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Jun 4th, '13, 20:01
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Joined: Nov 13th, '12, 13:49
Location: santa monica, california, usa
Contact: victoria3

Re: Keeping tea in the fridge?

by victoria3 » Jun 4th, '13, 20:01

This is the first year that I will be refrigerating first flush Japanese sinchas (packed in foil bags), since I pre-ordered quite a few. These first flush young buds are delicate and oxidize quickly if not stored in a dry dark cool place. I plan on opening them later in the year so refrigeration should help them stay nice and fresh as a reminder of spring. Since I don't have a dedicated refrigerator my main concern was odor. After looking around for solutions I chose to use bear proof, odor-air-water proof, camping zip bags, OPSAK by Loksak. I also dedicated a lower bin in the refrigerator to teas to separate them. I have read that it is a good idea to store the pre-packed foil bags in a carton to absorb any moisture, so I placed the foil packs into the zip OPSAK, and then placed that into O-Cha's nice small shipping boxes. Hopefully this will work well.

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Jun 5th, '13, 04:28
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Joined: Jan 5th, '13, 09:10

Re: Keeping tea in the fridge?

by Teaism » Jun 5th, '13, 04:28

For green tea, it would be best to buy the freshest possible and comsume them as soon as possible. It is ok to keep them in the fridge provided they are unopened and the bags are totally air and moisture tight. A 5mil mylar bag works well, if you can vacumn sealed it even better. Store them in very small quantity so that taking them in and out of the fridge in brewing qualtity is minimal.

For years, I tried to age Longjing and realised that there are a lot potential issue with the quality when aged, whether in or out of the fridge. Then I realise LJ and many green tea are processed differently campared to those tea that can be aged. Due to that they don't age well and tend to lose its quality very fast.

So for green tea, I would consume as fast as possible and don't store them or any other tea in the fridge.

The place I am staying is high humidity and constantly high in temperature. I can see the condesation happen instantly when I take anything out of the fridge. The risk and result maybe different in other region.

Cheers!

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Jun 16th, '13, 11:50
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Joined: Jun 15th, '13, 07:13

Re: Keeping tea in the fridge?

by donaldosborne » Jun 16th, '13, 11:50

tenuki wrote:Only time I keep tea in the fridge is when I do overnight cold brewing of my spent gong fu sessions - next morning voila sweet breakfast tea!
Do you use sugar? If answer is yes, do you sweeten before or after overnight?

Jun 16th, '13, 12:52
Posts: 51
Joined: Nov 29th, '12, 18:14
Location: Oslo

Re: Keeping tea in the fridge?

by ole » Jun 16th, '13, 12:52

Only tea I store in the fridge is matcha.
I normally go through my gyokuro/sencha fairly quick, and then order more as I go through it, so I've never really had an issue with them going stale in room temperature.
This year however I've bought a lot of shincha, some are still unopened. Maybe they should be moved over to the fridge.

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