Sep 13 2009
Eureka regularity
Here is a batch of the Rwandan Gkongoro Nyarusiza (or however the heck you spell it) that I roasted then immediately sealed into a Foodsaver Freeze and Steam bag.
I got a bunch of these bags on sale at Target a few weeks ago, They were half priced and I just could not pass them up. The thing about these bags is that they have little one way notches in them that are meant to release the steam when you decide to nuke a bag of vegetables.
Seeing these little steam valves on the bag kind of reminded me of the one way CO2 valves that come on many coffee bags. I figured that these bags might work the same way so set up a little experiment in order to find out.
For those who read this blog with some sort of regularity (it’s good to be regular) you now that I have experimented with saving freshly roasted coffee in food saver bags in the past only to find out that if I do not wait at least a day before sucking and sealing, the bag ends up blowing up like a balloon from the CO2 that is released after the beans sit a while. Well this is really fun to look at and might make a great emergency pillow, I do not think its the ideal way to store freshly roasted coffee.
So anyway, i roasted up a batch of my new favorite beans then immediately stored them in the freeze and steam bag (which ironically I do not plan to freeze or steam) and then let it sit overnight to see if the bag would either inflate or become slack like a spent balloon.
The next day I was happy to discover that the bag has the same han solo frozen in carbonite consistency as it had the morning before. This means either the one way steam release valves actually do work like a degassing valve or that the RGN does not give off a lot of CO2.
Anyways, I guess I need to do a little more experimenting to find out but I figured I would let the rest of your roasters out there know that this might be a viable storing option.
Or, I guess you could just invest in some coffee bags with degassing valves.
But if you like to play star wars. It is a pretty fun idea.
