How long does a 500g bag of coffee beans last?
How long it lasts depends entirely on how much your household drinks. Here’s a rough guide:
- One cup a day: your bag will last roughly one month.
- Two cups a day: you’ll reach the bottom of the bag in about 16 days.
- Four cups a day: you’ll want a 500g bag every eight days.
For most coffee drinkers, a 500g bag means fewer deliveries than 250g bags, without the risk of the coffee sitting around long enough to lose its character.
500g is the Goldilocks size. Large enough that you’re not constantly managing your subscription. Small enough that the beans are still alive with flavour when you reach the bottom.
When coffee sits for too long, it doesn’t go bad in the way milk does – it simply becomes flat and muted, losing the things that make speciality coffee special.
How long do 500g coffee beans stay fresh?
Coffee is a fresh agricultural product. Those scents that fill your kitchen when you open a new bag – chocolate, praline, something faintly floral – are at their most vivid in the weeks immediately after roasting.
At Pact, we recommend consuming your coffee within four weeks of its roast date. Coffee beans are full of delicate aromatic oils, and after about 30 days those aromas begin to fade.
This is a natural process called oxidation, where oxygen interacts with the bean and gradually strips away its complexity.
This is why we roast to order at our Surrey roastery and pack by hand. By keeping the supply chain short and shipping directly to you, we make sure you catch the coffee at its best.
Unlike commodity-grade coffee, which may sit in a warehouse for months before it reaches a shelf, our bags arrive while the beans are still degassing – still releasing the CO2 that helps protect their flavour.