Meldrew I started with the vacuum thing after reading an article about grinding frozen coffee. Apparently the trick is to not let it defrost prior to grinding because all sorts of chemical reactions start up, the end result of which is a less than full bodied, full flavored pour. Therefore, trialling freezing meant, for practical purposes, trialling vacuum sealing too.
I started with a pair of Acaia Orion dosing machines which were cool but slow. When I saw the packing machine for AU$400 I took a punt and bought it off e-bay. It works incredibly well and is as accurate as the Acaia’s.
My method is to roast, let the beans rest for eight days or so and use them from the zip bag with the one way valve, each day until I think they have hit peak flavor. Then I vacuum seal them.
These days though I don’t freeze them unless I roasted too many.
Through a lot of trial and error, I have found that a medium to dark roast will hit peak flavor around the 14 day mark (some as early as 8 days though) and will stay at peak flavor if vacuum sealed with a good machine, for another three weeks. But after that they decline surprisingly quickly.
I’ve tested over 100 roasts now and kept a flavor log on the majority of those roasts, day by day as I sampled them. I write the “Best Between” dates on every bag of roasted coffee, typically being between 14 and 35 days, assuming that they are vacuum sealed at the 14 day mark.
That’s the story behind the vacuum sealing machine and the weighing/packing machine.
Not that I am obsessed :-)
