The shelf life of coffee - 4 tips!

It is talked about a lot, and not everyone agrees. That is one thing that is clear… Coffee is hot, and the coffee culture is developing rapidly. A nice side effect is that this is also increasing awareness about the practical sides of coffee. This week in the blog we discuss one of these practical matters; the shelf life of coffee!

Don't grind too early…

It's a somewhat debatable topic, because coffee hardly spoils. In any case, I have never seen it… In addition, we have a dominant coffee culture in which we buy ground coffee in the supermarket, which does not even have a roasting date on it. Hopefully it should be clear by now that ground coffee has a bizarrely shorter shelf life than whole coffee beans.

In this blog we explained to you that ground coffee deteriorates very quickly, and gave you some tips for buying your own grinder. In fact, the experts say that ground espresso coffee only lasts 1 minute, and ground filter coffee 3 minutes. Please note that this mainly concerns the preservation of the aromas and therefore not spoilage.

So it is really very important to buy whole coffee beans and grind them just before brewing. That was number one, and hopefully just a repeat of what you already knew :-) …

Are your eyes bigger than your stomach?

Once you've decided to buy whole coffee beans instead of ground coffee, our next advice is: don't buy too much at once! Think carefully in advance about how much coffee you drink per period. It depends a bit on the type of coffee - also in this case, lighter roasted coffees stay tasty longer than darker roasted coffees. The same connoisseurs say that espresso coffee beans stay good for about 1 month. Our advice for shelf life is that you should have drunk the coffee within 6 to 8 weeks at the latest, then the coffee is simply at its best!

Patience is a virtue…

There are connoisseurs who claim that espresso coffee beans must rest for a certain period of time before they are at their best. One says a day, the other 3-4 days and yet another claims that this should be at least a week… I would not drink the coffee for at least 48 hours after roasting, then the coffee is not completely balanced. Coffee still contains a lot of CO2 after roasting and needs some time to get rid of it, hence the (one-way) valve on the coffee bags.

An old fashioned coffee tin!

The coffee can be stored perfectly in the supplied coffee bag. As mentioned, it contains a one-way valve so that the CO2 can get out, but no air can get in. Once opened, you can close the bag slightly after use with as little air as possible and put a squeezer on it or zip the bag closed again.

An old-fashioned coffee tin is also a very good alternative. Preferably no transparent pots, because light is one of the enemies of roasted coffee (besides air and moisture).