How to keep coffee fresh at home

Roasted coffee does not go off the way milk does, but it does fade. Air, moisture, heat and light all take the aroma out of it. Keeping coffee well is mostly a matter of keeping those four away.

Sealed

Keep coffee in the bag it came in, rolled down and closed, or in an airtight container, and open it as little as you can. Vergnano’s 1 kg bags have a one-way valve that lets gas out and keeps air out; put the lid back on a tin between brews, and use up an opened pack of ground coffee before an opened bag of beans. A bean-to-cup machine’s hopper is not a storage jar: it is open to the air and often warm, so load what you will use in a few days and keep the rest of the bag sealed in a cupboard. Ground coffee stales faster than whole beans, so buy the pack size you will get through rather than the largest one.

Dry, cool and out of the sun

A kitchen cupboard away from the hob and the kettle is the right place. Not the fridge: every time the pack comes out, moisture condenses on the cold beans. Not the freezer either, for the same reason, unless you freeze a whole unopened pack and use it all once it is thawed. Light ages coffee too, so a cupboard beats a windowsill or an open shelf in direct sun, and a glass jar on the worktop only earns its place if it stands in the dark. Heat is the other thing to keep away: a shelf above the oven or beside a radiator warms the pack every day. Keep beans, ground coffee and capsules sealed, dry, cool and out of direct sun; opening a capsule box leaves the capsules inside sealed.

Buy the size you will get through

Whole beans keep their aroma longer than ground coffee, because grinding exposes so much more surface to the air. Choose a pack size you will get through reasonably quickly — the smaller the pack, the less time the coffee spends open. A kilo makes sense for a household that gets through it in a few weeks, or for a bean-to-cup machine that is on all day. As a guide, a 250 g pack makes about 16 cups of filter at 15 g each. A 1 kg bag makes about 60 double espressos at 16 g, or about 110 cups in a bean-to-cup machine at 9 g. An estimate at a typical dose. Your machine, grind and recipe will move it. See How much coffee to use for the arithmetic and the coffee range for the pack sizes.

The date on the pack

Every pack carries its best-before date. Our Vergnano stock turns over quickly, and if you want to know the date on a particular batch before you order, ask us and we will confirm it. We order from the roastery in Italy on a monthly cycle. Once a pack is open, how it is kept matters more than the date on it, which is why the sections above come first.

Capsules

Capsules are sealed, so they keep well. Store the box dry and out of the sun; there is no need for the fridge. The Nespresso-compatible coffees (Oro, Cremoso, Intenso and Napoli, ten to a box) and the FAP coffees (Classico and Decaffeinato, 100 to a box) keep the same way, so a box of 100 in an office cupboard is fine. After use, the Nespresso-compatible shells are compostable where local facilities accept them; check with your council before they go in the food-waste bin. Which capsule fits your machine? covers the two systems.

More on freshness in the FAQ. Not sure what to buy next? The Coffee Finder starts from how you brew.

Reviewed 8 September 2026.