Storing Kona Coffee
21 September 2009
A question I am often asked by Kona coffee customers is "How should I store
my coffee?" The simple answer is "Just keep it sealed and don't grind
it until you're ready to use it." You can keep it in the refrigerator
or freezer but that's usually not necessary. Treat fresh coffee just
like fresh bread: keep it out of the open air and use it before it
goes stale. Buying directly from the Kona coffee farm
is like buying directly from the bakery, it gives you a good head start on
freshness.
We sell our coffee in half pound bags so it's easy to use the entire bag
before it goes bad. The bags are air tight to protect the coffee
from oxidation. We also prefer to sell whole bean coffee because
it stays fresh much longer than ground coffee. With freshly roasted
whole bean coffee straight from the farm, sealed in an air tight bag, it's
easy to get a couple months of shelf life.
Storing a couple pounds of roasted coffee in your kitchen is no big deal,
storing several thousand pounds of Kona coffee on the farm is a little
more complex. Humidity is the enemy of coffee beans and Hawaii has
plenty of humidity. Humidity is great for growing coffee, it just
makes storage a bit of a challenge. Besides dangers like mold, mildew
and bugs, too much or too little humidity will also affect the taste,
color and weight of the beans.
Hawaii certification standards require unroasted green coffee to have a moisture
level between 9 and 12.2 percent. Too dry and the coffee will taste
flat, too moist and the beans will get a musty odor. I target a
moisture content of 11.6%. That's my target but getting the coffee
there and keeping it there is not as easy as it sounds.
After picking, we pulp the coffee right away to remove the outer skin.
This outer fruit layer is thrown away, leaving just the inner seed.
The seeds, or beans, are laid out to dry in the sun. With constant
raking the beans can be dry to the touch within a day. That's important
to keep the bugs and mold away. It takes another week or so before the
beans are below 12% moisture.
I have a little portable moisture meter that checks the coffee's moisture
level and I use it constantly. The coffee beans seem to drop to 14%
fairly quickly then stall there for several days. That's about the
point where the outside of the bean is dry but the inside is still wet.
The moisture drops a little during the heat of the day but comes right back
up at night or when it's cloudy. Then, when the inside of the bean
finally dries out which is about the same time I forget to check the
moisture level, it plummets down below 12%. I'm getting better at
predicting how long the drying will take but it's different every time.
My moisture meter, which costs about $600, is calibrated to match the
state's fancy moisture meter, which costs a couple thousand dollars.
Their moisture meter measures is so accurate that a single bean can
make a difference. It's often necessary to remove a large bean from
the scoop and replace it with a smaller bean to get the weight just
right before measuring the moisture.
The state recently purchased a new moisture meter. That's good because
their old meter was getting a little too old. The problem is, their
new moisture meter is a whole point different than their old meter.
Coffee that read 11.6% on their old meter will read 12.6% on their new
meter. Of course that caused quite a commotion among Kona coffee
farmers.
Thanks to Virginia at the university extension office, a bunch of us Kona
coffee farmers got together and recalibrated our moisture meters.
My moisture meter was indeed off a tad but after calibrating it I was pleased
to see that it gave me accurate results again. I came home and measured
all the coffee we have in storage and it is all right where I want it.
All our coffee is currently stored in a 40' refrigerator container, the kind
you'd see on a truck, ship or train. The container is insulated,
sealed and secure. It's not pretty but having a secure, stable
environment makes it a better storage solution than the plastic bags used by
some farmers. For an even better solution, I'm making a storage room
under the barn. Come back next week to learn all about it.
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