Shipping to Alaska kills me. I went to order a five pound bag of that Red Line and they wanted $47 to ship it to me.
I have a commercial vacuum sealer (for game and fish). Do you think that would help if I froze a few pounds?
Didn't know you lived in Alaska. Cool. Yeah, you're probably going to want to focus on local roasters up there. If you live near civilization, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to find a good roaster, these days. Perhaps try Anchorage. Shipping at least should be less than from down here in the 48. That Red Line is wonderful, but I don't think I'd pay $50-in-shipping costs either. ;-)
Yes indeed, that looks like a great grinder, as far as I know. I'd be happy with that. :-)
Don't freeze coffee. It freezes the oils in the beans. When those oils thaw, the flavor & brew quality doesn't recover to what it should be. I don't think thawed great beans aren't any better than a tin can of Folgers.
A one-pound bag of beans lasts us about two weeks. So at most, I'll buy two pounds at a time because that's about much as we can drink through before the beans really start to degrade. I keep them in an air-tight glass container, in a cool & dry cubbard. Ideally, I like to just buy one pound at a time so that the bean quality is always near peak.
However, depending on where you live in Alaska, buying frequently might not be an option. And in that case, I really don't know what to tell you in terms of how to store beans long-term. I'd think in that case, your only real option would be to roast them yourself. There's bound to be a thread or two or twelve on some coffee geek forum about this topic. I'd try to find that and see what they say.
