Bean there, done that.
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Don't keep your coffee in the fridge.
The notion of keeping your coffee in the fridge or the freezer dates back to the late 1990s, says Jeremy Challender, co-director of Prufrock Coffee, head judge of the UK Barista Championship and authorised Speciality Coffee Association of Europe trainer.
"When I first got into coffee at the end of the '90s, everyone said to leave your grounds in the fridge. That's partly because it was far more common to buy ground coffee, rather than whole beans. Whole beans are a bit more immune to oxidation, because there's so much less surface area. So as long as you can protect your coffee from oxidising, any way of storing it is OK."
But colder beans mean that it'll be trickier to reach your desired coffee temperature, Jeremy continues.
"If you store your beans in the fridge or freezer, then you've got the problem of your beans being very cold when you start brewing. And so if you have a recipe in mind, and you have a target temperature you want the coffee to reach – and your beans are, say, 4 degrees – then it's going to be a little bit harder to get them to a hot temperature."
Prufrock Coffee
You should keep your beans in the bag that they came in.
There's no need to be fancy with your storage, Jeremy adds.
"In many ways, the bag that you buy the coffee in is appropriate, as long as you can seal it properly. Because it has a one-way valve in the top, air can't come in. Inside roasted coffee there's loads and loads of carbon dioxide, which is quite a good preservative.
"So the bag, with this one-way valve, is filled up with carbon dioxide and has displaced all the oxygen that was in the bag when it was sealed up. So basically, store your coffee in the bag that you bought it."
Always choose beans over ground coffee.
There's one main reason to choose beans over ground coffee – to retain the aromatics.
"Lots of the stuff that flavours coffee, like sugar and organic acids, is quite stable. So they're fine. Your coffee can still taste sweet and yummy if it's pre-ground. BUT, when it comes to coffee's USP – i.e. how incredibly complex and aromatic it is – you're going to lose lots and lots of aromatic potential if you've pre-ground it", Jeremy explains.
"As soon as you break those beans open, all the gases that were trapped inside the beans just disappear into the air. So if you want all the aromatics to be dissolved by water, you need to grind as close as possible to the point where you get water on them."
A good shorthand to remember is: "Aroma is flavour escaping."
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