lazysusie wrote:One major point that was stressed in these classes is
to NOT refrigerate or freeze coffee/coffee beans

You were misinformed. You may also have misunderstood the intention of this thread, since it is a discussion by people who regularly and successfully freeze coffee. We're not talking about freezing coffee once, but about repeatedly freezing and unfreezing coffee. Many foods that can be frozen once with no major change in taste or texture, like meats, degrade when frozen a second time.

Bottom line (as far as I can tell): If you bought a bag of coffee, you can tape over the valve and freeze it with no degradation. Freezing freshly home roasted coffee after sealing it air tight is even more common and has become the SOP for many home roasters. But once you take it out of the freezer, it's probably best to keep it sealed until it hits room temperature, then not to refreeze it. If it is possible to refreeze successfully, we haven't come up with the bulletproof technique for doing it consistently.