Keeping your coffee in premium condition takes nothing more than a few small adjustments to your setup and routine. At Niche Coffee, we’re passionate about making the very best drink – and if you’re going to use the best home grinder to make your coffee, it’s only right that you should take that little extra care to make what goes in the very freshest it can be.
Join us as we explore the finer touches to ensuring your coffee tastes great.
Why coffee storage matters
For all its robustness of flavour, coffee itself isn’t particularly robust in nature. In fact, without due care and attention, coffee can quickly degrade, absorbing flavours, smells, and moisture from the outside world – all of which affects the flavour of your cup.
Coffee is:
- Oxidative – This means it reacts quickly to oxygen, and the more time it spends in the air, the more its flavour is affected, becoming dulled and lifeless.
- Hygroscopic – Quick to absorb moisture from its surroundings. This causes the delicate oils and aromatics to deteriorate, leading to a flat, musty taste.
- Photosensitive – Light breaks down the oils some more, making aroma and flavour fade like an old photo left in the sun.
- Thermosensitive – Affected by heat, which speeds up its reactions to everything else and destroys the subtlety of flavour.
Left out on a warm countertop under a bright window, your coffee is rapidly dying – becoming stale and losing all the subtleties that once made it so delightful. Storing it well is essential. It means that when the day comes to grind your beans and prepare a delicious drink, you get the flavour you expect.
The best ways to store coffee beans
Understanding the problems coffee faces makes it easier to determine the solution – you want something that seals it away from oxygen and moisture, that doesn’t let in light and keeps out the heat.
Let’s start with how the coffee arrives in your kitchen, all the way from high mountaintops: it’s in a vacuum-sealed, foil-lined, opaque bag with a one-way valve that lets out any expelled CO₂ but doesn’t allow oxygen to seep in. Perfect!
The trick is to recreate that at home so that as soon as you open the bag, you can pour the beans into a similarly caring container – as long as the container is right for the purpose.
Clear vs. opaque
Many people like the look of their coffee beans in a glass jar, like a Kilner jar or something equally rustic. The problem is that there’s zero protection from the light. Even if the jar is well sealed and kept in a cool location, there’s unnecessary damage being done.
Always make sure your container is opaque.
Choosing a material
A basic tin offers little insulation from kitchen heat – if you cook a lot, it’ll warm up before you even notice.
Stainless steel in a cool location can work well, as it’s a standard food-grade material and won’t let in the light. Ceramic or stoneware pots can be good, provided the lid seal is good, while plastic is never a premium choice and should be avoided for anything other than short-term use.
To fridge or not to fridge
We’re so used to putting things into the fridge to give them a longer life, that it seems to be common sense that you’d put your coffee in the fridge or freezer but…
Coffee is extremely hygroscopic and adept at absorbing aromas – and in a fridge, moisture and smells are both high. What you gain in slowing down the degradation of your coffee through cooling it is eradicated by dampness and unwanted flavours seeping in. Air and moisture particles are tiny, and over time they beat even the best vacuum-sealed container. You may have your coffee in an excellent storage container, but once in the fridge, you’re placing it under attack!
Storing well-sealed, bagged coffee in the freezer for longevity can be done, but we advise that you avoid putting your opened beans in the fridge at any time.
Keeping the bag
The original bag will do a surprisingly decent job at keeping your coffee as fresh as possible. Yes, by opening it, you’ve inevitably let in air and moisture, but it’s still top-notch at keeping out light, and you disturb the beans less if you don’t shake them all out.
Press out as much air as possible, reseal the bag tightly, and slip it into a container or put it directly in the cupboard.
Location
Once in a suitable container, store your coffee somewhere:
- Away from moisture
- Away from direct light
- Away from heat
Kitchen cupboards are often the best spot. Of course, for convenience, you’ll want your coffee beans near your Niche grinder.
The size of your jar
When you first open your bag, chances are you’ll fill your jar to the brim, meaning it’s more coffee than air. As time goes on, the coffee is used, and the ratio drops quickly, with more air and moisture getting in every time the lid is opened. Multiple smaller jars are therefore better than great big ones – even if you’re buying your coffee in quantity.
A little jar technology
Of course, these challenges have been around for a while, and coffee enthusiasts who know a thing or two about jars have worked hard to overcome them. The Airscape coffee canisters are an example of advanced coffee jar technology. It’s a vacuum-sealed container that actively pushes air out and blocks anything getting in.
This significantly slows oxidation and moisture absorption, preserving the delicate oils and tastes of your coffee for longer.
They come in plenty of colours and designs too, so you can easily match your coffee bar aesthetic.
The do-nots – what to avoid when storing your coffee
It only takes a moment of care to keep your coffee in premium condition, but sometimes, if you’re not made aware of the problems, how can you know how to get it right? Here are a few thoughts to help you avoid common mistakes when storing your coffee:
- Leaving bags unsealed or just clipped shut – An unsealed bag will let air in easily, of course, but it’s also not good enough to just clip it shut. Take a few extra seconds to squeeze the air out, protecting your beans for longer.
- Not thinking about your jar location - Even the best quality jars will struggle if they’re placed badly. Kitchen cupboards are cool, dark environments, so think about putting your coffee jar back each time you brew. Avoid radiators, being next to windows, and placing your coffee by the oven.
- Refreezing – Once you have thawed your beans from a frozen condition and exposed them to the air, there’s very little benefit from freezing them again. The condensation they’ll pick up means they’ll suffer badly on a refreeze. Far better to portion them out before freezing so you only thaw what you plan to use.
- Storing ground coffee – If you remember back to your basic school chemistry, you’ll remember that the larger the surface area, the quicker the reaction. A coffee bean is a much tighter, closed form of the coffee – we grind it for the exact purpose of making it more able to react! Storing your coffee pre-ground will rapidly shorten its lifespan and quickly lead to stale coffee. Thankfully, when you use your Niche Zero or Niche Duo grinder, you’re grinding a dose at a time, turning your beans to grinds in the exact proportion needed for use right there and then with zero waste – you never need to store ground coffee again!
- Storing beans in the hopper – You’ll see coffee shops and cafés with hoppers full of beans, but remember they’re grinding beans quickly and using them in high volumes – and a good coffee vendor never leaves beans in the hopper overnight. Hoppers are not airtight or resistant to heat and moisture. Left in the hopper, your beans will go stale quickly.
From bean to cup – why single-dose grinding is the Niche way
Protecting your beans from the ravages of their environment is an important part of their care, so it makes sense to give them as little time as possible exposed – the best way to look after your favourite beans is to grind and drink them!
The Niche Zero and Niche Duo grinders are single-dose and virtually zero retention, minimising the time your coffee is exposed and maximising taste and aroma – paired with some quality storage, you’re all set up to make beautiful coffee.
What comes next? Getting the perfect grind will ensure that your well-cared-for beans aren’t wasted – explore this topic and other important parts of home coffee creation with our other blog articles.