The Absolute Best Way to Store Your Coffee

I’ve been drinking some form of coffee since I was 6 years old. Was I too young? Maybe; it's unclear. Was it mostly milk, though? 100%. Flash forward to two decades later, and I still adore coffee. Hot, iced, pour over, latte, drip, you name it, I’m a fan.

I know everything there is to know about my perfect cup of Joe, but when it comes to storing it, I don’t know beans. In my pantry? In a canister? In the freezer?

Don’t reinvent the wheel.

The best way to store coffee is to store it in the bag it comes in When coffee is roasted, gases (mostly carbon dioxide) form inside the beans and need to escape. Most coffee bags are designed with a gas release valve on them, which does a great job of letting that gas expel without letting air in.

Another plus of original packaging? It keeps out sunlight, which also ages coffee beans. If you do want to transfer beans to your own canister, make sure it's airtight and protected from sunlight, you’ll degas beans naturally when you open to prepare your coffee.

The freezer can still be your your friend.

While many experts agree that storing beans in the freezer is a no-no, I have other thoughts.

Coffee likes to be climate stable. We’re seeing a lot of people come back to the idea that freezing your coffee is okay. I think for ground coffee, especially, tossing it into the freezer actually helps with the aging process because it’s definitely away from sunlight, it’s definitely at a stable temperature, and if it’s in its original package, it can be degassed.

If you do keep your coffee in the freezer, avoid thawing. Allowing the beans to warm up before going back in the ice box creates moisture, which ages the coffee.

Less is more.

Coffee can last for months on the shelf after it’s roasted, but that doesn’t mean it’s fresh.

Roasted coffee starts losing its super nuanced sparkles about two weeks after it’s been roasted. I recommend buying coffee you can get through in a two- to three-week stretch of time. For me, that’s a bag every two weeks if I’m making a cup or a pot of it every day. If you’re sitting on a giant canister of coffee for months at a time, by the end of that canister, your coffee will start tasting differently than when you popped it open in the first place.

Coffee is a seasonal product, it’s a good idea to buy smaller batches more frequently, anyway. It makes me try more varieties of coffee, to get to know the nuances and differences. There’s always something new to try.