Home canning coffee?

Question

I've decided i'd prefer to make my own coffee and can it to have on hand when i'm in a pinch then get a bottle of cold brew at the grocery to store in the car.

I wonder if anyone else has experience with this or has suggestions/oversights that could easily be made.

Off hand I would think to sterilize the jar, add freshly made hot coffee which should be about 200°F directly to the jar, let it self seal. I do wonder if this going to be enough for the coffee to seal past being perishable both from quality and safety standpoint.

Answer 1

For safe home canning in a water bath, you need the contents to have a pH below 4.6. Coffee typically has a pH of at least 4.8, so you need to either add an acid to bring the pH down or use a pressure canner to process the jars.

Moreover, coffee is full of volatile compounds that degrade relatively quickly when exposed to air. Canned coffee would likely degrade quite a bit within a few weeks, unless you use a process more similar to how beer is bottled to prevent oxidisation.

I honestly think it would be less effort to make a big pitcher of cold brew once a week and keep in the fridge for coffee related emergencies.

Answer 2

You do not want to chill hot coffee. Its quality degrades rapidly when you do this -- like within hours.

Instead, you should make a large jar of cold brew and freeze it. Frozen cold brew can be kept for months or years. Storing it at room temperature is not feasible; you'll notice that commercially sold cold brew is mostly sold refrigerated, and the handful of "shelf-stable" brands are pretty uniformly terrible (Trader Joe's, I'm looking at you).