Extending Freshly Roasted Coffee Lifespan

The main enemies of Freshly Roasted Coffee are Time, Oxygen, and Moisture.

A solution has been presented to the public that is more beneficial to the manufacturers than to the end user.

Background info:

Immediately after roasting the coffee beans begin to emit carbon dioxide in sufficient volume and pressure to burst a hermetically sealed bag.  Some roasters opted to degas the beans for one to three days to alleviate this problem while manufacturers came up with a new product, the valve.
http://nxt-roasters.blogspot.com/2011/12/do-coffee-bag-valves-leak-1.html
http://nxt-roasters.blogspot.com/2012/05/revisited.html

Valve Limitation - as currently used:

It is possible that the valve is a single solution to burst bags when with a little more thought it could have also help to extend the freshness of coffee beans.

The CO2 is roughly 50% denser than the air we breathe, which consists of about 21% Oxygen.  This means when packaged, on the first day, beans emit CO2 that gas drops to the lowest level in the container and pushes the existing air upwards.  Surrounded the Freshly Roasted Coffee Beans with CO2 retards the oxidation process, hence, slows down the staling process.  How well and for how long the freshness is preserved is much more difficult to assess and beyond the limits of a one page blog entry.  For arguments sake I say it gives an extra week.  This process exists for the beans that are continually bathed in CO2 which is not the case when there is a venting valve.  As shown in the photo the CO2 will rise up to the valve then exit rather than flush out the air above the valve.  That means that, as the photo illustrates, that only 2/3 of the beans are in CO2 providing the bag is not tilted.  If the bag was laid on it back so that the valve was at the high point of the bag then there would be a different outcome but bags are not stored, shipped, or displayed laying down.  That scenario would be improved by moving the valve upwards to minimize the amount of air in the bag.

Using a valve does allow the roaster to degas in the heat sealed bag which offers the consumers the security and assurance that the bag contents have not been tampered with.

Alternatives:

The NXT solution to this dilemma is to use a ziplock bag which presents more flexible packaging options.  First, all the oxygenated air is pushed out of the bag when the bag is kept upright.  We recommend that people scoop out the beans for immediate consumption rather than pour them out which would drain much of the CO2.  Leaving CO2 to protect the beans extends the freshness.  Our bags are in a supervised area and they are not opened after closing but for added security, where bags are placed in a public area and a heat seal is required a simple pin prick between the ziplock and the heat seal which will prevent bursting the bag and allow a flushing of the oxygenated air.

NXT advocates degassing in the bag to take advantage of the emitted CO2 to extend the freshness of the coffee beans.

We have a Carbon Dioxide high pressure tank and a regulator to test the effect of giving a shot of CO2 to a bag of beans that are more than a day old when outgassing has mostly ceased.

It might mean some beans will be destroyed with water to determine the volume of the interstitial spaces which will indicate how much CO2 has to be injected to bathe all the beans in a protective gas.

To Do:

Test to determine how CO2 will enhance the life of ground coffee.