Coffee, do you store it?

You know someone's going to ding you for using a Teflon-coated pan instead of cast-iron forged in the bowels of Mt. Doom, right?

 

Great start on roasting and this posting, JABEC! Roasting can be a simple affair and as you describe, sipping coffee you roasted and ground yourself is especially enjoyable.

I just roasted my weekly batches and took note of a couple of things. The roasted beans expanded their volume by almost 50%, and went from 16 oz green to 13 oz roasted.

BTW I got all my stuff at Sweet Marias website and very happy with it all. There are several other online roasting suppliers but I can vouch for at least this one as top notch.

According to the book I got you want to wait 4-24 hrs after roasting until first grinding to let the beans off gas. This is also why you do not want to put freshly roasted beans into an airtight container for 24 hrs as CO2 is off gassed.

Then you want to brew as soon as possible after grinding. Ideally you grind just before you brew but not more than an hour or so prior for best taste.

The great thing is that fresh coffee is so far better than store canned coffee that you can make a few mistakes and STILL have a superior flavor. And as JABEC mentions you can savor the incredible fresh roasted aroma long afterward. I do it outside and the whole yard smells wonderful. As does my shirt.

As black and sooty your pan may get from roasting it seems to dissolve in warm water readily and is easy to clean up.

 

LOL, I would say that I usually select my cooking tools in the same manner I decide what I'm going to wear on any given day, (ya know, whatever is clean,) but in this case it was more a matter of convenience... (I read about the smoke and the mess, and decided NOT to try it in my own home first...)

@NWPilgrim , thanks man, I appreciate it. I've been a coffee junky since before I can remember, and a big fan of fresh ground coffee for a few years now ($20 for a cheap electric grinder back in 07 or 08, and I've been using it every day since...) Anyway, I remember talking coffee with a buddy I know through work - I offered him a cup of fresh ground coffee, and he told me about Sweet Maria's. Been meaning to try home roasting ever since, but never got around to it until yesterday. (One good thing about this coffee taste that has stayed with me - I smoke cigars too, and the ones that I didn't like as much because they just didn't have that same depth of flavor or "bite" as others, are much more enjoyable now.)

CATO, I promise the next round of pics will be more worthy of a "Roast Coffee Like a Real Man" Challenge. (I need a good pyro smiley here...)

 

THread Revival !
I love my fresh ground coffee beans and I use a french press. Recently I have been experimenting with freeze dried coffee aka instant coffee, for storage. I like the 'just add water' and i dont need to roast and grind beans.

Anyone have a good freeze dried coffee they use?
so far i have found wal marts to be decent and I like Maxwell House.

 

What timing for a revival. I just bought 5 individual pounds of the freeze dried "blocks" to use as barter bait. I give them to my neighbor each year at Christmas and buy new when it goes on sale. I never drink the stuff so Keeping it for barter is easy.

 

I have floggers coffee in their own sealed containers stored probably 40 Lbs or so .
I would have never thought that the green bean would store better.
Seems the germ would eventually die and rot. where as a partial roasting might tend to remove the life from the bean and remove all the moisture as well reducing the chances of rot.
As a point of reference in the future, I might get both and store them in various ways .
Of course it will take years to know what works.

 

I store green coffee beans vacuum packed in my freezer (I hope I did not screw up with the freezer). I roast them on my grill in a cast iron frying pan. It makes really strong coffee but after SHTF I think I will need it and maybe it will go further.

 

I buy Kirkland (Costco) Columbian Supremo. Same price as Folgers per pound, but way much better. It's vacuum sealed in a metal can and doesn't require a can opener. I keep about six months supply and rotate.

 

My roommate is a manager at Starbucks, and here's what he says about storage. Unroasted beans keep longer than roasted ones, and ground beans degrade faster than anything. The rule is that unopened, roasted whole beans in the vacuum sealed bags will keep for several months, but after a year, they will not be as good. That being said, I recently brewed a pot from some private reserve beans that were ground more than 6 months ago, and the coffee was exceptional. The grounds were kept in the original vacuum bag, which reseals nicely if you fold it correctly. Apparently, you are not supposed to freeze beans, but I never got a satisfactory answer of why. In my opinion, the original quality of the bean and roasting, plus how it has been stored (both at home and since commercially produced), are more important than how recently they have been roasted. If you are going to roast them yourself, start with the freshest highest-quality beans you can find, and store them in an opaque vacuum sealed container as soon as they are done off-gassing.

 

Why not just grow your own tree ?

 

i cant grow enough coffee =)

 

We rotate 12 cans. About one years worth . Right now Im hitting a sale where those large cans are 4.99 each. Just bought 6 of them. I have one open and 11 cans. Never have any problem with stale or bitter coffee as long as we dont buy the bottom quality brands.