end consumer. Stone crab are cooked on the boat, king at the processing plant, so on and so on. Fresh crab are rare unless you are in a coastal area then they become a treat.

Coffee ≠ Fish. Some things freeze well; others don't.

GHOTI = fish, but that's another story.

as a general note I've been finding that grinding frozen beans requires a a coarser grind than their otherwise identical thawed siblings.

Who grinds frozen beans? As I've said, I take them out of the freezer and let the beans come to ambient temperature overnight. If you grind frozen beans, you get all sorts of condensation ON the beans -- and that's definitely not good!

Jason, from page 1:

timo888 wrote:I dose from the freezer directly into the grinder and directly from the grinder into the basket or french press. I don't allow the beans to come to room temperature before grinding them.

Also, do you have a real basis for thinking condensation on beans you're momentarily going to pulverize and cover with water is a bad thing? I'll admit it raises my eyebrows a bit, but I haven't tried it myself. I have trouble seeing the condensation as problematic for this use, but I am sure it depends on the details of how you implement the process of grinding frozen beans—for example, does the bit of condensation you get on the frozen beans in the container when you open it and replace it in the freezer cause degradation? How much and in what timeframe?