Those of us that still make coffee in cafetieres or drip feeders such as the Bonavita Drip System of Coffee and Kettle or the Pour Over Coffee Maker from Coffee Gator know that once you’ve opened your bag of ground coffee, and taken deep sniffs of the heavenly aroma, then it’s the beginning of the end.
Once the bag’s vacuum seal is broken the process of decay begins. Coffee beans begin to start to lose their flavour soon after they’ve been ground as the oils begin to evaporate. The makers of ground coffee bag it immediately of course, and seal it tight, but even if the seal is never broken, the coffee will eventually deteriorate. Which is why the bags have a best before date on them,
Closing the bag super tight, and putting it in the fridge helps a bit, as does using the coffee up as fast as possible, but if you don’t drink coffee at home every day how can you best keep it as fresh as possible once opened?
Enter the Coffee Gator Coffee Canister.
On first glance it looks like any many others storage tins, it has a snap shut latch and a big rubber seal on the lid. But closer inspection reveals it has dials on the top and from the inside of the lid can be seen a valve type device.
The dials are simple but effective, you enter in the best by date on the packet and that way you can see at a glance how long your coffee has left. The valve? Well it seems that coffee emits CO2 and CO2 is bad for coffee. Really bad. So what this valve does is allow the CO2 to escape but not allow any new air in.
And that’s it, not rocket science but science all the same. It can’t stop the ground coffee oils decaying but if you’re grinding your own beans then it will work very well on the whole beans and will still help ground coffee stay fresher, longer.
The canister comes with four valves, as they do eventually become discoloured and clogged, as well as a rather nice coffee measuring spoon. The canister itself is a pleasing, well-made, metal thing that suggests quality and long life.
We’ll be trying it out over the next few weeks but the reviews on Amazon where you can buy one, seem to suggest that the science works.