Unfortunately, green tea degrades quicker than other types of tea.
Now that you’ve bought a premium green tea, make sure that you don’t let it go stale, or even worse, go bad.
The basics of storing green tea
Green tea leaves are damaged by heat, sunlight, humidity and oxygen. On top of that, the leaves pick up nearby odors quickly.
Thus, you should keep your tea in an airtight container and place it in a cool, dry place.
Tea tins inside your cabinet are usually enough for this purpose, assuming you don’t live in an excessively hot and humid place. Under these conditions, your green tea should be conserved up to a year.
But what if you bought in bulk and want it to last longer?
Taking it one step further
A common mistake that many of us do is to buy more tea than we’re able to drink, so it tends to go past its expiry date.
In this case, you should put your tea container inside a resealable plastic bag and make sure that you take most of the air out. Then place it in the refrigerator. That way you minimize the degradation of your tea.
Be sure to let your tea reach room temperature before you open the plastic bag. This takes a few hours, but if you don’t do it then then the temperature difference will make water condense on your green tea leaves and ruin them!
My suggestion is that if you want to drink green tea daily and have a lot of tea, take out what you will drink for say, 15 days or a month, and refrigerate the rest.
What if your tea is stale already?
Unless it’s really spoiled, for example when mold is present, you green tea still has some use.
Once it loses its freshness, the flavor and especially the aroma is diminished. You can still drink it but it won’t be as good as when it was fresh.
One option is to roast your green tea into houjicha. It’s fun and also gives your tea a new life.
You can also use it for cooking, as a deodorizer, and burn it as incense.
There are many more things to do, there’s no need to throw it away.
June 24, 2014
Burn it as incense!! I’ve never heard that before! Intrigued!
June 24, 2014
Hi Rona
It’s called a chakouro, I think that it’s available from Yunomi.us
June 25, 2014
Thanks for that! I’ll look it up!
June 24, 2014
This is brilliant!
June 25, 2014
Thank you Lochan : )
July 3, 2014
Thanks for your comment. Reagarding expiry date, in fact there’s no 100% clear answer. But I mean we can keep Japanese green tea even if in refrigerator more than 1, 2 or 3 years if the original package is not opened. But once opened, as you say, it’s not so strong like other type of teas.
July 3, 2014
Hello Hidenori
Thanks for the information. I have many unopened packages that I should put in the refrigerator.
July 22, 2014
wow that’s great Thanks for the knowledge ,I normally purchased green tea through teanaga and I have huge stock in my strore room ,I am really appreciate this site. Good job you are doing a great job!!!!
July 4, 2020
Interesting actually. Until I was aware of the right of storing the green tea, I used to keep them in air and let them breathe. Sometimes, even had them store in refrigerator. But, I knew something was not right because the flavor was lost. However, I did thorough research and figured it out.