The question of how best to keep your coffee is a perennial question. My thought is that you should always freeze your coffee, if you're not going to consume it within the first two weeks.
Why? It preserves the coffee at the point of freezing. Roasted coffee is about 2-3% moisture, meaning that there's not enough moisture in the bean to cause any damage. Try freezing green beans or tomatoes and you'll see what I mean.
How we do it is taking the bag of coffee, rolling it up tight to remove as much air as possible and then, unceremoniously, tossing it into the freezer and leaving it alone.
When I need to brew a cup or two, I grab the bag, measure the amount of coffee I need, put the bag back in the freezer, grind and brew the coffee as normal. No muss. No fuss. No grand gestures or paeans to the Coffee Gods.
It really is this simple. Seriously. I've been doing it now for nearly twenty years.
But there's always the question, so this video series is going to answer the question on how much impact does freezing have on coffee. While I was in Boston for the annual coffee trade show, I received a bag of coffee from George Howell. In this video, we're cupping the coffee and making notes on the flavor. Then, we're putting the coffee into the freezer until October, giving it six months of frozen storage.
Then, in October, I'm going to have some other cuppers come onto the show and taste the coffee blind, and then we'll see what they have to say about it.
So, check out Part One - Should You Freeze Your Coffee?
And stay tuned for part two later this year!