Monday, March 24, 2014

Freezing Roasted Coffee Beans

I have searched high and low for reliable information about storing coffee beans post roast. This is a time when the highly volatile compounds in the coffee quickly oxidize and otherwise change into not-so-tasty compounds. If you are anything like me, your coffee consumption cannot keep up with drinking 12oz or 16oz of freshly roasted coffee beans each day. And I don't have the tools/time/sanction/desire to roast beans daily at home. So unless I can retrofit my car to roast beans to perfection using engine heat during the commute and then grind and brew the coffee at work, I am having a hard time coming up with ideas on how I can get that fresh-roasted flavor using beans that are not actually freshly roasted. Maybe I need to think outside the box a little more.

This is the scheme I have come up with:
  1. Buy a pound of fresh-roasted coffee
  2. Split the coffee into daily portions in small canning jars (4oz)
  3. Put the jars in the freezer
  4. Pull the the jars out one-by-one on the day of use
  5. Grind the coffee beans
  6. Brew the coffee
  7. Enjoy the nearly fresh-roasted quality of coffee for up to 3 weeks past roasting time.
So far (I am at the beginning of the third week of my first trial using this method,) I have found the coffee stored in this manner to be nearly as good as fresh-roasted coffee. Not exactly the same, but light years beyond roasted beans merely stored in a sealed can on the shelf. It is not bitter. I can drink it straight up or mix it with milk or soy milk without the need to add lots of sugar or milkfat to cut the bitter.

Prior to this set up, I was freezing a week's worth of beans in a jar. Monday was pretty good, Tuesday was tolerable, Wednesday was not so hot, Thursday and Friday were not good at all. Week one was better than week two and so on. So I can attest to freezing having some deleterious effect on the beans. Since I am not opening, closing, exposing frozen beans to moisture and/or air, the quality seems to hold fairly well. I have not done side-by-side blind samples with fresh beans or anything like that, because I am almost certain I would be able to tell the difference. Especially by Friday of week three. But like I said at the top, I do not drink enough coffee each day to be able to buy fresh-roasted beans every day, so this is a compromise between quality and economy. And I think it is a fairly good solution for the time being.

My dream coffee machine would take in beans for a single use. It would roast them, grind them, and then brew them according to my desires that day. Why doesn't my dream coffee machine exist yet? Somebody get on that!

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