Do you remember movie from 1993 called “Demolition Man”? In the year 1996 a cop is frozen in a “Cryo Prison”. He is later released in the year 2032. He has been in suspended animation for about 36 years and hasn’t aged at all. You don’t have to be an advanced technology scientist to create a cryo-prison for your coffee. I’m sure your purpose it’s not to stop them from being violent, you simply want to taste a fresh cup of coffee even if the beans are one month old, right?
It has been always been commonly recommended to buy a one week supply of whole bean coffee at a time. But what if you can’t use up your whole bean coffee within one week? You can still keep it fresh. How? Freezing is a great way to preserve whole bean coffee. Below is a list of four helpful tips to guarantee your more-than-one-week-old coffee tastes as good as just-roasted-coffee.
- Airtight. Use the smallest practical airtight canister. Top it with coffee to allow the least amount of air inside it. Wrap the coffee beans using zipper valve-lock freezer bags.
- Don’t unthaw. Grind your precious coffee beans unthawed. Remember, moisture is one of coffee beans’ worst enemy. Thawing coffee beans causes condensation and gathers water on their surface. If beans are saturated with water they will loose flavor.
- Never refreeze. Once your beans have been frozen and thawed (they shouldn’t have been unthawed in the first place), do not refreeze them. Refreezing coffee beans will make them wet and therefore stale.
- Two months. How long can frozen coffee beans stay fresh? Frozen whole-bean coffee remain yummy for about one to two months. Some people claim they remain fresh even longer than that.
Hopefully, when you take the coffee beans out of the freezer, they won’t wake up to possess some kind of knitting or computer hacking skills.
