What's best median between grinding coffee beans every day or the whole bag at once so that it stays relatively fresh?

Question

I recently switched from buying pre-ground coffee to whole beans and I am grinding it myself at home for a French Press.

I know that grinding coffee every time I want to make it would be the freshest way to enjoy it. However, this is time-consuming to do every morning. I typically only drink one cup per day so if I grind the whole bag at once I am afraid it would get stale.

What would be the best median between grinding it every day or the whole bag at once so that the ground coffee still remains relatively fresh?

Answer 1

According to a previous question/answer here, even whole bean coffee may be appreciably stale after 14 days, and ground coffee within minutes. If you are considering pre-grinding, any number of days is probably going to affect flavor. Why not experiment? I don't think you will want to wait 14 days with ground, but you could experiment and see if you can taste a difference after 7 days.

You mention using a Black and Decker grinder. If that's a typical blade grinder and not one of their burr grinders, you might find that having your beans ground with a coarse setting at the coffee shop tastes better even at 14 days with a French Press. Blade grinders don't grind as evenly and can result in some pretty fine coffee grounds that negatively affect French Press. Grind consistency is important.

Answer 2

My experience is a few days is ok (although not exactly the same as fresh), after a week at room temperature, but out of direct sunlight, I noticed a difference - more in the “hm, I am missing something” range, not an “oh, sawdust”. But that’s one specific roast on one setting and in my average kitchen environment.

Depending on what you are working with, you may find a different personal threshold, as this has a large component of personal taste, there will be a certain variation between mine and yours. (Although there’s the practical aspect that weekend routines are often different from busy workweek schedules, which is why I would suggest to start with a one-week interval. At worst, you’ll loose a few days worth of coffee from the initial experiment.)

You write that the underlying motivation of your question is the hassle of pulling out your grinder and putting it away again. If you have the counter space and budget, I’d suggest a completely different approach: Get yourself a freestanding burr grinder with a hopper that can store enough beans for a week or more. Whole beans stay fresh better than ground and then you can easily grind and dose the daily batch in literally seconds with the push of a button.

Answer 3

Don't use pre-ground coffee.

I recently switched from buying pre-ground coffee to whole beans

That is great! Freshly grinding your coffee is the single biggest improvement you can do to your setup to have better quality coffee.

this is time-consuming to do every morning

What kind of grinder and how much coffee are you using? Even with my (slow) hand grinder, I don't need more than 30-40 seconds to grind my coffee. Are you brewing a lot of coffee at once?

What would be the best median between grinding it every day or the whole bag at once so that the ground coffee still remains relatively fresh?

There really is absolutely no middle ground here. Already ground coffee gets stale within minutes of grinding.

If you don't mind the taste and want to have a little experiment, I would suggest the following: Every day for 5 days, grind up a single portion of your coffee and leave each portion of each day in a separate mug or small bowl. At day 5, freshly grind another portion and put it in another bowl. Then, have a little taste test called cupping where you, in short, pour boiling hot water over each coffee, wait a bit, and then taste them side by side. This kind of comparative tasting will help you home in on your preference. You will see if you can taste any differences and if so, if they're worth grinding your coffee freshly every morning.

For you, this "cupping" method has the added benefit of having the coffee taste fairly similar to the way it would in a french press.

Even if you find, that you don't mind the taste of pre-ground coffee, I would suggest maybe buying an electrical grinder like the Baratza Encore or the Wilfa Svart. The latter has a timing function, where you can pour all of your beans in the hopper and when you push the grind button, it grinds for X seconds. You get the same (although somewhat inconsistent) amount of coffee out every time. The absolute ideal thing would of course be to keep your beans in the bag it came and single dose a pre-weighed amount.