About a year ago, I wrote about storing coffee on a boat. At that time, I advocated putting your coffee into Lock & Lock containers (amongst other things) to keep it as airtight as possible. That’s still the best option for coffee that comes in a can or a plastic bag.
But what about the bags of coffee — such as the one shown — that have the one-way valves in them? They’re considered to be “the state of the art” now, and are great just “as is” before they are opened. Unfortunately, they typically just have a metal clip thing to re-seal the bag once it’s open. And I know that rolling the top down and clipping it just isn’t completely airtight and in the typical humidity on a boat, the coffee will still degrade.
Lately, I’ve run across a few with “Ziploc” type seals. Unfortunately, coffee grounds can get stuck in the zipper and it doesn’t close properly. And of course, that means it’ll pop open with the motion of the boat. I hate cleaning up coffee grounds; they go everywhere.
And so I came up with what seems to be an even better solution than just putting the contents into a Lock & Lock container. I’m using the bag sealers that I wrote about a while ago. I cut one in half so that it was just slightly longer than the bag opening. It makes a really airtight seal!
You still have to do all the other “right stuff” as far as storing coffee goes — keeping it cool is major — but this has been a huge improvement on both the “airtight” and “moisture-proof” requirements. I’ve been doing this for about a year and our coffee never tasted so good — and it takes up a lot less room this way!
The bag seals are sold on Amazon in packages of ten, and we’ve found them to also be wonderful for chips, crackers, cereal and all sorts of other things that come in airtight bags but aren’t easy to re-seal.
See the Clip-n-Seal on Amazon US.
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Judie Ashford says
I do both. Keep the coffee in the original bag, turned down and sealed, and then into a Lock & Lock container. I like an ongoing container to always be the same size, so things don’t shift as they become smaller from use. A shelf full of Lock & Lock container that perfectly fit the size of the cabinet make it much easier to keep supplies in the same place all the time. If an item is out of stock, the Lock & Lock container is still there as a placeholder until it is refilled. This is a great benefit to me in a motorhome, and would suspect on a boat as well.
Susan Parker says
I use the clip-n-seals all the time for coffee, chips, and anything else that comes in a bag. Like you said, they provide an air tight seal. I’ve cut some of them into smaller pieces for smaller bags.
Linda jones says
i don’t know how we ever lived without these bag sealers. And they’re so easy to cut to size!
Marilyn Oglesby says
Carolyn, I just got the biggest kick out reading about these bag sealers. About 40 years ago, my husband worked as a computer operator at Plough. They had these huge laser printers that used a toner that came in large bags that were sealed with these EXACT same sealers! The sealers were being thrown away every single day and my husband (bless his frugal little heart) could see how they would be useful for any number of applications at home. Over time he salvaged a 5 gallon bucket full of them. To this day, we are still using them and have given away no telling how many to family and friends.