Mr. Rawles:
The way to store coffee long-term is by purchasing green beans and roasting them yourself as you need them. Green beans (whole beans) stay “fresh” for up to a year in a normal container, like a tin or glass jar or foil lined bag. If you completely seal them off from light and oxygen and maybe even nitrogen purge them then they should stay “fresh” indefinitely, well for several years anyway. See the Terroir site below for how they store their green beans.
The thing about roasting coffee beans is that they go stale within two weeks after roasting. There really isn’t anything you can do about it either. Doing all the normal long term storage things only delays the inevitable for a little while, maybe a month or two beyond the normal
two weeks. And I do mean all things, freezing, nitrogen purging, metal airtight containers, vacuum sealing, none of it works all that well. The roasted beans will go stale faster than you want, guaranteed.
Now for a definition of stale coffee. Most Americans are used to coffee purchased at a grocery store, and most restaurants usually serve the same bad coffee made from stale beans. Any coffee (beans or pre-ground) sold by a grocery store is going to be stale by default. The large coffee companies store their roasted beans for weeks before
they ever see the inside of a retail outlet. Stale, stale, stale.
Most Americans are used to drinking coffee made from stale beans. Another thing about grocery store coffee, it’s usually pre-ground. Ground coffee goes stale about twenty minutes after it comes out of the grinder. Storing ground coffee is even more of a losing proposition than storing whole roasted beans. Don’t even think about
it. You might as well gather up some sawdust, put some food coloring on it and put it in a tin can.
How can you tell whether the roasted coffee beans are stale or not? Smell them. Stale beans smell different than freshly roasted beans. If you don’t believe me please find a local roaster or order some fresh beans over the web. Compare the beans with the known recent roast date to some known stale beans or just wait for the freshly
roasted beans to go stale themselves. You will smell the difference. You will taste the difference.
If you already have a taste for stale beans then don’t even worry about long term storage. Just use whatever crosses your path because you won’t taste the difference. Store you coffee any way you want because it’s stale anyway. Long term, short term, it’s all the same to someone that likes stale beans. Don’t even worry about it. It’s
not worth the time and effort to ensure fresh beans if you like stale beans. How do you tell whether you like stale beans? If you really like any coffee you buy at the grocery store then you like stale beans. If you like coffee that’s been sitting out on the hotplate of the coffee maker for more than fifteen minutes then it doesn’t matter
whether you use fresh beans or not.
Now about Illy. They are okay as long as you buy the whole beans and grind them yourself. As far as buying roasted beans for long term storage you can’t do much better than Illy. Just know that long term for roasted beans is not long term for most other dry consumables. Roasted coffee beans out-gas CO2 (carbon dioxide) , a pretty large
quantity of it too. It is why bags of coffee have check valves in them to let the gas out so the bag won’t burst. As the beans out-gas the gas also takes other molecules with it, molecules that make up the flavor of the coffee bean. The heavier oils of the beans also travel to the exterior of the bean. Upon exposure to the air these oils (not really oils but… ) either evaporate or change chemically and detrimentally affect the flavor of the coffee made from those beans. Where do you buy green beans?
Sweet Marias.
There are probably others but Sweet Maria’s sell beans to the home roaster in smaller quantities than you would be able to get from wholesale coffee merchants.
There’s lots information at Sweet Maria’s if you dig for it. All or most of what I’ve told you here can be confirmed there. You could even send an email to them yourself and I’m sure they would be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.
Some other links you may find useful.
Coffee Geek
alt.coffee
Terroir Coffee
Pan Roasting
There’s more to good coffee than getting freshly roasted beans but I only wanted to answer your query about long term storage. Hope this has been helpful. – A.P.