Auto Vacuum Canister (Kickstarter) - Page 2

Discuss roast levels and profiles for espresso, equipment for roasting coffee.
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TomC
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#11: Post by TomC »

JB90068 wrote:Interesting and thanks for posting this. I'm a bit confused though. I always thought that excess CO2 is bad for freshness so this leaves me wondering why they would add CO2 as a replacement gas other than it is easily obtained. Hopefully someone can chime in here.

I found this article about nitrogen flushing for packaging roasted beans. Thoughts?
https://coffeetec.com/blogs/news/nitrog ... ther-facts

Large industrial packaging (think Illy) is going to use the much cheaper Nitrogen because in larger systems, you can either generate your own nitrogen. Both nitrogen and CO2 are nearly/highly inert, so they'll do the same job. But small mason jars, vacuum sealed and stored in the deep freeze will hold greens and roasted for literally years. When I was using the CFS during the initial review, I placed black construction paper on the inside to completely block out light, which is another thing that roasted coffee doesn't want.

To your first question, CO2 isn't bad for roasted coffee. The only "bad" gas that coffee normally experiences is oxygen. Reducing it by 1/3 or 1/2 or 3/4's still doesn't stop the process of staling, it might help a tiny bit, but I'm skeptical.
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Jeff
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#12: Post by Jeff »

A good summary of research can be found at https://scanews.coffee/2012/02/15/what- ... e-staling/

Worth a read, but in the specific context here
Labuza et al. (2001) determined that oxygen was the most important factor controlling the shelf life of coffee, and showed that reducing oxygen to 0.5% in a coffee container could increase shelf life by 20-fold. One research group found that for each 1% oxygen increase there is an increase of the rate of degradation of 10% (Cardelli and Labuza 2001). Even at very low levels of oxygen in packaged coffee (<2%), this oxygen has been found to migrate into coffee and facilitate oxidation reactions (Harris and others 1974).
21% oxygen in air, 98% vacuum, about 0.4% of atmospheric level remaining

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JB90068
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#13: Post by JB90068 »

TomC wrote: Large industrial packaging (think Illy) is going to use the much cheaper Nitrogen because in larger systems, you can either generate your own nitrogen. Both nitrogen and CO2 are nearly/highly inert, so they'll do the same job. But small mason jars, vacuum sealed and stored in the deep freeze will hold greens and roasted for literally years. When I was using the CFS during the initial review, I placed black construction paper on the inside to completely block out light, which is another thing that roasted coffee doesn't want.
Tom - my wife thanks you. Now I no longer feel like I have to install a nitrogen generator for $50k in the garage. :D Seriously though, I appreciate your depth of knowledge and being way smarter than me.

One question for you - do you disagree with Doug Weber who feels that light isn't really an issue for roasted beans? I'm just curious to get your thoughts.

I'm lucky that my daily coffee beans are roasted about a 15 minute drive away. As long as I don't start doing coffee vacations or ordering rare roasts, if my beans go bad, I can just jump in the car...
Old baristas never die. They just become over extracted.

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JB90068
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#14: Post by JB90068 »

Jeff wrote:A good summary of research can be found at https://scanews.coffee/2012/02/15/what- ... e-staling/

Worth a read, but in the specific context here
That's a good read. Thanks!
Old baristas never die. They just become over extracted.

jpender
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#15: Post by jpender »

It's so sexy. You could fill them with all sorts of foods. Sugar cubes! Maybe they'd keep your socks and undies fresh too.

They claim it pulls a vacuum in 3 seconds but then show a video snippet of it with a gauge attached taking quite a bit longer. And it only pulls about 60% of a vacuum. My cheap Vacu Vin hand wine tool does better than that. 60% removed means the oxygen level is still above 8%. Will that slow down oxidation? Sure. Enough to be worth bothering?

It's so easy to simply put the coffee into the freezer.

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baldheadracing
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#16: Post by baldheadracing »

Jeff wrote:A good summary of research can be found at https://scanews.coffee/2012/02/15/what- ... e-staling/
The study mentioned at the end of that article was done. A summary of the report that seems reasonable to me is here:

(SCA charges non-members for the actual report. I have a copy from when I joined the SCAA for a year.)
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ira
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#17: Post by ira »

JB90068 wrote:Tom - my wife thanks you. Now I no longer feel like I have to install a nitrogen generator for $50k in the garage. :D
You can get one that will give you 98 %nitrogen for a few thousand. I have one that's supposed to do that but never considered for storing coffee. I use it to minimize the oxidation of lead free solder when soldering with our robot. You will need an air compressor to go with it as they need pressure and use RO, just like the water filters, only for gasses.

For example:

https://hakkousa.com/hakko-fx-780-nitro ... rator.html

or if you need more capacity:

https://hakkousa.com/fx-781-high-capaci ... rator.html

Ira

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CarefreeBuzzBuzz (original poster)
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#18: Post by CarefreeBuzzBuzz (original poster) »

Ok now that I have had my engineering lesson for the day time for a beer. Thanks for all this education. I think I can summarize these responses with - drink more coffee before it goes bad.
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TomC
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#19: Post by TomC »

JB90068 wrote: One question for you - do you disagree with Doug Weber who feels that light isn't really an issue for roasted beans? I'm just curious to get your thoughts.

It's not helping anything. But temperature and exposure to air/oxygen are vastly worse.
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jpender
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#20: Post by jpender »

CarefreeBuzzBuzz wrote:Ok now that I have had my engineering lesson for the day time for a beer. Thanks for all this education. I think I can summarize these responses with - drink more coffee before it goes bad.
Or freeze it.