To Freeze or not to Freeze

That is the question: Whether tis preferable in the cup to suffer

the lackluster and shallow taste of stale beans,

or to take arms against the sea of time and by freezing end them?

I’ll spare you the rest of my speech, but I just started an experiment to see
if freezing will actually prolong the life of my beans or if I just wasted half
my coffee. I used a heavy duty Ziploc bag, pressed as much of the air out of it
as possible and froze 6oz. of my latest coffee shipment (I wrapped the bag in
paper to keep out harmful light. When I run out in a week or so of the other
half I’ll thaw and post my results here.


I’m really unsure as to what it will taste like, because a google search reveals
nothing buy controversy on this topic. For every person that says freezing
helps, there’s another saying that freezing should never be done. Ever.


What finally made up my mind (besides the fact that the beans taste stale after a
week or so anyway) is the results of a blog post at home-barista.com, in which
they provide a blind taste test where the participants are unable to discern between
frozen beans or fresh beans. Here’s a link if you want to read it yourself: http://www.home-barista.com/store-coffee-in-freezer-results.html


On the other hand, here’s a similar blog post on seriouseats.com explaining a similar test with very different results: http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2010/10/taste-test-to-freeze-or-not-to-freeze-coffee-beans-v20.html


I’ve also heard a few of you mention freezing as an option
and so in the interest of figuring out if it works for me or not I decided I’d
just have to try it myself. We’ll see in a week or so whether or not I ruined
6oz. of coffee…