Ultimate Guide to Tea Storage
I’ve been recently getting my family tea as gifts and also encouraging them to reach for teas more often. Recently, I received this question from my brother concerning how to store loose leaf teas. I’ve also added information about specific teas and their shelf life. Thanks for the question, Bro! Hope this helps. Drop me any of your questions in the comments below.
So why’s it important to store your teas well?
Taking a few simple steps to store your teas properly ensures that all the work put into picking and processing the tea leaves to bring you the specific character of a tea is preserved when you go to make your cup.
Processing tea leaves to create the six different category of teas (white, green, oolong, black, and aged) is an art that has been perfected over a thousand years (if not more). The leaves undergo specific processing to get the proper moisture levels, flavor and oxidation to create the unique flavors we associate with each tea. In the case of blended or herbal tisanes, care and artistry is also applied to create a unique flavor or health result.
To make sure you are tasting what the tea artisans intended and also to make sure your money spent on the tea is not wasted, being aware of these simple guidelines will help you get all the right flavors from your tea.
The following tips are quite basic for any perishable, but if you wanted a fun way to remember these guidelines just say to yourself:
“H O L A, Minimalist Cuties!”
“H” for Heat
“O” for Odors and Other Scents
“L” for Light
“A” for Air
“M” for Moisture
“C” for Crushing
These are the things we want to avoid when storing tea. You’re welcome. :)
Photo: @rajat_sarki
General Tea Storage Rules
Heat: Let your tea live in a cool place. To preserve green teas’ freshness, some people have been known to store their high quality green teas in the fridge in reliably airtight containers. Tea vendors do this to extend the shelf life of their fresh harvests for distribution.
Odors and other scents nearby: Store your teas away from strong odors and smells. Not only is tea delicate in aroma—one reason we appreciate it so much for its subtle nuances—the tea leaves also absorb smells from its surroundings quite easily so it needs to be kept away from strong smells. Which means storing them in a cabinet away from your cleaning supplies or pungent foods will ensure you are not brewing the smells of something else not intended to be in your cup of tea. Leave it to the professionals to infuse your tea with fragrances. (But, if you feel inspired to do some tea perfuming yourself, hop over to ITEI.ca and take an online tea blending course and use code MinimalistTea10 for 10% off.)
Light: Keep your teas away from light exposure. If they aren’t living in a cabinet, they need to be in opaque containers as light will add heat further oxidizing your teas and altering the flavors. I store some of my teas in glass jars, but those jars live in a dark room in drawers away from light. When in doubt, opt for opaque containers like tea tins.
Air: Store your teas in airtight containers. This maintains its aromatic content and doesn’t prematurely age them. This is especially true for green tea and green oolongs
Moisture: Make sure the area you are storing your teas isn’t exposed to steam or other sources of humidity.
Crushing, to be avoided: You can CRUSH-ON <3 the teas, but avoid crushing softer packages of tea leaves by storing them too tightly together. If possible use a hard container for more delicate teas. For example, you’ll want to be careful not to crush or cause too much breakage to expensive loosely twisted or flattened teas such as Dan Congs or Tai Ping You Kuis as it may lower the artisan brewing experience of aesthetics and cause more of leaves’ flavors to dissapate before you even go to brew it.
*Bonus: Keep track of the harvest year information and when you bought it in a system that works for you. For tea connoisseurs, you may keep this information on a Google sheet or tea journal. Perhaps you may like to use a simple labeling system on your tea package. Masking tape and a pen is one simple and cost-effective way to keep track of this.
Storage and Shelf Life for Specific Teas
Green teas, Green Oolongs like Tie Guan Yin:
The prime time for flavor for these teas are in the its first 6 months of harvest (spring months March - April) due to their minimal processing (which preserves them less, but give them the refreshing qualities we all love in green teas). After that the flavor starts to fade. It is typically recommended that green teas or other minimally processed green teas like Tie Guan Yin, should be consumed within a year and a half from harvest. After that you may just be a getting a skeleton of its original flavor.
General storage guidelines from above apply.
Crucial to use airtight storage. Some airtight containers can be stored in the fridge for shelf life extension for up to 6 months.
Drink within 1.5 years. For prime flavor, enjoy in the first 6 months of harvest.
White, Oolong and Black teas:
The general guidelines for tea storage apply here, but these are teas that are going to be more forgiving if the storage container is not 100% airtight especially when it comes to aged oolongs. As long as there isn’t huge amounts of airflow within the container you will be fine.
