the apocalypse has begun...I must retrieve my tinfoil hat

discounteggroll

It just goes to show you, you can never have too much coffee.

AnthoMacP

Oh no, there's a glitch in the Matrix

SabrinaFaire

It looks like someone didn't have their morning coffee....

azrael1o

remarkably similar to the last article I read on lifehacker!

Biggrz

Ground coffee starts to loose flavor and go stale between 30 minutes and 2 hours after it has been ground. Don't buy ground coffee.

Roasted coffee starts to go stale 2 weeks after roast date, even when stored in one-way valve sealed bags.

Find a local place that roasts or one online (there are several) and only buy what you can consume in that amount of time.

Some good resources are: coffeegeek.com, home-barista.com, or you could try roasting your own coffee, check out sweetmarias.com for green coffee beans (they sell roasters and roasted coffee as well). It's really not that spendy to buy quality, single origin, freshly roasted coffee, it's usually between $9 and $15 a pound.

Mike Panic

@chris-mcc (and @everyone else having a good laugh): Actually, I probably had a little too much coffee (stored at room temp) and accidentally refreshed a page I shouldn't have, creating the twin coffee realities. But you guys did make my morning snafu a lot easier to take.

Kevin Purdy

I bought a container at the grocery store, It's meant to store liquids, and it has a pour spout on the top. It's great for storing ground beans, because I can just pour directly from the container into the coffee machine. No spoon needed.

jeffeb3

Sometimes Kevin gets twitchy after his 8th cup and a double click turns into a quadruple click. I hope you will accept my forgiveness on his behalf.

chris-mcc

@ghostdogg: I find that airtight ceramic canisters, such as these, are ideal for bean storage. They keep them nice and cool, and minimize exposure to air. The largest one in that set should be able to hold 2 pounds of beans easily.

HeartBurnKid

@Jarick: i find it odd that someone would drink folgers coffee at all, never mind two year old folgers.

firesign

@spicedham: What a great method. It's similar to how my girlfriend and I buy meat from Costco. I'll have to try this with coffee too.

chris-mcc

@ghostdogg: I buy my coffee fresh roasted from Costco in 2.5 lbs bags. When I get home I grind enough coffee for a week and divide it up into 7 filters and then stack those filters in an air-tight container that I place next to the coffee machine. You essentially then have the convenience of coffee pods.

The rest of the coffee goes in a gallon zip lock back in the freezer. Seems like the best compromise to me for someone who's not a coffee snob. The bag 2.5 lbs bag lasts me a couple of months and I can't really taste the difference between when I got it and when I finish off the bag.

spicedham

Odd, when I drank some two year old Folgers this morning, it tasted fine. It came in an opaque, airtight container.

Coincidentally, I'd been buying different Columbian beans in hopes of recreating this blend I found once, and the Folgers Columbian that had been sitting in the cupboard for two years nailed it.

Jarick

Any site suggestions for a 2 pound air-tight container? I get my Starbucks from BJs Wholesale Club and they sell the beans in 2 pound bags; all the air-tight containers I have seen online only hold 1 pound. Thanks!

ghostdogg

As a former barista for a very large corporate coffee company, they did a good job on this article. The reason you never store coffee in a refrigerator or freezer is that coffee will suck up all the odors in either. So unless you want coffee that taste like freezer burned hamburger meat, keep it in the pantry.

gkchap

We have a tall, stainless steel locking-ring can with a rubber O-ring we use for the purpose of storing coffees. It not only works great to keep the flavor of the coffee in and other flavors/scents out, but if you're a camper, is the ideal way to store any aromatic food to keep it safe from raccoons. We use these cans for storing grains, gluten-free flours, chips and pulses - beans, lentils etc. to keep moths from laying eggs in the bags in the pantry.

Had a big to-do with moth maggots some years ago, and found these locking O-ring cans to be the best work-around. The darned moths even ate through recycled peanutbutter jar lids that we tried using for coffee storage - aluminum, but thick aluminum. They can't eat through the stainless steel but may in rare cases nibble the O-rings. In the USA, I get such cans at Storables and The Storage Store, though any good kitchenwares store will have them. Anywhere from a few cup size up to tall, spaghetti storage size.

maryamwebster

You assume that coffee lasts long enough in my house to learn how to store it properly.

LynetteRadio

Great tips!
90% of Dunkin' Donuts customers can't tell the difference anyway.

spaceman7

The method of storing coffee (other than it being air tight) is less important than you think. The oils in coffee are starting to turn racid right after roasting (think meat or fish in terms of freshness). If fresh roasted, you have about one week until the rancidity becomes the dominant flavor. If however you are using nitrogen-packed coffee, while it retains the original freshness at the point of unsealing, the rate of rancidity thereafter is at least double that of fresh roasted (so use it right up).

jeff-beatofhawaii

@karmaghost: There's no problem with it, as long as the canister's opened once a day (which you're going to do when you make coffee, anyway). The CO2 isn't going to cause any problems with a sturdy canister, like it would with a bag.

HeartBurnKid

"is in an opaque airtight canister at room temperature."

I was always told that keeping whole beans in an airtight container was a bad idea because of the carbon dioxide they give off. That's why coffee bags have those valves to let the CO2 out and keep the O2 out as much as possible.

karmaghost

I generally only make coffee at home on the weekends, so I keep my purchases small enough where I'm buying fresh beans every 2-3 weeks.

My coffee bean container: a metal tin that (surprise!) was designed to hold coffee beans. That's right, I bought a can of Illycaffe whole beans once and reuse the 8.8 oz can.

My coffee beans: I just buy them at the local cafe. They have a 25 lb. industrial roaster at the front of the cafe which they fire up three times a week. They'll sell you any quantity, so I usually buy a half-pound bag, which fits perfectly into the above Illycaffe can.

Deprong Mori

Don't freeze your coffee either. Buy fresh. Always store at room temperature in an air tight container. I work at a fair trade organic coffee roaster that roasts and ships to order. If you live in the south east we can most likely get your coffee to you the very next day. Farther out will take 3-4 days. We nitrogen seal our bags, and to the average coffee consumer, the unopened bag will stay fresh for about six weeks. Coffee guru's however say they can notice a difference of a few days.

[www.highergroundroasters.com]

monkeyswitch