Light and oxygen are regarded as the two main components that will accelerate the oxidation process in coffee that makes it stale. Coffee is a perishable food and becomes stale over time. Coffee that is roasted today will generally last for 3 weeks before beginning to lose its complex flavours, though retaining many of it’s base flavours. Crema production (that wonderful, fine brown foam on top of espresso) also dramatically decreases after this time.
The light part is easy to deal with – just keep your coffee in a dark place like the pantry cupboard.
We recommend that you keep your coffee in the bags that we use. You’ll notice they have a little circular one-way valve built in so that once the zip lock is closed, you can gently squeeze out air that remains in the pack without the chance of it getting back in. The other reason for the valve is that when coffee is first roasted, it produces carbon dioxide (CO2). Not in harmful quantities, but just enough where you might find that when your bag of coffee is delivered that the bag is ‘puffy’. Without CO2 there is no crema!
Some people claim it’s more environmentally friendly to sell coffee in brown paper bags. That might even be right, but the cost of doing so will accelerate the oxidisation process in your coffee, so we’ve decided against it.
We don’t recommend keeping coffee in the fridge or freezer! Along with cooling down the coffee, your fridge will also cool down the moisture in the surrounding air, and the subsequent condensation will ultimately spoil your coffee.