How to Store Coffee at Home

If you love brewing your own coffee, then you will need to have some coffee beans at home. Storing freshly roasted coffee beans at home needs to be done properly to ensure the coffee remains fresh and tastes its best when brewed in your AeroPress UK coffee maker.

Why Does Coffee Need to be Correctly Stored?

Even the best quality coffee will go stale if not stored correctly, so ensuring that your coffee is kept in the right way at home is essential to stop waste of your favourite beans. If coffee beans are stored incorrectly, they will lose flavour and freshness, leaving you with an unsatisfactory brew. When a bag of coffee beans are opened, they will be exposed to oxygen in the air. Oxidisation will then occur and can dull the aromatic flavours of the beans.

Where Should You Store Coffee Beans?

Factors which will damage your coffee include air, heat, light and moisture, meaning beans need to be stored in a cool, dry, airtight, opaque container. The bags that coffee beans are sold in are typically not suited to longer-term storage, so transferring them to an airtight tin or opaque jar is a great idea.

While whole beans will stay fresh for around 2 weeks, ground coffee will only last for a couple of days. Because of this, it is always a good idea to only grind the amount you need when you need it, as well as buying smaller bags of freshly roasted coffee every week or two to ensure that your coffee beans are as fresh tasting as possible.

It is likely, however, that many coffee lovers will instead choose to buy their beans in bulk, having enough to supply them for far longer than a week or two. In this case, the best option is to pour 2-weeks worth into an airtight container and freeze the rest of the beans. Ensure the beans that are frozen are stored in a completely airtight container too, so that they do not experience freezer burn. It’s a good idea to freeze your beans split up into 2-week portions in different containers to make defrosting the right amount easier.

Where Shouldn’t You Store Coffee?

While some coffee lovers will think that the fridge is a great place for keeping their coffee beans safe and fresh, this is definitely not the case and will not be suitable for the task. For one, the fridge will not be cold enough to keep the beans fresh, but more importantly, coffee beans will absorb the aromas of the other items in the fridge, which is likely to make your coffee taste awful!

Another bad choice is a cupboard near an oven or other appliance such as a dishwasher. It is likely to be too warm in such a location, and exposure to heat can cause coffee beans to lose flavour. The changes in temperature may also make condensation form near the beans, and this moisture can cause irreparable damage to their quality and freshness. This means that cupboards that may come into contact with water, such as those under a sink or with a pipe running through them, are also unsuitable for storing coffee beans.

Do you have any tips on how to store coffee at home? Let us know by leaving a comment below!