At room temperature, in the refrigerator or
in the freezer. I have three samples stored
for six months at the mentioned places. They
were triple packed (plastic pouch, tea caddy, Ziplock) and they have not been
opened for that duration.
The samples
D: room temperature
E: refrigerator
F: freezer
What do you observe in the pictures?
I found some differences in dry leaves and brewed
tea. To tell the conclusion first, they
are all bad. Brewed tea D turned reddish
in color, which is not a correct hue for
shencha. D also doesn’t have a depth
in its taste and I found a dusty flavor.
E has a yucky bitterness that I tasted in the back of my mouth. F is similar with E but much stronger. F is the worst in taste. I don’t want to drink any of these teas even
for my casual consumption. I am very disappointed
with the result.
Some of you who have been reading my blog
might have noticed the reason of the failure.
The day when I prepared the samples six months ago was a rainy humid
day. The only cause that I can think of
is humidity. The leaves might have absorbed
some moisture and I packed the leaves with humid air as well. The moisture must have ruined the tea during
the storing. I’m sorry that I could not
give you the answer for this subject.
But, from this experiment, I can say that it does not matter where you
store tea if you pack it on a humid day.
Moisture is a very negative factor for tea storing. So please avoid packing tea in a humid day.
I’ll try to do the same experiment again to check
if I can get different results next spring.
Posts
Hi i just stumbled upon your blog and have been wondering about the optimal way to store japanese green tea myself. The results were suprising to me aswell. The source of error could be condesation. how much time went by form the time the tea left the freezer/fridge until you opend the containers?
ReplyDeleteI have read that tea out of the fridge should rest at least 5-8 hours before being opend and tea out the freezer should unfreeze for one day in the fridge first and then accordingly.
Hi, David-san, I left them in room temperature for one hour before opening them in this test.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of taking time for thawing is very interesting. I have done an experiment on the slow thawing before. But, I could not find significant difference between fast and slow thawing. But again, the samples were packed on the same rainy day. So, the result might not be so reliable. I would like to do the test for the slow thawing sometime again^^