If you’re running a café, how you store your coffee beans makes a huge difference to the quality in the cup. Coffee is a fresh product, and like all fresh products, it needs to be looked after.
In this article, we'll discuss how to properly store your coffee beans so that you get the best flavour possible in every single cup that you serve.
Fresh Coffee Tastes Better
To help you understand why we need to take care of how we store our coffee beans, it's important to understand that coffee is a live, organic product.
Once roasted, the seed of the coffee cherry (aka the coffee bean) slowly releases it's flavours and aromas into the atmosphere, and eventually, the water you use to brew your coffee. Keeping your beans as fresh as possible, and reducing the amount of aromas and flavours that are lost to the atmosphere as much as possible, is the best way of making sure your brewed cups of coffee are flavourful and delicious, without any bitter or stale compounds.
Different Coffees Stale Faster
Whilst the rule of 'fresh is best' applies across the board generally, different types of coffees stale faster than others. A neat way of looking at it is that the more a coffee bean has had to be processes, the faster it will stale.
In general, a darker roasted coffee will stale much quicker than a light roast coffee. Dark roasts generally only remain at their peak within a month of roasting, ideally within one to two weeks. Whereas, lighter roasted coffees actually may require a little resting after being roasted, and could taste their best after 1 month or even 2 months after they have been roasted.
Decaf coffees have gone through an additional processing step, and therefore are much more brittle, porous, and prone to staling than their caffeinated counterparts. Because of this, decaf coffees can often have a disappointing flavour. The issue isn't the coffee itself, rather that it is much more likely to have already gone stale when it eventually comes to have been brewed.
It's interesting to know that different types of coffees stale faster. However, the same advice applies for every type of coffee when it comes to proper storage and maintaining freshness. Let's discuss how to store your coffee to slow down it's staling as far as possible.
Keep your Beans Fresh with Proper Storage
The enemies of fresh coffee are air, moisture, heat, and light. To slow down staling, you need to keep your beans away from all four. The simplest way to do this is to:
- Store beans in sealed bags or airtight containers.
- Keep them in a cool, dry place.
- Avoid direct sunlight.
If your roaster provides resealable bags with one-way valves, keep using them until the coffee is finished. These bags are designed to let carbon dioxide out without letting oxygen in, which helps preserve flavour for longer.
Beans in the Hopper
It’s tempting to fill your coffee grinder hopper with a full bag of beans, but hoppers are not airtight and are often left in direct sunlight. This makes them one of the worst places to store coffee for any length of time.
Instead, only fill your hopper with enough beans for the day’s service. If you can, return any unused beans back into their sealed bag or container at the end of the day. This small step will go a long way in keeping your coffee tasting fresh.
Be Careful Not to Stockpile
Even with good storage habits, beans will eventually stale. The best safeguard is to manage your stock properly. Order little and often, ideally enough coffee to cover no more than two weeks of service.
This approach ensures that:
- You’re always serving coffee close to its peak freshness.
- You avoid bags sitting on shelves for months at a time.
- You reduce waste from beans that have gone past their best.
Retail Coffee Bags
If you’re selling retail bags of your wholesale coffee, the same rules apply: don’t over-order and stick to a fortnightly supply cycle. Customers buying retail want the freshest coffee they can get, so don’t let bags sit on your shelves for months.
If you do find stock getting older (one to two months past roast date) these coffees will become harder to sell. Consider, instead, serving it as a “special espresso” at a premium. This not only reduces waste but gives customers a chance to try something different. Offering multiple bag sizes, like 250g for occasional home brewers and 1kg for daily coffee drinkers, can also help move stock efficiently.
