Abe,

I guess the question is, if it tastes good to you, why does it matter? Would negative experiment "result" change what you taste?

I'm not thinking about myself here. This site is about building a knowledge base and "best practice" recommendations for the coffee enthusiasts. Freezing beans became common practice only after Ken did his experiments with it and published it here. I'm suggesting to pickup where that experiment left off.

Oh I understand that. It just seems to me that this is little more should I say subjective than freezing...

I dumped from freezer directly into my M3 lot of time with pretty much same routine as you and could not taste anything different...

tekomino wrote:Abe,. . .
Would negative experiment "result" change what you taste?

For me, the answer is "yes." My appreciation and knowledge of coffee is substantially driven by what more knowledgeable others suggest. My "taste" has developed in this culture of expertise, and if left to my own resources and senses, I'd probably be quite satisfied with that hot bitter-flavored drink I used to consume.

My current practice is a mix of science, my own and others' subjective taste, superstition, habit, hunches, tradition, pragmatic coffee-supply management, and much more. And, I'm not 100% convinced that freezing, as an isolated variable, is as good as careful fresh roasting--unfrozen.

However, freezing does contribute to the overall reliability of my having optimal beans to extract. Likewise, storing coffee (or most consumable food products) in a dark, cool, dry place is so overwhelmingly supported by science (I think) and conventional wisdom, I'll stick with it.

+48 hours [total 5 days from defrost]

The beans with the condensate smell quite off, reminding me of lubricant tainted jute bags, and brewed unpalatable sink shots. Remainder of jar discarded. The defrosted while sealed beans smell normal and brew as expected.

cafeIKE wrote:+48 hours [total 5 days from defrost]

The beans with the condensate smell quite off, reminding me of lubricant tainted jute bags,

Ian, could you please enlighten us on what a "lubricant tainted jute bag" smells like? None of the "lubricants" that I can think of have any odor, in and of themselves. As a former physician who used those products in the context of patient examinations, I could not identify any of them on the basis of smell (and no, I have never tasted them ). I guess you could say that WD-40 is a "lubricant," as is motor oil, but I don't think that this is what you meant in your description.

ken

Jute needs lubrication when it is milled. Today, usually mineral oil, but in times past, whale, seal and mineral oil combination were used. Non-food grade jute has a distinct odor, rather like burned lubricating oil in combination with cotton sheets that have sat too long in a cupboard.

Burlap tourist gewgaws often exhibit this smell. A walk around a craft show / store often finds a sample

I've been grinding straight from the freezer for 30 years. Nowadays I do tend to thaw small batches (1/2 pound) at a time before use instead, but only for convenience. My unscientific observation has always been that coffee seems to stay fresher in the freezer, and that no obvious damage is done during the 2 seconds that the container is open.

The exhortation not to freeze beans has been around for decades at least, I do not know what its origin is. Some here might recall an old thread from alt.coffee where someone from Baratza insisted that grinding frozen beans is hard on grinders, but that seemed to me at the time to be in the context of trying to find an explanation for premature burr wear, which was probably more likely due to a batch of inferior burrs.