Best storage container for coffee beans?

Can someone please recommend their favorite storage container for coffee beans? Looking for something airtight, block the light, preserves freshness, etc. Thanks!

I use a mason jar. It is glass, but I keep it in a cabinet so the beans are not exposed to light.

It's like a Mason jar only ceramic - a freebie Gevalia coffee bean storage container with a rubber gasket-ed lid. I've been using it for years to great results. Of course...I never seem to keep beans around that long anyway

Davooda

Davooda, that's good. It's way more important to start with fresh beans and use them quickly than to have a so-called ideal container. Nothing is really that "air tight" if you are opening it every day. I try to use my beans within a week and only buy beans roasted within a week (ideally within a few days). Metropolis and Intelligentsia are my main local suppliers. I also order from Paradise Roasters occasionally.

I use a combination of Mason jars, Gladware containers, and valve bags. It depends on store-bought or home-roasted and what's convenient. If I have too much coffee to go through in 2-3 weeks, I'll portion, vacuum seal and freeze so the package only makes one trip to the freezer. To me, freezing stops the clock at the point the beans are frozen but then will age more quickly once thawed so I make sure to use those beans within a week.

I second Davooda. I get my red bag from Intelligentsia, put them in the top grinder/pot (cuisanart) and the rest of the beans go in the Gevalia container. Then I open up that container once and use the rest of the beans for the next go around.

Having worked in the coffee industry, I've really lowered my coffee standards and am now using cheap ground coffee - largely because I can't justify the price of the beans I like. Yes, it's a huge compromise.

However, we've been quite happy with our coffee storage system - a three-tier Tiffin box from a shop on Devon. It's airtight, light-proof, cleans easily so you don't get rancid coffee oils flavoring new coffee, and we can store caf, decaf and half-caf (what we drink most often) separately but in the same tiffin. There are plenty of sizes and varieties of tiffin, I think you can get up to four tiers, and they're cheap.

Can you elaborate on why, having worked in the coffee industry, you now use cheap ground coffee because of cost considerations? Are the local roasters (Metropolis, Intelligentsia) what you are referring to in terms of high cost? Or, having worked in the industry, are you saying that those suppliers are not worth the incremental extra cost over, say, Starbucks beans and that there are better sources out there that you would ideally be buying from if cost weren't an issue?

Thanks.

Nope, I'm just saying that cost (and, I suppose, convenience) is a bigger consideration than flavor right now. However, even with cheap coffee, I make sure what I buy is arabica - I can't stomach the harsh flavor of robusta coffees, even though they're cheap - but canned grocery-store arabica is doing it for me right now. I can't stomach the idea of pouring a half-pot of stale coffee down the drain if said coffee costs more than loose change.

That being said, I've found that whole-bean coffees are usually either over- or under-roasted for my tastes. Most west-coast places and many of the pricier brands of coffee I find the roast to be too dark and the burnt flavor predominates, and cheap beans (Dunkin Doughnuts, Eight O'Clock and their ilk, which sometimes sneak in robusta beans) I find the roast waaay too light and the flavor harsh - this is before you get into my general preferences for specific coffees. For instance, I tend to prefer a washed coffee from a dry-processed one; I've found that this is a better indicator of whether I like it or not than the country of origin (though I tend to prefer wet-process American and African coffees to Indonesian coffees.) So, maybe some of my cheapskateness is bourne of frustration - If I can't get exactly what I want, I'll get what's cheap and easy.

I keep meaning to go find the green beans and roast them myself, per this thread; I've just never gotten around to it (Ethiopia being a country where they typically wet-process the beans; I know I read somewhere on this forum that you can find green ethiopian beans somewhere in Chicago, but my google-fu is apparently fully caffeinated today.)

If you do get into home roasting, two places I've had good experiences with are Burman Coffee Traders in Madison, WI, and Sweet Maria's in Oakland, CA. Both have a variety of Ethiopian beans.

We keep coffee in an enamelled metal tin that I bought as a souvenir at the Hotel Sacher in Vienna. At the time it was filled with chocolates, which I wanted as a gift for my husband. Now I pick whole bean coffee (usually some variety of 8 o'clock) at the grocery store, grind it in the store machine, come home and fill the tin with the freshly ground coffee, and store the rest in the bag in the freezer.

I know the tin's not airtight because in the morning when I open the cabinet that holds the coffee and coffee cups and cones and such, there's a rush of a wonderful coffee aroma that greets me ... but I'm not complaining ...

I am storing the beans in containers similar to this:
ceramic canister

I buy beans in small quantities since I don't want to keep them around that long.

The Whole Foods in my area posts when they fill their whole bean coffee bins. Metropolis said that you can figure out the roasted on date (on the bag) by taking the Best By date and subtracting 3 months. The roasted on date is printed on the bottom of the pre-packaged coffee bag for Intelligensia coffee.

Pucca -- what kind of coffee beans are you buying? Are you buying them from the bins or are you getting pre-packaged coffee beans?

shorty wrote:Pucca -- what kind of coffee beans are you buying? Are you buying them from the bins or are you getting pre-packaged coffee beans?

I actaully started this thread looking for Christmas gift ideas for my fiance. He usually gets his coffee beans in bulk at Costco - either Starbucks or the specialty kind at the Clybourn store (name escapes me).

I've been using these valved zipper bags from sweet maria's for my home-roasted coffee. http://www.sweetmarias.com/prod.bags.php

I was thinking of getting the tin that's listed at the bottom of that page for the store-bought coffee that I keep on hand.