When it comes to sourcing green coffee beans, one of the most common questions roasters ask is, How long do green coffee beans last? While green coffee beans are more stable than roasted coffee, their shelf life can vary depending on how they’re stored. Factors like exposure to air, heat, light, and humidity can cause them to lose their freshness, impacting the quality of the coffee they produce.
This is a growing concern, especially with increasing consumer demand for high-quality coffee. To maintain the rich flavors that customers expect, roasters need to be aware of the shelf life of green coffee beans before they start the roasting process.
Knowing how long green coffee beans last ensures that roasters don’t waste product, and it helps them build better relationships with suppliers by ensuring fresh beans are always on hand. In this article, we’ll dive into why understanding the shelf life of green coffee beans is essential for quality control and maintaining customer satisfaction.
What Are Green Coffee Beans?
Green coffee beans are the raw, unroasted seeds of the coffee cherry, which grow on coffee plants. Unlike roasted beans, green coffee beans haven’t been through the roasting process, so they maintain a fresh, grassy flavor.
They are typically light in color and have a higher moisture content than roasted beans. The key to preserving their quality is maintaining the right moisture levels, temperature, and protection from light and air, as these factors affect their freshness and potential flavor.
Green coffee beans offer a wide range of flavor profiles, from fruity and floral to earthy and nutty, and their unique characteristics come out once roasted. Keeping them fresh until roasting is crucial because improper storage can lead to flavor loss, making them less enjoyable once brewed.
What Factors Impact the Quality of Green Coffee?
When it comes to green coffee, several factors can affect its quality and impact its flavour over time. Understanding these factors is crucial for roasters to maintain fresh, high-quality beans. Let’s dive into the key elements that influence green coffee quality:
Temperature
Temperature plays a critical role in the quality of green coffee beans. Exposure to extreme heat or cold can cause condensation inside the packaging. This creates a moist environment, which damages the delicate flavours of the coffee.
Over time, temperature extremes can even alter the coffee’s internal water balance, leading to loss of subtle aromas and changes in taste. To maintain freshness, it’s essential to store green coffee in a cool, stable environment.
Humidity
Just like temperature, humidity impacts the freshness of green coffee beans. When the air is too dry, it can suck out moisture from the beans, leading to dull flavours.
On the other hand, high humidity can cause the beans to absorb too much moisture, which may lead to fermentation, mould, or mildew. Both extremes affect the coffee’s quality, so it’s important to store green coffee in a place with controlled humidity levels to preserve its flavour.
Oxygen
Oxygen is another factor that impacts the freshness of green coffee. When exposed to air over time, the beans begin to oxidize, causing them to lose their aromatic compounds. This oxidation process can create “flat” or “stale” flavours, diminishing the overall cup quality.
For this reason, it’s important to limit the coffee’s exposure to oxygen, ideally through airtight storage containers or vacuum-sealed bags.
Light
Light can also be harmful to green coffee beans. Prolonged exposure to direct light causes a process called “photodegradation,” where the light breaks down the organic compounds in the beans.
These compounds contribute to the final taste of the coffee, and when they degrade, the flavour profile can suffer. To prevent this, green coffee should be stored in dark, opaque containers away from direct light to keep its flavours intact.
Time
While green coffee is more stable than roasted coffee, time still affects its quality. Over time, the combined impact of temperature, humidity, oxygen, and light can cause the coffee to lose its delicate flavours.
Although time itself isn’t the direct cause of degradation, it’s a marker for how much the other factors have influenced the beans. Proper storage practices can help slow down this process and extend the shelf life of green coffee.
How Long Do Green Coffee Beans Last?
Green coffee beans typically remain fresh for 6 to 12 months after harvest. Once past the one-year mark, the beans are classified as “past crop,” which often means they start developing undesirable flavors like flat or aged notes. Freshness depends on factors like how the beans are processed and stored.
Proper packaging plays a vital role in preserving the quality of green coffee. Using hermetic bags, which provide an airtight seal, helps protect the beans from moisture, heat, light, and air, all of which can degrade the beans over time. This packaging ensures the beans stay fresh until you’re ready to roast them.
