Ok to bring ground coffee through security?
 

Will be flying to visit a friend and wanted to bring a gift of a couple of pounds of premium ground coffee in my carry on. Will not be checking bags and would hate to have to discard it, and then show up empty handed. Anybody know if this should be okay going through security? It's a domestic flight, FLL - EWR. Thanks.

It's not a liquid or a gel, so it should be fine. I've flown back from Hawaii to Seattle with ground coffee and coffee beans in my carry-on with no problem. The only think I can foresee is that if you get vacuum packed ground coffee, they may ask you to open the bag to "inspect" it.

WE think it's not a liquid or gel...

even tho you capitalized it, if you don't mind, would you mind amending your post to bold the word "we" so to really stress the emphasis ;)

Within the US not a problem

Flying from some countries to the US, they will think you are using it to hide the smell of the drugs you are smuggling in from the dogs in customs.

You can bring as much of it as you want.

Okay, sounds good, thanks for the responses.

Come on, Goalie! I'm an aging Baby Boomer who is not yet sure what LOL means!

BTW, the two greatest goalies in the history of Planet Earth have been Gump Worsley and Eddie Giacomin.

How else is someone supposed to prevent their coke from being detected?

Bring it and enjoy the coffee when you get to your friend's. :) Not a problem bringing it through.

If you have some spare time, put some coffee creamer into little baggies and put that in with the coffee grounds. I'm sure some TSO will think he/she's got "The Big Catch™" :D

I knew it wouldn't take long to get the Beverly Hills Cop response on this. Anyone remember Victor Maitland and his smuggling technique? Except I'm serious, it's just coffee. And by the way, coffee does not "throw off" the dogs. The dogs are absolutely amazing in their ability to detect traces of narcotics on the most minute levels.

My vote is for Bernie Parent. Go Broad Street Bullies!

touché and fair enough :) and i'll add jaques plante and frankie brimsek to your list (but eddie giacomin was my idol while growing up ^)

Sadly, you're probably right. Then the TSA would have to crank up the spinner again to mitigate their mistake. :rolleyes:

We brought coffee beans back from trips without any problem with TSA or CBP. Never brought ground coffee as we prefer to grind our own as we make coffee. You should not have any problem, but then again we are talking about the TSA and they don't even know how they will be operating five minutes from now. :rolleyes: YMMV

I encountered no problems taking ground coffee and my french press to China and back into the US (with the remaining grounds). The coffee was in a ziploc bag, so even more "suspicious" than if you have nicely ground coffee in the producer's bag.

I have had no problem bringing Puerto Rican coffee to clients in the US and abroad. You'll be fine.

So spoke with the wife this morning who is out on a business trip. She always brings coffee with her, she wants flavored coffee in the morning, and likes having it ready when she gets out of the shower. We usually use the 8 oz canning jars with a plastic lid, she had two of them.

While it wasn't a hassle at LaGuardia, they did search her bag. She's been pretty proud of going through and making sure nothing stray is there like a corkscrew, and couldn't figure out what their attention was drawn to.

It was the two canning jars of the ground coffee. She told them it was ground coffee, they opened one to make sure, and it was fine.

So I'll change what I said upthread. It shouldn't be a problem, but depending on how you are carrying it they may want to have a look at it.

Depending upon some factors, such as granular items can often look like LGAs, such items are sometimes checked. In the situation you describe, the check is simply to determine if it is a LGA. Or so says my best guess based upon experience.

It will be in the original producer's packaging so hopefully based on the responses here it should be okay. Love the term "upthread" btw.

I'm sure the way she packs her carry on (not really sure why it was in her carry on as she checked a bag too, but she defies any packing logic :) ) with all the electronics and the rest she was probably carrying it must have looked pretty interesting.

It was no problem, they opened the jar, smelled it and off she went.

Hmmm they shouldn't have opened nor smelt it. But that doesn't surprise me....