What could be better than a caffeine kick as a wake-up call in the morning? However, if you don’t have enough time to enjoy your coffee, it starts cooling down, and the scent is gone.
With this leftover drink, can you refrigerate coffee and reheat it? Below is all the information and guidelines for storing coffee in the fridge and reheating it. Scroll down right now!
Can You Refrigerate Coffee And Reheat It?
Luckily, the answer is a “yes.” You can keep the coffee in the fridge for one week while its quality is still acceptable. Just put it in an airtight jar; glass material is much more preferable. However, its flavor may change, so if you love the coffee taste, you may feel the old coffee is horrible.
Basic Information About Coffee
Can you refrigerate coffee and reheat it? Yes. But how to do it properly? We need to know a few things to come up with a conclusion. Coffee is a drink made from natural ingredients. So it is easy to lose its smell, and the taste changes when exposed to light and oxygen.
You’ve probably come across this situation often. When you just bought a bag of coffee, you open it and smell the pleasant aroma wafting throughout the room. However, that scent is no longer as strong as the original after a while in the kitchen cabinet.
The same goes for brewed coffee left out in the room condition for a time. In addition, the taste of coffee has also changed negatively.
The factors that change the taste of coffee are air, humidity, temperature, light, and other scents. As soon as you open the package of coffee, they will be exposed to moisture in the air immediately, resulting in their inherent aroma disappearing.
Coffee also absorbs heat and light, which affects the original flavor. With brewed coffee, its flavor will mostly disappear after only 30 minutes under room conditions. Oxidation affecting flavor and properties when exposed to air degrades the coffee’s quality.
It’s the same when you store coffee in the refrigerator. Overnight, all its fragrance and taste will disappear. Besides, coffee will have a bitter taste in some cases.
Surely you may encounter the situation when you reheat the coffee, it is even more bitter and comes with a touch of sourness. And then the coffee goes straight to the trash.
Why Reheated Coffee Tastes Bitter?
The reason behind its bitterness is that roasted coffee beans’ nature includes many acids and substances, creating a bitter taste when being heated up. The unroasted coffee beans are full of chlorogenic acids, and the roasting process splits them out into quinic acids and caffeic acids.
Both of them have distinctive and even stronger bitterness than the former chlorogenic acid. If you heat your coffee, you are making opportunities for caffeic and quinic acid to appear. Therefore, your coffee is more astringent and bitter.
Of course, all coffee somehow tastes bitter. However, in the newly brewed coffee, the acidity and the sweetness appear due to chemical reactions, balancing the bitter flavor in coffee and making it delicious and addictive.
Thanks to the volatile compounds, a compound exists in a large quantity in coffee beans creating a pleasant taste and beautiful coffee scent. But they are easily dissolved when you reheat the coffee, resulting in a liquid full of bitter substances and unpleasant fragrances.
Plus, inside the coffee liquid environment, there are many tiny particles in every cup of coffee, especially with coffee brewed by a French press, that are still in the brewing process when you heat them up.
Even when you just sit in a place and stir your cup, you are basically brewing your coffee even more. The flavor extracted in the liquid is above the average level of a proper coffee.
Since the coffee beans are already roasted, you are cooking a cooking ingredient. Therefore, the flavor and the scent are not the same as the first time when you reheat it, counting three times in total.
Read more: Does heating cold brew coffee make it acidic
Is It Safe To Refrigerate Coffee?
There have been controversial opinions around this topic for a long time. We believe that the answer is “yes,” but it depends on the way you store it and your taste.
There are a lot of ways to make a nice cup of coffee nowadays. They are so convenient that many people dislike the concept of refrigerating. They prefer a fresh coffee cup in the morning rather than the leftover liquid.
But in case you have to be in a hurry in the morning and still want to enjoy a sip of coffee, you can actually brew coffee beforehand and keep it in the fridge. Finished products can last for a few days if stored well. Below is the way to store them properly.
Ways To Refrigerate Coffee
Many people do not like coffee that has been stored in the refrigerator because its taste is no longer the same. It’s true. But in our article, we will show you the easiest way to store coffee in the refrigerator without twisting the taste too much.
Later on, we will also explain the drawbacks that most people don’t refrigerate their coffee use. While there are negatives, it all depends on your personal taste and preferences.
Black coffee is the best choice for refrigerator storage
In general, you can store any type of coffee in your refrigerator. However, it is encouraging that you choose black coffee because pure black coffee is less prone to alteration than other flavored coffees.
This helps you avoid certain flavor problems. For example, if your coffee has sugar and dairy when reheated, they will change the flavor and affect the quality of the coffee.
Use a glass jar or container for storing
To preserve coffee in the best way, it doesn’t matter what coffee you use, but what kind of container you use. This is the most important factor affecting the taste of coffee.
Make sure you use an airtight container or a vacuum-sealed jar, as the best, and double-check that the container is really tight. Be careful because sometimes some products look airtight but have holes that you don’t know about.
Contrary to popular perception, most plastic pitchers are exceedingly inappropriate. Even some containers used for a long time are also not advised because their rubber stopper is loose, unable to perform good airtightness after multiple times opened and closed.
You should also avoid using metal containers. Coffee, as mentioned above, is full of acids. Therefore, they will be likely to react with metals and later create unpleasant smells.
The airtight containers made of glass are the most suitable for this task since you can easily clean all the stains on the glass surface easily and don’t maintain flavors.
You can keep your coffee in plastic ones; however, do not put anything else in those containers but coffee only so that the plastic won’t stick to other smells.
To make sure airtightness, you can use plastic wrap to cover the lid of containers, minimizing air exposure.
In the normal environment, coffee will easily adopt the scents of surroundings. Ensure that you put the container away from other smelly foods, such as meat, garlic, and many more.
Generally, coffee can stay edible for up to one week in your refrigerator. But it is advisable that you consume it the sooner, the better. From 3 to 4 days is the time coffee maintains its good quality. After this period, its quality and taste will change drastically.
Ensure that your container is always clean
After every storage, remember to wash your containers in every nook and cranny. It is better to wash away all the odors from the previous storage to maintain the best quality in the next round. Of course, as we mentioned before, a container for keeping coffee only is a wise decision.
To properly clean the container, first, you soak it in warm water for about 15 minutes. Next, you use the liquid dish soap and gently rub it all over it. Rinse it with water and leave it dry completely for the next storing. In this way, your coffee is always in good condition.
Best Ways To Reheat Coffee
You can put your coffee into the microwave. The average timing for this method is from 30 to 40 seconds. You want the coffee to be a little steamy, not too boiling.
Another way to do this task is to boil it directly from a pot above the stove. By this, you can control the time and see the status of the liquid. But remember, do not make it completely boiling.
Conclusion
So can you refrigerate coffee and reheat it? We hope you have found the answer to the question. From now on, you can enjoy every cup of coffee without wasting time and energy just by some basic steps above.
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Almost 20 years already spent committed to coffee and more than 3 years of experience as a barista at Starbucks. Madelyn Doyle graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Nutritional Science from the University of California and finished the Coffee Skills Program at the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA).