I have been preserving multimillion dollar motors with inert gas under pressure for years. I also have an CFS, it works and it worth the cost if you like your coffee consistent over time. Vacuuming will dry out the coffee as it is possible to lower the boiling point below the ambient temperature. Remember the first dehydrated coffees were made by spraying brewed coffee into a vacuum chamber.

Before putting back in the freezer, just squeeze the air out of the zip locking bag the coffee came in. Then if you like the vacuum idea, place your lips around the valve and suck most of the remaining air out.

bustelo12 wrote: I couldn't agree with you more. Vacuum sealing causes faster staling of the beans, in my experience. I bought the CFS System with a few extra 400g canisters and it works great! BTW I am not insane.

Nothing about the CFS system seams insane to me (other than maybe the containers being clear.) Science is science; I have no doubt that it preserves beans as good-if not better-than most consumer devices/methods available. But, for me, it doesn't provide an attractive format, pricepoint and aesthetic.

Regarding vacuum containers, Fellow is up to something interesting. On one hand, they explain how Atmos works in detail and without eschewing science. Otoh, it is buried not one, but two, levels deep in a blog post. The main product page overstates the benefits of their product just like the literature of so many other perishable item storage device manufacturers.

It's hard to hate on the Airscape, Atmos, Coffeevac, etc. because they are so inexpensive. They don't provide a sufficient level of protection for many of us, but they are also only thirty bucks. So be it.

If you place your CFS out od direct sunlight There is no detectable UV induced degradation across 20-25 days using the largest canister.

If all it is is CO2 - can't one place coffee in the cheaper ISI or the Chinese copies and fill with CO2?

Or find a way to use a Sodastream bottle? Those are cheaper than a grinder. At least cheaper than many grinders...

bustelo12 wrote: I couldn't agree with you more. Vacuum sealing causes faster staling of the beans, in my experience. I bought the CFS System with a few extra 400g canisters and it works great! BTW I am not insane.

My experience is completely different. Without vacuum sealing, flavor degradation starts after about one month in the freezer. With vacuum sealing, flavor degradation starts after about two months in the freezer. The only difference is that vacuum sealing lengthens the amount of time I can keep beans fresh.

Note that beans continue to stale in the freezer, albeit much more slowly, regardless of whether I vacuum seal or not.

Like many others, I find that frozen beans stale more quickly after thawing. This is true whether I vacuum seal or not. So I freeze in containers holding only enough beans for four days max.

Caveat: My freezer is just a consumer kitchen model, so it doesn't get down below -5F. YMMV if you have an industrial or lab-grade freezer that can go much lower.

FWIW, I have a VacMaster VP115, the serious cousin to shawdo's serious vacuum sealer. I had to replace all the cheap capacitors on the power supply board because one of the large caps shorted and blew the switching transistors and other components. Quite the mess. Also had to replace the sealing relay, the contacts of which got pitted, causing sealing to be intermittent at best. Luckily, I was able to do this myself without shipping the heavy machine to the factory (or getting any help from them, which is non-existent.) Since the VP215 has similar features to the VP115, I suspect (hope) they upgraded the electronics.

I use Airscapes for my coffee and also small tightvacs for the 17-18g portions. I find this keeps the coffee quite fresh but I do go through it rapidly.

I have a bigger issue with the packaging and time between roasting and packing that are used by roasters. I dislike immensely all the ECO packaging that's many roasters are starting to use. I find that even with the valve taped up you can smell the coffee through the packaging. Packing coffee ASAP after roasting is something I think is important.

The second problem is the valve itself, I have not packed coffee in valve bags for over 4 years now....even though I have a box of 500 brand new valve bags that I shall probably never use. I use a food grade mylar 20x30cm (weight 7g) with no valve and heat seal. I can smell no coffee at all and it stays fresher far longer, even after opening. I do try to squeeze out as much air as possible before heat sealing.

That coffee smell in my cupboard never seemed like good thing...

As for the environment, I can do other things that have a far bigger impact than non bio,recyclable coffee bags.

I have never run a systematic experiment on freezing my beans, but here is what happened last week. I ran out of sufficiently de-gassed coffee and looked in the freezer to see what was there. I found a Kilner 500ml screw-top preserving jar nearly full of medium roasted Peruvian coffee marked May. As I recall, it was a Square Mile coffee called Diamante that I had used for a little while and then frozen. My domestic freezer runs at -20C (equivalent to -4F). The coffee is fine, same flavour as I recall -- chocolate with a hint of orange in microfoamed milk -- and the EY this morning, after a week of taking it in and out of the freezer -- is 24.4%. I might add this is in line my usual experience with frozen coffees.

I have generally had positive results vacuuming beans in 4 to 8 ounce glass jars and freezing at -5 to -10ºF for non-natural processed beans. I've had a couple different bean blends survive quite tastily out to a year; albeit that is the rare sample.

But, nearly 100% of the natural process beans loose their signature fruit-bomb like flavor(s) even after only 2-4 weeks of vac-seal-freeze! Darker roasts don't seem to care as much but "naturals" don't survive...at least based upon my experience.