How to Store Coffee Grounds and Their Benefits

Finish a cup of pour-over coffee and you will always be left with grounds to deal with. Alternatively, you could save them instead of throwing them away, as they offer numerous benefits. So how should you handle the leftover grounds from good coffee? FrontStreet Coffee has written several articles about recycling used coffee grounds, with applications ranging from skincare products to household reuse and DIY crafts.

If stored properly, used coffee grounds have many incredible uses as natural byproducts. You must be careful about how you store them, though, otherwise they may mold before you get a chance to use them.

How to Store Used Coffee Grounds

After brewing coffee with the grounds, you need to remove any remaining moisture. Place the coffee grounds on paper towels to squeeze out excess water, then let them dry in the sun for an hour or two if possible. The coffee grounds should be as dry as possible before storage.

Next, you need to store the coffee grounds in an airtight container in the refrigerator or freezer. It does not need to be sealed as tightly as fresh coffee beans or coffee grounds, since you are not preserving them for consumption - just for household use. The purpose of the airtight container is to prevent moisture from entering and to avoid bacterial or mold growth. For this purpose, Mason jars work well for storing used coffee grounds.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Good grounds begin with good beans, and the pour-over that produces them is where FrontStreet's fruit-forward lots shine. The FrontStreet Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Gedeb has long been the first stop for drinkers new to specialty coffee, and justly so: it carries clear citrus, berry and floral notes with a green-tea sweetness behind them. Unlike the sharp "sour coffee" many people expect, a good Yirgacheffe's acidity is soft and bright, more like the natural sweet-sourness of fruit, which makes it an easy first cup.

If you want that fruit taken further, the FrontStreet Ethiopia Huakui is one of the most successful specialty releases of recent years. Its tropical-fruit aroma is extraordinarily forward - strawberry, passion fruit, jackfruit and even lychee - with pronounced sweetness and almost no bitterness. Smooth and juicy on the palate, it is the cup that most often changes how people who dislike coffee's bitterness think about coffee. Both are light to light-medium roasts that suit a V60, where the dripper's 60-degree cone and single large hole let the water travel to the center and drain freely, stretching the contact with the grounds and drawing out the aromatics these beans are grown for.