I bought my 1st can of coffee last year to drink every now and then on cold days. I just realized the can has been in my fridge for nearly a year now. How long will a can of coffee stay good in the fridge?

-- Buk Buk (bukabuk@hotmail.com), September 03, 2001

Answers

keep it sealed up tight, and refrigerated it should last a very long time! We keep ours as beans in the freezer, and fill a jar on the counter once a week to grind fresh. After it is ground, though, it is never as fresh, so a can is already less fresh. Does it still taste fine to you?

Geez, how do you show such self control? I could use a few lessons.

-- marcee king (thathope@mwt.net), September 03, 2001.

Keep your ground coffee in the freezer part of the fridge. It stays "fresh" a long, long time.

-- Joe (CactusJoe001@AOL.com), September 03, 2001.

Thanks for your responses. glad to know my coffee won't go to waste. And...no self control involved. :) The taste of coffee is something i crave only once in a while and i'm not addicted to caffeine.

-- Buk Buk (bukabuk@hotmail.com), September 03, 2001.

Keep ground in the freezer for freshness or invest in a $15 electric grinder and buy in bulk as we do. I buy two 20 lb bags a year and when my coffe can runs low, throw a scoop of beans in a pan in the oven at 275 degrees to reroast them a bit and remove the moisture in the bean for about an hour. Then grind the beans while still warm. Fresh coffee and the house smells like "Joe Muggs Coffee House" all day long.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), September 03, 2001.

And if you don't finish the entire pot, just pour it into a glass jar and keep it in the refrigerator until you save enough for another pot full. Why waste anything?

-- Sandy Davis (smd2@netzero.net), September 04, 2001.

A friend told me that she pours her leftover coffee, black, in her plants. She says the do wonderful on coffee.

-- Cordy (ckaylegian@aol.com), September 04, 2001.

Sheesh. I am still drinking coffee out of cans of stuff I bought for Y2k. I am just now starting on March 1999's cans. What was I thinking?!! (Oh yeah, coffee was my barter item!) Anyway, it still tastes fine to me. I like good coffee (this stuff is just "okay.") I live out here in the land of coffee...even before Starbucks, et al! This place is crawling with Scandinavians and many of us started drinking coffee before we started preschool! (Of course, mostly cream with a touch of coffee!)

-- sheepish (WA) (the_original_sheepish@hotmail.com), September 04, 2001.

I do that also Cordy, coffee grounds are good for compost too.

-- Dave (something@somewhere.com), September 04, 2001.

Hey Jay...where do you buy 20 pound bags of coffee? I've not seen a place that sells beans that way.

-- Anne (HealthyTouch101@wildmail.com), September 04, 2001.

Sheepish, you got my sides hurting from laughing. Boy do I remember the "barter" items from Y2K! I still have more tea than all of China. I also went wild on baking powder for some strange reason. If I lived to be a thousand years old, I never could have used that much. Sheesh, most recipes call for just a teaspoon of the stuff! What was I thinking!!!!? Hadn't thought of those barter items for a long time.

-- Annie (mistletoe@kconline.com), September 04, 2001.

We buy the bulk bags at our local Sav-A-Lot. Btw, the grounds are not only a great compost component. They make an excellent acid additive to the vermicompost bins too. My worms will consume slurry containing a scoop of used coffee or tea grounds with the veg slop twice as fast as veg slop by itself.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), September 04, 2001.

Sheepish, I went for the coffee as a barter item also. Only I also picked up 40 CASES of toilet paper too :>)

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), September 04, 2001.

If it's any other consolation, I'm still eating all the canned tuna, salmon, raisins, oats, wheat, navy beans, lentils, dried split peas, 13-bean soup mix, powdered cheese, powdered peanut butter, tea (Lipton...hey..not picky!), vegetable oil, Crisco (ugh!), macaroni and cheese, sugar, and salt that I stored!! Spices are another story!!! And yes, we are still working on the toilet paper, too! And this is about half of what we have...and no, these weren't barter items! I'm splitting my sides laughing, too!

I sure am saving money on groceries, though! Oh yeah, the seeds that I bought were still viable this season and probably next. (good old Territorial Seed Co.!) Glad I bought all this stuff while I was still in the "real" workforce. LOL!!!

I only wish I could have stockpiled health insurance...then I would never have to work outside the home again! :-)

-- sheepish (WA) (the_original_sheepish@hotmail.com), September 06, 2001.