What is The Shelf Life of a Coffee Pod?
Forget about use-by-dates, best befores and shelf lives: guarantee a genuinely fresh cup of coffee with our refillable, fully-home compostable pods. It’s the best decision you’ll ever make!
Let’s start with the good news..
Your regular supermarket coffee pod has a reassuringly long shelf life. While not quite in the territory of freeze-dried instant coffee—which could survive several nuclear winters—pre-filled capsules will generally expire around one year from their creation date.
If a wayward coffee pod tumbles into the dark recesses of your kitchen cupboard, along with that single bow-tie of dried farfalle pasta, it can be dusted off and will be perfectly safe to drink.
As with all perishable foodstuffs, the sworn enemy of ground coffee is light, oxygen and moisture. And, because standard pods are hermetically-sealed during the manufacturing process, the deterioration cycle is slow. As long as the seal isn’t damaged and the coffee not exposed to those elemental forces, your morning brew will remain untarnished.
A year? That seems like a long time. Is the coffee still fresh?
Well, here's the kicker. While the expiration date printed on your standard coffee pods might indicate a suggested ‘safe-zone’ for their consumption, it doesn’t give any clue as to its freshness or flavour quality. Sure, you might not need to book a hospital visit anytime soon, but will the coffee actually taste good?
You’d be forgiven for questioning whether the coffee inside supermarket pods was even coffee at all, and not just some synthetically-created space food. Regular coffee doesn’t last a year, how could this possibly be a legitimate product?
Before spiralling into a complete doom cycle about the prospect of fake coffee, let me assure you that you haven’t been lied to all these years. The ground coffee beans found in a classic Nespresso pod—or any other brand that you care to mention—are 100% genuine.
As ever, the bone of contention concerns freshness.
The freshness of ground coffee is majestically fleeting. We’re talking hours rather than days before that intense aroma and flavour begins to disappear into the ether. As quickly as the magic is created: it’s gone. An experienced roaster and barista will tell you that fine ground coffee used for an espresso will lose its potency in less than 30 minutes.
Popular coffee pod brands will do all they can to circumvent the potential argument regarding freshness. As well as being hermetically-sealed, to safeguard against any outside contaminates, some pods are injected with a blast of nitrogen to slow down the oxidation process. Elsewhere, manufacturers will often seal the container with an extra layer of foil. Anything to preserve the illusion of freshness.
As discussed in a previous edition, the issue of calling your average pre-filled pod ‘fresh coffee’ runs into all sorts of problems when you consider that the majority of these products are sourced from Europe, Australia and the Far East. Can you call it fresh coffee if it’s been freeze-dried and stowed away in a shipping container for weeks?
We remain unconvinced.
So what’s the alternative?
Here at Coffee Pods, we understand that ‘shelf-life’ is somewhat of a red herring when it comes to pre-filled capsules. While we all want our products to last, what’s more important is the quality they retain in that time.
By leaning on the expertise of the many hundreds of artisan roasters based in the UK, who provide us with a glorious selection of unique blends, we know that we’re getting 100% freshness in every cup.
Our customers have a seemingly endless list of flavours to choose from—each bursting with its own distinct, intoxicating aroma.
So forget about use-by-dates, best befores and shelf lives: guarantee a genuinely fresh cup of coffee with our refillable, fully-home compostable pods. It’s the best decision you’ll ever make!
Phew, we made it.
A bounty of tips, tricks and recommendations to help you get the most out of your Nespresso machine and our glorious compostable pods.
Now, I could do with a coffee…
Posted on August 19th 2021
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