Your coffee loses its flavour before you drink it: 8 free fixes
Eight free or near-free fixes that keep the flavour in the coffee you already buy: where the taste goes in the cupboard, how to store and freeze the beans, when to grind them, and the brewing habits that turn a good bag bitter by Thursday.
Roasted coffee is a perishable flavour. The taste you are paying for is created in the roast, when sugars and amino acids react into the aroma compounds that smell like coffee, and those compounds are unstable. From the moment the beans leave the roaster they are leaking, and four things speed the leak: air, moisture, heat and light. 12 The pot takes a second cut. Water at the wrong temperature pulls too little or too much out of the grounds, and coffee left on a warming plate or standing on its own grounds keeps extracting until bitterness is all that is left to taste. 34
Everything below is free or near-free, and the kit is small: the bag the coffee came in, a clip, a clean jar, a freezer bag, the scoop you already own and a kettle. The eight fixes run in the order the flavour escapes, from the cupboard the beans are kept in to the cup you carry away from the machine.
1. Keep the beans in the bag they came in, out of the light
Steps
- Leave whole beans in the bag they came in when that bag has a one-way valve: press the air out and reseal it tightly, or fold the top over and clip it shut. 1
- Where the bag will not reseal, move the beans into an airtight, opaque container filled so that as little air as possible sits above the coffee. A clean glass jar you already own will do, as long as it does not smell of whatever was in it before. 12
- Put the bag or the jar in a cool, dark, dry cupboard, away from the oven and the dishwasher and off the windowsill. 12
Why it works: Roasting creates the flavour, and it creates it in a form that does not hold. The aroma compounds are chemically unstable, oxygen is the worst of the four things staling them, and moisture, heat and light hurry it along. 1 A one-way valve lets out the carbon dioxide the beans are still releasing without letting air back in, which is why the bag from the roaster often protects the coffee better than the tin you were about to decant it into. 1
Avoid this mistake: The clear jar on the open shelf beside the kettle is a step backwards. Light and heat are two of the four enemies, and coffee is porous enough to take on the smell of whatever the jar last held. 12
2. Buy a fortnight at a time, and look for the roast date
Steps
- Buy the smallest bag you will finish in one to two weeks. The Kitchn's rule of thumb is to keep only enough beans to last that long, which for most households is a small bag rather than a kilo. 12
- Look for a roast date on the packet ahead of a best-before date. An unopened bag keeps until its best-before; once opened, the guide is two weeks for the best cup, with three weeks as the outer edge. 1
- Buy where the coffee moves. A roaster or a busy shop knows the roast date of what it is selling. 3
Why it works: The window is the whole point. Roasted beans hold their best flavour for roughly two weeks from roasting, and the aromatics that make a cup worth drinking are what goes first. 12 Buying small keeps you inside that window without any extra work.
Avoid this mistake: The bargain bulk bag. Six months of coffee bought cheaply is six months of coffee going flat in the cupboard. Where only the large bag is available, freeze what you will not drink within a fortnight, which is fix 3.
3. Out of the fridge, and into the freezer only in portions
Steps
- Take the coffee out of the fridge and leave it out. Refrigeration brings moisture and other people's food smells, and the beans take up both. 12
- For coffee you will not drink within a couple of weeks, use the freezer. Divide it into single-use or weekly-use portions, squeeze the air out, and seal each one in packaging that is airtight and moisture-proof; where the original bag is not, put it inside a second freezer bag. 15
- Put the portions among other long-term frozen food, so that they stay insulated every time the door opens, and away from anything strong-smelling. 5
- Take out one portion at a time, leave it sealed until it has come back to room temperature, then use it up. 15
Why it works: Cold slows the chemistry that stales coffee, and it brings a problem of its own. Every time a cold bag meets warm air, moisture condenses on the beans, and a bean porous enough to hold aroma is porous enough to take in that water along with whatever the freezer smells of. 15
Avoid this mistake: The daily bag in the freezer door. Opening the same container every morning is the temperature cycling this fix exists to avoid, which is why the freezer suits the coffee you will drink in a month and not the coffee you will drink this week. 15
4. Grind it when you brew it, and grind it to suit the pot
Steps
- Buy whole beans. Ground coffee stales much faster than whole, often within a few days of grinding, because the surface the air can reach has multiplied. 13
- Grind the amount you are about to brew. 13
- Match the grind to the brewer: medium, close to the texture of sand, for a flat-bottom filter; a little finer, nearer granulated sugar, for a cone filter; coarse, like breadcrumbs, for a French press. 36
- If you buy pre-ground, use it within a week and keep it airtight in the dark. 1
Why it works: The oils that carry the flavour sit on the surface of the bean, and grinding multiplies that surface many times over. The beans that keep for weeks whole will lose most of their aroma within days of being ground. 12