Certain oolongs are designed to age to allow it to develop more flavor complexities. Proper knowledge on how to store and age these teas will require a bit of further inquiry. However, you can experiment yourself by keeping a journal about the shifts in flavor from year to year if aging tea is something that sounds interesting to you. Some people boast that white tea tastes better with age. The only way to find out is to do some further inquiry or keep a simple tea journal and document the tastes from your brew sessions each year.
General storage guidelines from above apply.
Typically drink these within 2 years.
Some oolongs are designed to age. There has been a growing interest in the aging of white teas, but I won’t be getting into that here.
Pu-Erh teas:
Pu-erh tea is a special class of tea that can have a collector paying thousands of dollars for a single tea cake due to its scotch or coffee-like flavor profile and miraculous health boosting qualities. In its pure form, pu-erh is actually green tea that has been pressed into a cake to be aged in 2 processes creating two types of pu-erhs. These teas are aged either through an expedited aging process (Shou, or Ripe) or a slow aging process (Sheng, or Raw). In China, Pu-erh is called “black tea.” What we in the West call “black tea,” the Chinese actually call “red tea” which actually more accurately describes the color of the liquor when black tea is brewed. So in China, your English Breakfast tea would be considered “red tea.”
Pu-erh is typically stored in paper or a NON-airtight encasing, such as a wood box, to allow it to breath as it ages and ferments. The steady and slow incorporation of stable humidity and oxygen is what connoisseurs bet on helping a Pu-erh tea cake age. This aging process can help to mellow out the “musky barnyard” flavors of this tea, develop more complexities in flavor, and create more smooth textures.
These collectors items may be stored for multiple decades increasing their price tag to exorbitant amounts just as wine or scotch would be collected, aged, and auctioned.
If you are aging your teas, allow some air flow. If you have a small amount that you plan on drinking in the near future, an airtight container works.
Balanced, neutral humidity is best. An overly dry environment will not encourage the aging process, and at the same time an overly humid room can cause mold.
Try a closet or dedicated cabinet or shelf for these teas. When you take them out to drink or taste, simple wrap it back in its paper wrap or store it back in a breathable container made of odorless natural materials.
Herbals and Blends:
It’s common that many of the blended teas are leaves that have reached a medium shelf life and a tea shop can take the these teas which are still good, but not newly fresh, and give them a second life by blending them with flowers, fruits and other flavorings to augment any flavors that have dissipated with time.
Herbal teas are fresh up to 1 year. I’m sure an herbalist may argue 3-6months is the prime drinking time and after that the benefits and flavor may wane.
General storage guidelines from above apply.
Drink these teas anywhere within 6 months to 1 year.
Photo: @aboodi_vm
In general, safeguard and enjoy!
At the end of the day, I’m in the school of thought where I don’t think you need to be OCD with tea storage. After all, the discovery of pu-erh around the 10th century happened by accident when large quantities of pressed green tea cakes were transported on horseback along a treacherous land journey ranging from 6 to 8 months. This long journey was called the Tea Horse Road where tea transporters traveled from Southern Yunnan to Tibet. Read more or see cool pictures on Pu-Erh and the Tea Horse Road here. And they surely didn’t have plastic packaging back then. Natural effects of microorganisms, moisture, shifting temperatures, tight packing of tea, and all the things I just told you to avoid, added to the eventual creation of Pu-Erh which is now, as I mentioned, a prized collectors item throughout China.
At the moment, I don’t have a sophisticated way to store my tea as I just moved into a small 800 square-foot apartment in Los Angeles with a roommate, but I do however make sure to store my teas away from the elements and in a cool dry place, a.k.a. in wooden drawers in my bedroom where my humble ceremonial tea items are also stored.
Generally, I store my loose leaf teas in the original packages that it comes in. If I buy a large quantity of a certain type of tea then I will distribute the large bag into several glass jars that I have cleaned well and deodorized to be gifted or stored in different locations where I may want tea like an office and at home.
Thoughts on tea collecting for a minimalist …
When it comes to being a tea specialist or enthusiast, there may be a professional need or desire to simply acquire many different types of tea. But with the large quantity of tea, it can be wasteful as it can be difficult to drink all these teas by yourself or even with the help of friends.
So I want to stress that when it comes to buying tea, be sure to buy in small quantities so that you can finish your teas within a reasonable amount of time. That way, you also have the opportunity to try out more types of tea and enjoy it at its peak flavor while it is fresh.
If you love a type of tea, document that tea’s information somewhere so you know what region, type of tea or style to look for when buying that tea for next year’s harvest.
Have any more questions regarding storing teas? Shoot me a comment below, right now! Perhaps organization is the next subject to tackle after this!
———
Enjoy your tea, practice mindfulness and take care of yourself and those around you. Until next time…
MinTea xOO
