I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time, but finally got fed-up enough with coffee taking up food space in the freezer. It’s a cute 1.8 cubic foot (probably about a quarter albatross for those using the metric system) little cooler-style fridge/freezer. Justified it further since if I ever needed to it has a 12v dc adapter for car use (doubt I ever will). It does feel pretty special for the coffee to have its own storage unit, and it makes finding frozen fruits and meat in the standard freezer easier to sift through. A couple of times I even threw stuff out of the freezer to make room for coffee, so I knew it was time to try this.
As an update / for posterity - after 64h on the KillaWatt, I’m clocking this at 0.62 KW / day running at the max setting of -8F. That’s pretty decent. On par with many chest freezers.
OK but why? my coffee is on the counter. it doesn’t need to be cold?
If you ever buy a few bags that you won’t be able to drink in the few weeks it’s at peak flavor, you can keep it fresh in the freezer provided that the packaging is airtight and you let the beans come to room temperature before opening the bag (so you dont get condensation).
For example, I bought a bunch of coffee when I was on vacation, and i know it would otherwise lose peak flavor if I kept it in my cabinet.
You can also grind it directly from frozen and throw the rest back into the freezer with no bad effects.
Honestly. Probably not. Unless you buy a ton of beans for months at a time i wouldnt bother
Agreed. I’d say anything under two months even it’s diminishing returns.
Neat. I suppose if I had one of those old style USA fridge/freezer units where the freezer is just one large bin, this would make sense. Here in Vietnam, I have a large Japanese fridge freezer with 4 separate doors (two for the large fridge area and two for separate freezer areas that have multiple storage bins). I have one storage bin in one of the freezer areas just dedicated to beans.
I was just thinking about those. I have a two-door setup, where the bottom half is just 100% freezer. Plenty of space for coffee, berries, veggies, etc. If you somehow need even more space, consider getting a proper chest freezer and use it for all sorts of long-term storage needs. As long as you have either one, there shouldn’t be any need for a tiny coffee freezer.
I have basically the following at home:
Oh wow. That should be enough for a big family.
That one is a bit larger than ours but ours is not small. I think ours is 545 liters of volume which is plenty for our family of four.
I presented that image since it has almost the same layout as ours. Our freezer has a couple of smaller side by side drawers where the one in the image has larger single drawers on each side. We’ve had it for almost 6 years now and it has been a big improvement over the traditional style two door fridge.
I can imagine. That setup looks very useful.
Did you reserve one corner of a drawer for coffee? I have about 500 g of coffee in the freezer, so the beans occupy the same drawer where I keep my berries.
I have one of the smaller drawers dedicated mainly to coffee. I have around 2kg currently in the freezer (four 500g bags of different different beans). Each bag has tape over the valve and each bag is in a ziplock bag. There are some single serving bags of udon noodles in there too. I don’t have anything in the drawer that could leak if we lose power for an extended period of time.
Sorry to be Debbie downer but if thats a 12v car fridge it almost certainly uses a Peltier cooler which is extremely inefficient. Theyre only designed for day trips, its going to use a lot of electricity for that task.
The label in the top left seems to indicate a refrigerant
Looks like 10g of r600a, which is isobutane. Neat! I knew some used propane, but not isobutane.
Obligatory Technology Connections video.
Try optimism for a change it will rock your world and that of those around you in such a good way! It’s a compressor!
Optimism doesnt pay my bills :) excellent they make compact, 12v refrigerant based coolers now. Learned something new!
Most 12v car fridges use a proper compressor these days. It’s still likely very inefficient as compared to a home fridge of course, but due to lack of insulation and inefficiencies of a small refrigerant system.
So you are freezing roasted beans to slow degradation until you have enough time to drink. Neat!
I considered it, but to keep roaster coffee fresh longer, I went the other direction. I buy green beans and roast myself in small batches on demand. Just a few days before I need to drink the batch.
The clock doesn’t start ticking on beans until after roasting with all the complex maillard reactions.
I mean really slow. You make it sound like it would be noticeable. It’s not! Home roasting is awesome too!
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Very nice! I’ve considered getting a mini freezer for coffee too but I don’t currently have the space for one so I haven’t bothered doing the research yet. How cold does yours go? I see it’s set to around -18°C right now, can it go colder? I’ve heard -40 to -50 to be the best for coffee but again, I haven’t done the research.
It’s set to - 8F. I checked it and it runs at - 4F in actuality.
Too many different albatrosses to make sense of the size: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albatross
I’m not sure of your space but a chest freezer is much more efficient and useful overall. Probably cheaper as well.
This was cheaper for what I found at least and the energy rating numbers weren’t that far off, maybe because it is so small. Energy star estimate of $14 a year to run, but not clear if that’s at freezer levels. I do think I’ll hook it up to my killawatt to see what it’s pulling this weekend though!
