We pride ourselves on providing the freshest roasted beans and ground coffee. But even the best coffee is useless to you if it isn't kept as fresh as possible. That's why packaging is so important. Coffee "breathes" once it has been roasted. The beans give off carbon dioxide gas as a by-product of the chemical changes within them, and this gas has to be dealt with. Traditionally, coffee roasters have a de-gassing stage after roasting when any carbon dioxide has a chance to be expelled prior to packaging. But in pursuit of the ultimate freshness, we want to pack beans the moment they come out of the roaster. The problem with this is that any trapped gas inside a sealed coffee bag would cause it to explode - an unfortunate experience for any barista…

So, how to pack fresh roast beans without explosions?

The solution to this puzzle is a small, insignificant looking piece of plastic: the one-way valve. Our new coffee bean packaging has a discreet valve built in to the foil. Over time, as the carbon dioxide is expelled from the beans, this valve will only let gas out - so no air can get in.

Next time you open a case of our coffee beans, take a moment to look for the valve outlet near the tope end of each bag.

This article originally appeared in Fresh 3