The coffee sites I find always say not to freeze coffee, but don’t say why not.
I’m the only coffee drinker here and I buy the large size for major savings.
Seems to me everything stays fresher longer when frozen.
And of course a coffee site wants you to buy a lot of small quantities instead of cheaper larger ones.
I buy high quality coffee whole been and freeze what I’m not going to use soon. If done right the coffee will be just as flavorful as a fresh. The key is not to let water condense on the beans.
Water will condense on anything you take out of the freezer - including the beans, and will continue to till the temperature of the object is at room temperature. What you have to do is seal the coffee in a air tight plastic bag, or other air tight container before you freeze it. When you remove it you have to let the package come back to room temp’s before you break the seal and let air in.
Thanks for the info, kanicbird. I freeze coffee, also, but didn’t know about this.
The airtight bag is also important to keep other odors in your freezer from glomming onto your coffee beans. Coffee beans (whether whole or ground) are great little odor eaters, and while you may not notice smells in your freezer, they are there, and they’ll make your coffee funky. The bags that coffee comes in are not airtight. Stick 'em in a ziplock freezer or similar bag.
Someone tried to tell me that keeping your ground coffee in the freezer and getting it out daily to use would keep it more fresh. Seems like a lot of people do this. Unfortunately, it’ll just get a little condensation on it every time you open it and get stale fast.
Coffee is strange stuff, it just doesn’t handle being mucked around much. Fresh roasted coffee keeps about a week, maybe, before it starts losing flavor. Freezing helps extend this, apparently, though I haven’t tried it. The best solution revolves around finding a good roaster and buying fresh roasted in small quantities - or - buying green coffees and roasting yourself. Green coffee keeps well, a year is one accepted figure. While fresh-roasted coffee is excellent, I have found it actually improves for a day or two, and then goes downhill after that.
Can’t speak to whole beans, but ground definitely keeps better frozen. Room temp holds its peak flavor maybe a week, frozen a month or more.
That’s because the ground just tastes nastier to begin with - there’s just not much flavor to keep.
We freeze coffee here in Thailand for the same reason as the OP: We buy larger quantities. BUT we only drink it on the weekends, when we’re home together. The wife and I have different schedules, and she’s gone long before I’m even up. She drinks coffee in her office (instant), and I make do with instant at home during the week. We save the good stuff for when we’re together. (Thailand is the Land of Instant Coffee, and the freshly ground stuff is expensive.) I have not noticed a difference in taste, and we keep some of it frozen for up to three months.
Of course, my taste buds HAVE become scorched beyond all recognition by the Thai food by now.