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I'm looking for some small container to store small amounts of ground coffee.
I have a lot of jars after some other things, like olives.
Can they ever be fit for storing ground coffee? Is it possible to remove all side odours from them?
If so, how should I clean them before using them for coffee?
The original package is not very tight after opening, so the jar would better prevent the contact with the air...
The Short answer to this is no. You should not use a glass jar for storing coffee.
Why? The base of the answer can be found here: When Does Coffee Go Off?
Coffee goes stale relatively quickly, and the transfer to a glass jar will:
Furthermore, you should only be purchasing and storing whole bean coffee - as pre-ground coffee is already stale.
My experience is that some jar lids are almost impossible to make completely odorless, while the glass simply needs to be soaked in a mixture of baking soda and vinegar for a few hours. I have even read that leaving the jar in the sun for a few days works efficiently, but since we don't have that much sun in my part of the world i have never tried this before. Depending on the original content of the jar i would very likely replace the lid and clean the jar for re-use.
Apart from that i don't see any problem in storing coffee in jars as long as the coffee has degassed significantly before hand, to avoid exploding lids (extreme case).
