I drink exclusively decaf espresso and my wife exclusively drinks caffeinated drip brewed coffee. I'd like to make her an americano every once in a while. I was thinking about freezing some caffeinated espresso beans so I can pull them out in the rare instances she's willing to have an americano. The challenge is that I won't be able to plan ahead to defrost and degas the beans.

Have any of you figured out a good way to do this? Is it okay to grind up frozen beans? Does anyone have any great ideas?

I've tried splitting a bag of coffee into tiny 18g bags (I have a heat-impulse sealer) and freezing them, and found that it was not necessary to defrost them before grinding - just take the bag out of the freezer, cut it open, grind and go.

It is safe to assume that grinding cold beans would have some effect on the espresso, but in my experience the effect was so minimal that I didn't even notice it.

Find a bean that she likes both as drip and in the Americano, and use that for both.

Using the same beans for both drip and americanos is probably the easiest...my current fav (la perla de oaxaca from intelligentsia) is great for drip, french press and espresso