Drinking coffee every day is a habit that most adults maintain throughout their lives. Whether you buy it ground or grain, you need to know how to store it properly. For years it has been believed that a real barista trick was to put it in the refrigerator, but is it a good idea?
For vegetables and other foods, cold temperatures stunt growth and keep things fresh for longer. This increases its useful life. However, for coffee, keeping it in the fridge is a bad idea. Coffee beans (and ground coffee) are seeds and not plants or leaves.
The refrigerator reduces the quality of the coffee
People love coffee, but a stale cup can ruin our day. During the manufacturing process, the beans are roasted to remove moisture. This, in turn, allows them to be easily ground into the coffee that most of us know and love.
By putting coffee beans or ground coffee in the refrigerator, we can cause too much moisture to condense inside the container. The beans, as dry as they are, absorb this moisture like a sponge . This means that over time they can be partially prepared and lose much of their powerful flavor.
Exposure to moisture can also cause the beans to go bad. This can make them taste bad and even be potentially dangerous to your health, depending on the amount of moisture that condenses inside the container. As a result, the coffee can start to break down and this can create a host of new problems to deal with.
In addition, by putting and removing the coffee from the refrigerator or freezer every day, we will be aggravating the situation. These temperature changes can leave the coffee tasteless. The cell structure changes, causing a loss of the oils that give coffee its aroma and flavor. It’s not even a good idea to keep edible coffee beans cold.
The best place is the pantry
The best way to keep ground or whole grains fresh is to store them on a pantry shelf in an opaque airtight container away from light, heat, and moisture.
Not only is it important to store it in the right place, it is also important to keep it in a tightly closed container . Whether it’s in your everyday closet or basement, it’s important to keep your beans or ground coffee in an airtight container with a one-way valve. The one-way valve ensures that oxygen does not enter, but allows CO2 to escape. The beans emit CO2 after being roasted, which eventually turns into a “coffee bloom”. The valve ensures that the gas can escape. Like humidity, oxygen is bad for coffee, so keeping it tightly sealed is very important.
If we can keep humidity and air away, we will not only have better quality, we will also have better mornings.
