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The Best Way to Store Coffee: The Coffee Drip

The Best Way to Store Coffee: The Coffee Drip

Coffee storage is easy when you know exactly how to store it for optimal flavor. Unfortunately, many people live with the misconception that the best way to store coffee is in the refrigerator or freezer. While that is kind of true if you’re storing coffee for long periods of time (6 months or more), it’s not the best way to store coffee that is fresh and will be consumed within a couple months.

Coffee’s flavor is defeated by 3 things: Light, Oxygen, and Temperature

When coffee is roasted, it’s roasted with the knowledge that those beans will be ground, added to a coffee maker, and will have near-boiling water poured over them. That is the next – and last – time that your coffee should see a drastic temperature change if you want to enjoy the absolute optimal flavor possible. Constant exposure to light actually “fades” the beans and their flavor “fades” (for lack of a better word) with them too.

Finally, Oxygen is the biggest thing to watch out for if you want to store your coffee. Many people go to the extreme of vacum-packing the coffee with one of those devices that suck the air out while they seal it shut. That works great but if you’re like most people, you want a quick and easy way to keep your coffee fresh. We recommend that you leave the coffee in it’s original package and roll down the top while squeezing out the air. After that, tape down the top. If you’d still like further measures to ensure freshness, a ziplock freezer bag works great!

If you ask us, the best way to store coffee is in a sealed bag or container up in a cupboard that you don’t access very often – but is near your coffee maker.  Only open the package to get what you need out of it and immediately seal the package when you’re finished.

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The Best Coffee Grind

Getting the best coffee grind from your grinder is easy when you know how to do it.  Here is a really fast breakdown of how to get the best coffee grind for your coffee maker.

Burr Grinder (recommended) – A burr ginder (or even better, conical burr grinder) provides the best, most consistant grind for your beans.  This will lead to a consistently better cup than standard blade grinders will provide.

  1. #1 (finest) – Turkish
  2. #2 – Fine Espresso
  3. #3 – Standard Espresso
  4. #4 – Cone Filter Drip
  5. #5 (middle grind) – Universal Drip
  6. #6 – Flat/Basket Filter Drip
  7. #7 – Percolator
  8. #8 – Stovetop Percolator
  9. #9 (coarsest) – French Press

Blade Grinder – make sure to keep the grinder upright on the counter.  A common mistake is made in twisting and turn the grinder to “assist” in the grinding process.  This actually only hurts the grinder as the circular motion of the blades causes the force necessary to properly grind the beans.

  1. 20 seconds (finest) – Turkish
  2. 16 seconds – Fine Espresso
  3. 14 seconds – Standard Espresso
  4. 12 seconds – Cone Filter Drip
  5. 11 seconds (middle grind) – Universal Drip
  6. 10 seconds – Flat/Basket Filter Drip
  7. 9 seconds – Percolator
  8. 8 seconds – Stovetop Percolator
  9. 6 seconds (coarsest) – French Press

Questions or Comments?  Need a good grinder recommendation?  Please post below!