How to protect roasted coffee powder from degrading during daily use?

In all truthfulness, the fact that you buy coffee grounds instead of whole coffee beans is the biggest culprit.

Here's a list of things to consider:

• By whole beans
• Grind immediately before use, not the night before, not an hour before, but immediately before brewing.
• Keep in air tight container, and store in a dark place. Do not put them in the freezer, as they are subject to freezer burn, and long exposure to cool temperatures can effect the flavor.
• By from a roaster. Roasters roast daily, and you'll likely get a batch that's no older than 2-3 days, often times you'll get beans roasted that day or the day before.

You can see how fresh your beans are when you initially add hot water to the grounds. Fresh beans will produce lots of foam, as they still have lots of CO2 left in them from the roasting process.

Some things to note when grinding beans at home are the type of grinder you use. Blade grinders will not provide a consistent grind, the grounds will be a varying sizes, and this affects extraction more than you'd think. For the record, no coffeeshop(not even the dinner down the street) use a blade grinder. Make sure to have a Burr Grinder, or a Hand Mill grinder. These will provide you with a consistent grind.

A few burr grinders that I've known to work well:

• Hario Ceramic Coffee Mill Skerton
  • The first burr grinder that I owned. I used to brew single cups and didn't want to spend the $100+ to get an automatic burr grinder. It works really well, but I got sick of grinding coffee by hand every morning for 2 years.
• Capresso Infinity Conical Burr Grinder
  • Pretty standard automatic burr grinder. Its in the lower price range, but it works well.
• Baratza Encore
  • This one gets lots of hype in the coffee community, mostly because its relatively cheap, and it has a wide range of grind settings.
• Baratza Virtuoso
  • A set up from the Encore model.

It depends on what you're willing to spend for a grinder. If you really want to get into coffee I'd start with the Baratza Encore. If you just want a automatic grinder the Capresso Infinity might be for you. If all the other options are too expensive the Hario Coffee Mill works great.

In my experience, you're going to get a lot of degradation with pre-ground coffee regardless of the steps you take to protect it.

As mentioned in other posts (ex: What is the best way to store ground coffee?) you're looking to do the following:

1. Prevent the coffee as much as possible from contact with air.
2. Avoid moisture absorption (from air).
3. Avoid temperature swings, especially near the freezing point (the cells inside coffee beans will crystalize and de-crystalize, releasing flavor and aroma before you brew)

I'd reccomend one of the following:

1. Repack the coffee into many small containers and place some in the freezer for use at the end of the week (assuming your freezer temperature remains relatively consistent)
2. Purchase a jar which removes air such as the EVAK

An electric coffee grinder is small, inexpensive and easy to use. I would recommend getting one and buying whole beans instead. Get a large bag of whole beans, and store it in the freezer, then just extract the amount of beans required and grind right before brewing. The frozen beans should stay fresh much longer than your pre-ground coffee, and adds the bonus of the fantastic smell of freshly ground coffee every morning.