Hmmmm. Next time I'm in Italy, I'll have to try to find some fresh stuff and bring it back to try...

Good luck.

Have people been unable to obtain such things? Shoot, I guess maybe so since if memory serves, Mark Prince was apparently unable to obtain much fresh Italian coffee for his espresso-off. Darn.

cafeIKE wrote:Andy S posted this link in another thread. Sivetz PACKAGING ROAST COFFEES.

Man, that was an interesting read! I recently attended one of the cupping classes at Sweet Marias, and Tom mentioned a few times about going into nitrogen flushing as a means of preserving green beans...which called to mind Terroir's comment that they do so with their roasted coffees. Yet they note that this vac bagging & flushing occurs "within a few hours" of roasting. If Sivetz is right, that's too long.

I also wonder about using nitrogen. Wouldn't a packager want a gas that is heavier than O2 if they're using the usual valve-near-the-top bag? Why not just flush with CO2? I'll confess that I may be guilty of splitting hairs here. Terroir goes on to note that they've tried the N-flushed beans stored at room temp over one-week increments and found them still fresh-tasting "for many weeks." That sounds pretty good to me...

Cheers,
Paul

I buy quite a bit of coffee from Terroir & what ever method they are using seems to work just fine. George is very big on vacuum bagging & freezing his green beans to preserve freshness.
http://www.terroircoffee.com/news/

I've been v/b & freezing my roasted coffees for close to a year now & while I've fine tuned my methods over time I've been very happy with the results from the beginning. I pulled some Black Cat roasted 5/30/08 out of the freezer this morning & enjoyed some of the best shots I've had from that batch pulling long(40 sec), syrupy Ristrettos. If I'm able to get great tasting shots with plenty of crema from beans 8 weeks past roast I find it very hard to believe that vacuum bagging has any negative effect on the beans.

Recently finished reading Chapter 6 of the Illy book, Storage and packaging.

Here is my synopsis:

Factors affecting storage include water, oxygen, and temperature.

About 1-2% of coffee weight is CO2, about 6-10 liters per kg. Driving force of "degassing" is the pressure and concentration gradient. At lower temperature, the CO2 migration slows, therefore the oil migration also slows. CO2 pushes oils out of bean cell structure.

In increasing order of protection: air packaging, vacuum packaging, inert gas packaging, pressurization, and finally, combination of the above with active packaging.

My interpretation of the packaging and degassing process can be explained by the gas equation PV=nRT and slower rate of chemical reactions at lower temperature. By reducing headspace volume and temperature, the shelf life can be prolonged. In the home environment, it would be difficult to achieve pressurized or inert gas packaging. However, we can reduce the rate of oxidation, moisture, and partial oxygen and CO2 pressure and migration by vacuum packaging and freezing.

roblumba is correct in surmising that slight degassing in tight container enhances shelf life. Some inert gas packages are made by placing drops of liquid nitrogen or CO2 (technically not inert gas) into the package.

I started freezing coffee after reading the chapter, and have been taking the packages out 1/2 pound at a time over the past few weeks. So far, I could not detect appreciable difference from non-frozen coffee. However, my palates are probably not as refined as most other people here.

TimEggers wrote:I just pulled a pound of Redline out of the ol' freeze (in original bag with one-way valve) and its absolutely horrid. That's an expensive lesson to learn (and Redline is such a nice blend too).

Huh... really? I do that all the time and had absolutely no problem. I usually buy a 5# bag of greenline, and then 2, 1 pound bags. Freeze one and use the other. Tastes the same to me. Is your fridge funky? Baking soda...

A quick observation about coffee in the freezer. I put coffee in the freezer within hours of roasting. When I don't open the freezer door, degassing doesn't begin until I take the coffee out of the freezer. When I need to constantly open the freezer, the coffee bags begin to bloat, indicating degassing has begun while the bags are still in the freezer.

If you have a large super market look for an item called a reynolds handi vac. These are very cheap and I have been using it with their larger bags. I even looked on e-bay and they are for sale as low as 10 bucks. I get coffee about 2 days out of roast and I leave it in it's original bag with the valve taped over. The handi bag is not very powerful but sucks enough air out of the bag to get a nice seal and I pop it right in the freezer just like that. I have so far had fantastic results and have noticed no deterioration of quality when storing like this. I have so far used beans stored like this 2 months after roast when I needed extra for a party and they were fantastic. I have no doubt they can be stored much longer but I tend to rotate stock out of the freezer about every 3 weeks just to make sure I keep the freshest beans I can available to my quests.

Although I have deviated from this practice I prefer to split the bag when I get it... divvy it up between a few 1 qt zip-loc freezer bags that I squeeze the air out of before sealing... and then put those inside of a 1 gallon size zip-loc freezer bag that is similarly sealed. When I need more coffee I just take out one small bag the night before the morning I plan to toss it in the hopper and then open it in the AM when it's totally thawed.

In the absence of guests - which is only an occasional event in my house - I go through only about a half pound per week and freezing is important for me as a way to preserve freshness.