Frozen Joe - Good or no?
- QUESTION -
I hear this statement / question a lot - "but I can just put it in the freezer. right?" I have instinctively disapproved of this in the past - I don't want anyone to have a less than amazing experience with my coffee. I finally have a concrete answer!
- EXPERIMENT -
3 coffees were used for my experiment: The first was sealed in a zip-lock and put in the freezer (2 days after roasting). The second was left cool and dry. After 7 weeks these were tasted with a 2 day old "control coffee".
All 3 coffees were brewed with a standard cupping technique used to assess every batch of TAPROOT coffee.
- RESULTS -
The frozen coffee was smokey & flat, compared to the fresh coffee. The dry coffee tasted surprisingly fresh compared to the frozen coffee.
The frozen coffee was also noticeably more sour & acidic - it burned in my stomach - a problem that I have never experienced before.
Frozen VS Dry
- CONCLUSION -
If you are buying fresh coffee there should never be a need to freeze it. Fresh coffee can be stored dry for up to 1 month and still taste fantastic. Freezing coffee does not slow degrading of fresh coffee in short-term applications.
My next experiment will track the degradation over several months at 1 week intervals to see if freezing will preserve the coffee to any degree over extended periods of time.
- Malachi Morris