Over the last 20 years, the quality of coffee bean packaging has improved substantially.
Gone are the days of coffee being packed and shipped in paper bags or in sealed containers that had no method of allowing the carbon dioxide to escape naturally.
When it comes to fresh roasted coffee, there are some packaging solutions that may not entirely live up to expectations in terms of keeping that coffee fresh.
For example, you may have seen the solid "bricks" of ground coffee sold in the supermarket.
Those solid brick ground packs are created by first allowing the roasted and ground coffee to "stale" from the peak of freshness to low levels of CO2 are exhausted from the roasted coffee.
In effect, this is destroying or eliminating all of the magical essence in the coffee such as aroma, some flavors, body, acidity and aftertaste.
Once that stale state is achieved, the "no longer fresh" coffee is filled into a tight- fitting package then a nitrogen flush is applied for removal of any residual oxygen.
If the freshly roasted and ground coffee was packed like that without being pre-staled, the pack would expand rapidly as the roasted coffee exhausted gas caused swelling and possible burst of the bag.
It is therefore proposed that the coffee packed into those "bricks" can no longer "stale" and hence you are purchasing a "dead" product.
Whether this concept is true, or a good marketing story is not for us to debate. We already know from tasting and testing those "bricks" that the coffee inside those bricks is far inferior to the freshly roasted and ground coffees we produce and sell.
Is there any truth in the claims that removing oxygen slows down oxygenation and therefore also slows down the coffee staling process ?
Yes, of course. But you can see that in order to manufacture those bricks they had to first perform significant staling.
There are specialized Degassing chambers to help accelerate and control the process of removing a majority of CO2 from fresh roasted coffees.
These systems use a combination of nitrogen and high pressure to force the CO2 out of the coffee particles.
Degassing systems are expensive both to own and operate. Almost every coffee brand in Australia does not use a De-gassing system as we all expect our products to be consumed within a short period of time.
It's only typically used for export markets or for very large volume retail sales but we also remind our readers that the costs of degassing coffees under controlled environments is expensive, adding to the cost of the product.
What about metal cans and tins.
Again, it is a similar concept to the bricks - remove the CO2 requires some off-gassing via either delayed time (age) or nitrogen pressure.
Some of the metal packaging solution these days are using the same 1-way valves as flexible coffee bags. This provides a way for excess gas to be safely exhausted.
Why flexible bags with valves are the best solution
We believe that food-grade, foil-lined, 3-layer flexible bags with a 1-way valve is still the most cost efficient and effective packaging solution for fresh roasted coffees.
As more environmentally friendly packaging materials emerge onto the market, we continue to test and trial these materials to ensure the integrity of our coffee is properly preserved.
Nobody wants to drink stale coffee.
