Research into freezing techniques means that stale coffee could soon be a thing of the past. ONA Coffee’s Ebe Ganon explains
Imagine a world where coffee never goes off and you can choose your brew based on its vintage.
Pure fantasy? Perhaps not, thanks to years of hard work being done on coffee cryogenics by Canberra-based specialty roaster, ONA Coffee.
Current reigning Australian Barista Champion Matt Lewin together with two-time Aussie champ Hugh Kelly both now work in research and development at ONA. They have been closest to the experimentation around this technique, which has been used in the competition context for a number of years. It involves taking the coffee when it’s at its flavour peak, usually once it has undergone some degassing for a few days after roasting, and then freezing it to lock in the flavour.
Initially, vacuum-sealed bags were the freezing substrate of choice, however they have been found to be more challenging during daily café service, and the plastic waste that remains isn’t ideal. Subsequently, ONA has achieved great success using 50ml centrifuge tubes instead. Not only are they more sustainable and reusable, but they also store neatly in the freezer and are faster to retrieve and place into the grinder for service.
“It involves taking the coffee when it’s at its flavour peak, usually once it has undergone some degassing for a few days after roasting, and then freezing it to lock in the flavour.”
Lewin and Kelly have both used this technique in the competition world. Winning comps that run over several days requires controlled consistency, so freezing the beans makes a lot of sense. In some cases, it actually improves the definition with extra flavour.
Freezing isn’t just an exciting development for competitions. ONA are excited about being able to serve vintage coffees and extend the shelf life of expensive reserve coffees.
It’s important to emphasise that this isn’t something that is cost prohibitive to cafés, nor is it only for the high-end or high-volume establishments – this is something that, with a freezer, some tubes and plenty of determination can be a success for everyone.
Once this program becomes more established in cafés around Australia, ONA is aiming to have a retail offering enabling people to be able to freeze their own coffee at home! Stay tuned.
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This coffee cryogenics feature appeared in issue one of Caffeine magazine.
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