But not all coffee varieties are created equal when it comes to shelf life. Some beans retain their freshness longer than others, while some can develop stale flavors quickly. This variation can depend on the coffee’s origin, processing method, and how it’s handled during storage.
The specialty coffee industry is constantly researching how freshness affects flavor and quality. Recent studies are diving deeper into the relationship between different processing methods (like fermentation) and how they impact the coffee’s ability to stay fresh. This ongoing research will help roasters better understand and manage the shelf life of different coffee varieties.
Using high-quality packaging right from the start is crucial for maintaining green coffee’s quality throughout its journey. Hermetic bags, such as those used by roasters in Ethiopia, are ideal for protecting the beans during transit and storage.
Especially in regions with less-than-ideal warehouse conditions, using robust, airtight packaging can prevent issues like mold, mildew, or flavor degradation.
How Does “Old” Green Coffee Taste?
As green coffee beans age, their once vibrant flavors start to deteriorate, resulting in a less enjoyable taste. “Old” green coffee often takes on cereal or grain-like notes, giving it a dull, flat flavor. It can also absorb the taste of its storage environment, making it taste “baggy,” like burlap sacks.
Other common flavor traits of old green coffee include woodiness, cardboard, and even paper-like undertones. Sometimes, it may develop musty or straw-like qualities, which are clear indicators that the beans have surpassed their prime. When coffee beans age, these undesirable flavors dominate, and the lively, fresh characteristics that make coffee enjoyable fade away.
How to Store Green Coffee Beans Properly?
Storing green coffee beans properly is essential for maintaining their quality and flavor. Here are five key points to keep in mind when storing green coffee beans to ensure they stay fresh for as long as possible.
Moisture Level:
Green coffee beans should have a moisture level between 8% and 12.5%, with 12% being ideal. Moisture can affect the flavor, causing it to become stale or develop undesirable notes. Keeping the moisture in this range helps preserve the coffee’s freshness and prevents spoilage over time.
Storage Conditions:
To maintain optimal freshness, store green coffee beans in an environment with 60% to 65% humidity and a temperature around 20°C (± 5°C). If the environment is too humid or hot, it can cause the beans to deteriorate quickly, leading to off-flavors and reduced quality.
Hermetic Packaging:
Using hermetic packaging, such as BN Pack vacuum sealed coffee bags, is crucial for protecting green coffee from moisture, air, and external contaminants. These bags help to create an airtight seal, which locks in the coffee’s aroma and freshness. Without proper packaging, beans are more vulnerable to degradation from environmental factors.
Storage Environment:
Green coffee should be stored in dark, cool conditions to preserve its flavor. Light and heat can speed up the aging process and cause the beans to lose their aromatic compounds. Palletizing the coffee helps with airflow and prevents excessive pressure on the beans, maintaining their integrity over time.
Packaging Design:
BN Pack coffee bags are designed with nine layers of food-grade protection, making them perfect for storing green coffee beans. These bags not only protect the coffee from oxygen and odors but also extend its shelf life beyond the typical one-year mark. Plus, they are reusable and recyclable, making them both effective and environmentally friendly.
Physical Damage Prevention
Green coffee beans are delicate and can be easily damaged if not handled properly. BN Pack’s strong, durable jute bags offer excellent protection against physical impacts. These sacks shield the beans from external pressures and help keep pests away, ensuring the beans reach the roaster in the best possible condition.
Conclusion
Green coffee beans can last anywhere from several months to a few years, depending on how well they’re stored. To keep them fresh, it’s essential to store them in a cool, dry place, away from light, heat, and excess moisture. The right packaging, like hermetic bags or vacuum-sealed pouches, plays a big role in preserving the beans’ flavor and quality.
For exporters seeking top-quality packaging to maintain optimal conditions for green coffee beans, BN Pack Coffee offers a variety of solutions. Our packaging options, including hermetic bags and jute sacks, work together to create an airtight seal that shields the beans from external factors. This ensures the coffee stays within the ideal 12-month freshness window.
Reach out to the BN Pack team for a quote on green coffee packaging that preserves the quality of specialty coffee before roasting.