Read a few times on this forum that repeatedly opening containers to take out beans is not good for the remaining beans in the container.

What is the difference in the oxygen that is displaced out of the container and the new that replaces it? With the airscape the air above the level of the beans is pushed out, so I would think the ratio of beans and oxygen remains the same if that matters.

If there is a difference, wouldn't it be smart to only put half the bag in the airscape at a time? Would there be a difference between the beans in the airscape at day 7 when it was opened 9 times and the bag of beans at day 7 that was only opened once?

Oh... the airscape is opened only long enough to scoop out 2 spoonfuls, maybe 10 to 15 seconds.

Ken

It's really hard to say. But here are a few things to consider.

Even without any headspace in a container there is air in between the beans. It works out to about 1cc per gram of beans. Air is about 1mg/cc and is 21% oxygen by weight. At sea level that means there is roughly 200ug of oxygen per gram of coffee. That doesn't sound like much but experiments have demonstrated that it only takes 150 to 300ug of oxygen to stale coffee to the point that 50% of tasters find it unacceptable. The threshold for specialty coffee tasting sub-par is probably a lot less than that.

So it is likely that when you first put the coffee in your Airscape there is enough oxygen to spoil it, eventually.

If you leave the container closed, and it has a very good seal, the amount of oxygen will decrease as it is consumed. That in turn will slow the rate of oxygen consumption. Unfortunately the rate of coffee spoilage doesn't decrease significantly until the oxygen percentage is pretty low. When you open the container some fresh air, flush with 21% oxygen, will intrude to some degree, which of course doesn't help matters.

I suspect an Airscape (or an opened bag) isn't a whole lot better with respect to oxygen consumption than an open container. But a closed container or bag will protect the coffee in other ways, e.g. exposure to moisture in the air. You'd have to do a bunch of tests with blind tastings to really find out whether keeping it in the bag or in the Airscape makes a difference that you can detect. I'll bet you wouldn't be able to tell.

Thanks John, always appreciate your posts!

You must be an engineer or scientist.

Gather I couldn't tell the difference either, actually not sure if a blind tasting would do me any good either as every shot is a 'little' different as it is and wouldn't know if it was the beans or the pull.

Ken

I have 8 Airscapes and buy into the discussion that they don't work so well, especially if you open them all the time. What they do enable for me is to drop my custom roast cards on top of the black push down and see the card through the clear top. They also enable me to dose into my custom single dose rack easily. I can dip the jars into the Airscape and you get good at estimating the weight. I do this about every 4th day so that is how often I open them. Why 8? 6 are medium and 2 are small. Decafs go in the small. I usually roast four coffees for consumption at home and usually there is some not yet finished so the new coffee can rest. Usually 2 of them. So 2+4+2.

Grant it I have accumulated these over time.

So regardless, they are very useful to me and I don't worry if they don't work 100% for keeping the air out.

I've had a bit of a wild ride with Airscape. Never used it before six months ago, and thought it solved some real issues. with daily use, I discovered that, for me, the Airscape actually causes more degradation to the bean over time. I can literally taste the difference over the course of days.

As a result, my Airscape is now collecting dust, and I've moved to a regiment of freezing single doses into (almost) airtight containers. Quality and freshness is far more consistent, and the last jar is just as good as the first.

I don't doubt that this is the optimal way to go, with regards to freshness. I sometimes use small canning jars like that.

BUT... I rather enjoy the airscape process. I have four, but three are generally frozen at a time and the other I'm working from. Probably 4 days worth of beans at a time. More beans than that and yeah, I'll seal them up and freeze in some large jar or vacuum seal. I don't know why the multitude of small jars bothers me so much... perhaps I just don't know what to do with all of them taking up room in my freezer (in the other room) and shelving after I use them.

MNate wrote:I don't know why the multitude of small jars bothers me so much... perhaps I just don't know what to do with all of them taking up room in my freezer (in the other room) and shelving after I use them.

To be clear, my wife thinks I'm insane.

There's definitely pluses and minuses. Fresher doses for sure, and it's incredibly handy to never have to measure beans every time I want an espresso or cup of coffee. But storage in the freezer is required, storage in a shelf for the empty jars is required, and every week I spend 10 minutes dosing a freshly opened bag of coffee while being openly laughed at by my wife. (She's not laughing at the excellent coffee I make her though, so there's that. )

Now I know why we blend, we have no accountability for our errors and the coffee is damn good 95% of the time. Our coffee is in the Airscape until 3-4 days post roast and then opened about 3 more times over two weeks. My wife always drinks caps and so blends work great. I have one or more SO espressos over those two weeks, but I don't sense a big enough difference to worry about it.

Ken5 wrote:Gather I couldn't tell the difference either, actually not sure if a blind tasting would do me any good either as every shot is a 'little' different as it is and wouldn't know if it was the beans or the pull.

You could cup the coffee instead. But it would probably still be really hard to taste the difference, if there even is one.