Oops bought too much coffee! Is it better to freeze right in the bag it comes in, or mason jar? Jar won't explode, will it? I tend to put the cap on very tight.

Jim S and other extremely experienced folk here use bags.

I use mason/ball 1 pint jars. put lid on snugly but not mega-ape. let it thaw for a few hours before you try to open it - you'll get a nice little puff of coffee-air. I opened one right after pulling it out of the freezer and it "imploded" when I removed the lid, and blew beans everywhere - no broken glass, and quite funny!

innermusic wrote:Oops bought too much coffee! Is it better to freeze right in the bag it comes in, or mason jar? Jar won't explode, will it? I tend to put the cap on very tight.

I package it into a bunch of these then freeze, as Jim said, with tape over the valve. The main reason I prefer these to the jars is that it's easier to slide a bag back into the coldest part of the freezer. They're good for several uses, though not as durable as a jar. They last longer if you under-fill a little. It only takes a few hours for them to come to room temperature when I pull them out of the freezer.

How about just putting in the freezer in its original bag, scotch tape over the CO2 valve?

I believe someone already responded to your question about using the bags just taping the valve. They said yes

innermusic wrote:How about just putting in the freezer in its original bag, scotch tape over the CO2 valve?

That's fine too if you'll use the whole bag before it goes stale (once it comes out of the freezer). I do that for 12oz or 1lb bags. When I wrote my reply I was thinking of the 5lb bags I've been buying lately. Since I use about 1 to 1.5lb per week, 5lb needs to be divided into smaller portions before freezing.

I just did a little experiment over the last 3 days.

I froze a few doses of relatively fresh (i think 8 days since roast date) black cat analog espresso (i made sure they're double bagged for airtightness)

I kept most of it as I usually would in a zip locked bag.

And I got this "easy food bag" $20 vacuum bag and air pump kit from home hardware (or similar store).
I used the vacuum bag to seal like 1/4 of a pound of the beans as well, and kept at Room temp (actually in my cupboard which is kind of pretty cold!)
The beans are about 3 weeks since roast date now and the regular ziplocked ones lost their fruitiness/complexity which made the black cat nice / special. Its kinda just 'meh' now (I make cappuccinos with my espresso, but I can still tell when it's really good/not so good) .

The frozen one was a bit better, a bit more of that fruitiness /complexity I got when the beans were fresh, but still lacking something.

The vacuum packed ones actually tasted best, which I suspected because every day I'd quickly suck out more gas from the bag (beans still degassing carbon dioxide) and it always smelt nice and fresh still!
I'm not sure how it compares to fresh roasted, but it definitely turned out better than the frozen and regular zip locked beans. It had that fruity complexity I wanted and I don't think I changed my procedure too much, although I did use a new 18G VST basket with this one, but I doubt it would have that much effect on the taste. I'll experiment further with this though; maybe try the old zip locked beans again using the VST basket.

(oh as a Side note: I should add our Silvano doesn't seem to work with VST Ridgeless 22G baskets, it fits in the portafilter holder but won't lock into the machine for some reason. )

Ben

Someone in another thread linked to a site that ran tests and stated that unless you can get to under 0.1% O2 then it makes no difference if you use a vacuum or not (and it mentioned not a single consumer vacuum sealer will do that). In addition, if you freeze below -10F then you don't need to vacuum anyway.

Well it tasted fresh after vacuum packing a 1/4lb of beans, and first re-opening it. BUT I re-vacuum packed the remainder again, and I tried it again after 2days it didn't have that fresh fruity taste anymore, more nutty this time, so I think it degrades quickly once exposed to oxygen, next time I might try single serving individually vacuum packed bags. That might work better.