Is Frozen Coffee the New Fresh?

Editor’s note: This article in its entirety is published in the January/February 2026 issue of Roast magazine. Below is the author’s expanded cut of the introductory paragraphs, plus a short summary of the research project. Chris and Isabella also recorded a podcast on our findings that you can view here on YouTube or listen to here.   

Author’s Expanded Introduction 

I grew up with my grandmother storing Folgers in the freezer with the promise of “it will stay fresher longer’. My dad was also a fan of the classic Folgers, drank it black while mom threw in packets of Splenda and creamer. Our tastes evolved, and as I grew older, I found myself storing my slightly upgraded Dunkin Donuts in the freezer as well. All but hoping my morning cup ladened with sugar and almond milk creamer would taste all the fresher, as if I could even tell. 

One day an evolution occurred, I drank black coffee, how utterly sophisticated and chic of me. Banned was the automatic drip machine that stood the test of time throughout middle school, high school and college. (Drinking coffee in middle school was an unfortunate event that was highly reprimanded by my parents. During these years they switched the start time of public schools to 7:30am. This along with being the first bus stop meant I had to wake up at the crack of dawn to get to school on time. I would brew up coffee before any other eyes in the house peeped open for the day. Sneakily, I would put it back in the cupboard with pristine precision and would only get caught when my mom noticed the coffee machine was still warm when she woke up). None the less, I evolved into a sophisticated adult (22), my natural state I suppose, that could drink black coffee.  

Throughout this exploration I discovered third wave coffee, natural coffees and other fascinating processing methods that were hidden under the gleam of the coffee shops owned by Christians in the Orlando area. At one point, I’m not sure exactly when, I turned up my nose at freezing roasted coffee. It was unheard of among my fellow enlightened comrades sitting across from me at a birch countertop facing floor to ceilings windows. 

Once I started working in coffee this notion sort of proliferated and my nose turned up even higher. But I didn’t particularly have a reason why, just that it wasn’t cool I suppose? 

A couple years ago I began teaching coffee classes and over time I have absorbed enough information that I can reliably answer almost every question. Except there was one I never had the answer to, and this question came around often. “Does freezing roasted coffee help prevent it to stale?”. This felt like a question my grandmother would ask and at first dismissed it. But more and more people kept asking this question and the more and more it annoyed me that I couldn’t answer it.  

Now we enter summer of 2024, where I had this crazy Idea to start this experiment. What started off as a thought formed into a 6-month long experiment with endless triangulations and bruised egos. The Crown’s lead roaster, Doris Garrido and director of education Chris Kornman were accomplices in this plan and supported with experiment design, prep, data analysis and execution.  

Research Summary: 

Over the course of the research the team found that although there is no substitute for fresh beans, there was nothing in the finding that suggested you shouldn’t freeze your coffee. In the study a washed and natural coffee were used to compare three storage types against each other: A control, room temperature one way valve and two frozen variables—one vacuum sealed and one way valve. Both triangulations and the CVA form were used in this experiment to observe cupper accuracy as well as trackable trends in flavors.  

Cuppers found negligible differences between the two frozen storage types, with cupper preference inconsistent between cupping sessions. However, after the four-week mark cupper accuracy to determine the difference between the control versus the two variables jumped dramatically until the end of the study.  

In the study we also discovered that sweetness was a major indicator of freshness and had the strongest trend in both the coffees we evaluated. For the control coffee in both the washed and natural coffee, sweet notes dropped dramatically compared to the frozen. There was also an increase in flavors like stale, musty, papery and oily notes.  

These findings suggest that after a couple months or so, it may behoof you to freeze your whole bean coffee.  The answer surprised us, and there are areas of this study that need further investigation. Special thanks to my grandmother for her intuitive foresight as well as Chris and Doris for supporting this endeavor. Happy Freezing.