Follow My Experiment in Decaf Storage: Freezing vs Shelf

I keep having bags of decaf go stale on me pretty quickly - they lose flavor, crema, body, etc. While this is somewhat expected and I did try vacuum storage and freezing loosely to try and combat it, I never really got a clear picture of how freezing did at retaining flavor because my trials weren't really done with proper storage or side-by-side, like-for-like comparison.

This time, I'm being a bit more structured about it and I thought it would be fun to post so folks could see the results.

Beans: St. Frank Decaf Ubuntu - my favorite decaf, with a really nice chocolately body when brewed as a ristretto, perfect for me and my wife's daily lattes.

Recipe: I burned 4-5 shots dialing in the newest bag I got, resulting in a 21g in, 24g out in about 25-30 seconds. This is the same recipe I'll use for every brew, though I may adjust grind if I feel that both samples need it.

Samples: After dialing in, I had about 178g of coffee left in the bag, enough for roughly 4 shots each with some left over. Less than I thought, but it'll do.

Storage: 4 doses will be stored in the valve bag on the shelf. We live in a mild climate but have a poorly insulated old house, so we might be running the heater a bit. The shelf isn't high, so shouldn't really be at over 75F ever. For the freezer, I bought these freezer-safe 4oz baby food containers that I'll be keeping in a Kirkland freezer-safe ziploc bag.

Method: We usually take about a month (often less, depending on how much we are home) to go through a bag as we also have some other decafs usually and/or are drinking cafs as well, so that's a good timeframe for the experiment. I certainly felt that the longer we kept the decaf the bigger the difference we should see between the two storage methods, and a perceptible difference was important to have an outcome. But also, this is the timeframe we are most likely to use the coffee in, so for our purpose, spreading the 4 shots out over the month made the most sense.

The only strange bit is that we are going on vacation for 2 weeks, so I pushed the last shot out quite a bit for the day after we get back. This has the added benefit of giving an extra long gap to see how the beans develop over time, so I was fine with it.

I am going to test these in 8oz small-ish lattes, which is what we mostly drink. Yes, I know - I should be trying them as straight 'spro for the most clear comparison, but for my household, flavor in milk is the result that matters. Sorry!

Dates & Results:

Would love to know your thoughts! I'm sure there are many ways I could improve the integrity of the results and the comparison, but for me as long as I get a firm answer on how to store my decaf, I'll be happy. Plus, it's fun!

Will copy paste this post and add new results each time.