Avoid this mistake: Setting the timer and grinding the night before. You wake up to coffee that has stood open on the counter for eight hours, which spends exactly the freshness the rest of this list is trying to protect. 3
5. Brew with water just off the boil, and wake a cold machine first
Steps
- Boil the kettle, then give it about half a minute before you pour. The range to aim for is 195 to 205°F, roughly 90 to 96°C. 3
- On a filter machine, run a full pot of water through it first, then pour that water back into the tank and brew with it. The first cycle warms the machine and brings the brew closer to the temperature it should reach. 37
- Use water you would be happy to drink on its own. Where the tap tastes strongly of chlorine, filter it, or fill a jug the night before and leave it on the counter, which lets some of the chlorine escape. 378
Why it works: Extraction runs on heat. Below the range the water leaves too much behind and the cup tastes thin or sour, and at a rolling boil it strips out bitter compounds instead. 3 Cheap filter machines seldom reach the range quickly, which is a large part of why their coffee tastes flat, and a drink that is mostly water will taste of the water it was made with. 38
Avoid this mistake: Preheating past the point of usefulness. Some machines keep climbing above the top of the range and scorch the brew, so taste the cup and keep the trial run only if it improves it. 3
6. Fix the ratio once, with the scoop you already own
Steps
- Start at one to two level tablespoons of ground coffee for every 6 fl oz, about 175 ml, of water, and settle on the number you like. 36
- Check what your machine means by a cup. Run water to the four-cup line and measure it, because brewers disagree with measuring jugs and it is the markings your recipe is really built on. 3
- Change one thing at a time. Bitterness points at the grind, so go coarser; a weak, sour cup points the other way, at a finer grind or a little more coffee. 3
Why it works: Strength and extraction are separate dials. The ratio of coffee to water sets how strong the cup is, while the grind and the contact time decide how much is pulled out of the grounds. 3 Moving one dial at a time tells you which one the cup was complaining about.
Avoid this mistake: The pinch of baking soda that circulates among coffee drinkers with a sensitive stomach. Baking soda is alkaline and does neutralise some of the acid in a cup, and the amount people report using is around a quarter of a teaspoon for a pot. The research behind the idea is anecdotal, and the writer who looked into it would sooner spend the money on better beans. 9 A harsh cup is answered better at the bean and the grind than in the pot.
7. Get the coffee off the heat the minute it has brewed
Steps
- On a filter machine, take the pot off the warming plate as soon as the brew finishes, and pour what you are not drinking now into a thermos or flask. 38
- On a French press, plunge and pour straight away; for a second cup, decant the whole pot into a thermos rather than leaving it standing on the grounds. 4
- Brew the amount you will actually drink. A small pot you finish beats a large one you abandon. 4
Why it works: Coffee keeps extracting for as long as it is hot and still in contact with the grounds, and a warming plate holds it in exactly that state. The last of an office pot is the familiar proof. 48
Avoid this mistake: Judging the coffee by its heat. A pot that has stood for an hour is still hot, which is why people keep pouring from it; what has changed is in the cup. 8
8. Brew a week of it cold, overnight
Steps
- Put coarsely ground coffee and cold water in a jar or jug, stir once, and cover it. Ratios in circulation run from one part coffee to two parts water up to one to eight, and one to four or one to five is a workable middle. 10
- Leave it on the counter for 16 to 18 hours. Where that timing does not suit your day, brew it in the fridge instead, which stretches the steep to 20 to 24 hours. 10
- Strain the grounds out through a fine sieve, a paper coffee filter or a cloth, and keep the liquid in a sealed container in the fridge, where it holds for seven to ten days. 10
- Dilute it before you drink it. Half concentrate and half water over ice is the starting point, and hot water works just as well if you want a hot cup. 10
Why it works: Cold water extracts the coffee slowly, which is why this method turns out a rounder, less acidic drink and why the effort amounts to a stir and a wait. Brewing cold and storing cold is also what lets the concentrate keep. 10
Avoid this mistake: Drinking the concentrate undiluted, and grinding fine for it. A finer grind turns the brew muddy and slow to strain, so keep it coarser than the grind you would use in a filter machine. 10
Tonight, take the bag out of the light, press the air out, clip it shut and put it in a cupboard, which takes about a minute. This week, find the roast date on the next bag you buy, freeze whatever you will not finish in a fortnight, and grind tomorrow's coffee when you brew it. The habit underneath all eight is to buy small, buy whole, brew with water just off the boil, and get the pot off the heat as soon as it is full.
References
- 1How to Store Coffee Beans
thekitchn.com
- 2The Best Way to Store Coffee
thekitchn.com
- 3How to Get the Best Cup from an Auto-Drip Coffee Maker
lifehacker.com
- 4
- 5
- 6How To Make French Press Coffee
thekitchn.com
- 7Brew the Best Possible Coffee Without Breaking the Bank
lifehacker.com
- 8
- 9Have You Ever Added Baking Soda to Your Coffee?
thekitchn.com
- 10How to Make Cold Brew Coffee
lifehacker.com
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