vacuum sealed tea deterioate?

BB&B didn't have them. Neither did The Container Store. Neither did Sur La Table. Shopping in the physical world is so very often met with disappointment and empty arms. Still searching for all-cotton, non-flannel, solid women's pajamas -- these too are apparently unavailable in any store.

So, to hell with consumerism. I've come up with a air-lock tea storage solution that relies only on ingenuity and items in my own home. We had an empty 180ml brown glass sake bottle. It has a screw cap, but that's put aside, because the VacuVin rubber stopper is used instead. A 100g bag of Sencha, with the aid of a paper funnel, fills the bottle about 2/3 full. A few quick sucks with the hand pump, and the precious, perishable tea is now protected against the evils of light and air. Measuring the tea now means I must dispense with my bamboo tea spoon, so I will now just pour spoonfuls directly into my palm, like I would with salt. All in all, this technique seems nice and easy. I'll give it a week or so and report back with my impressions.

--crymad

snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com12/15/05

Crymad,

I hate to be cynical -- although that would seldom stop me -- but I seriously doubt whether this thing actually maintains a vacuum. In NYC I know at least two people who have tried them with no to moderate success. Have you got experience with these things?

Michael

Not the containers. And since I couldn't find any locally, I may never get experienced. But the VacuVin wine stoppers I use often. And every time a bottle of vacuumed wine gets opened, it produces a satisfying WHOOSH. As for Sencha storage, this is something I'll be breaking into at least once a day, and so the bottle will get a fresh air lock each time. Certainly this hand pump and rubber stopper combo can't produce a true vacuum. But a good portion of the harmful air is removed. And good is good enough, at least until I feel driven to reach nitrogen-flushed, metal-bag, heat-sealed nirvana.

--crymad

mike,

thanks for the info on the nitrogen flushing. i'm going to give it a try as i have most of the materials already.

-gary

Mike: Those little one-brew-sized bags you sparge with nitrogen aren't reusable, are they?

I wonder if it might make sense to find a whole gang of very small screw-top containers and fill them with one-pot-sized portions of a green tea when breaking the seal on a new quarter pound or 100g. The tea wouldn't be quite as fresh as with Mike's technique, but you wouldn't be adding - what: Mylar? - to the world each time you made tea.

/Lew

Argon gas would be even better than Nitrogen, but it's more expensive. Argon gas is 1.4 times heavier than air.

Lewis snipped-for-privacy@panix1.panix.com12/17/05 17: snipped-for-privacy@panix.com

It also sounds as though a communal nitrogen spurging set up might not be beyond the realm of reason, if not possibility. Michael

Michael, I agree. I was possibly being a bit diplomatic. I quickly close all bags of opened tea. Unless in a resealable pouch I transfer to airtight ceramic canisters. I try to use all as soon as possible. It is true that the truly delicate and expensive greens are best within a short time after manufacture. Until you can travel to source and taste truly fresh teas we are stuck with what we can get.

Richard

An update on my VacuVin tea storage test. Consider it a bust. While the vacuum air lock held good for a few days use, after that I was no longer greeted by the comforting "whoosh" when getting tea. It appears that the rubber stopper is not designed for long term insertion in a bottle neck, so perhaps the rubber loses its tight fit after a while. Another possible problem could be that I was using the rubber stopper dry: it's recommended that it be moistened slightly before use with partially opened bottles of wine.

At any rate, I've gone back to my double sealed, rubber-lined screw cap container for tea.

--crymad

Hi, about 2 years ago I bought lots of tea in China, most of it vacuum packed. I found that within the first 12 months the greens deteroriated considerably whereas all the Oolongs are still almost as good as new. I had them vacuum sealed 10g wise.

Greetings from Darjeeling, Karsten

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com snipped-for-privacy@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com12/27 /05 02: snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

Karsten,

Thanks for the report! Were you saying that the greens, even left for one year in their vacuum seals, deteriorated considerably? I never did that experiment myself. Is it possible, to add to the discussion, that a vacuum sealed green whose seal was broken shortly afterward -- let's say a week -- would then begin to deteriorate less quickly than a vacuum sealed green whose seal was broken later -- let's say after six months?

How's the weather in Darjeeling, and how are you fairing?

Michael

May I ask what you're doing in Darjeeling and where you've been? I wouldn't think anything's being harvested now, even at lower altitudes, right?

/Lew

She is drinking tea..........

Hi Michael,

That's what I found. But then the green teas were all pretty fresh when I bought them, maybe fresh teas behave a little different than say teas that had been stored in tins months before the purchase.

Can't tell since I had almost everything sealed 10g wise and you can imagine that once I open one of those packs I drink it within hours or max. 2-3 days.

The weather is just fine, pretty cold and a bit overcast today but the clouds shouldn't stay for long. It's my 6th stay up here, I just love the place, the people, mountains, culture, food and hehe the teas. The advantage of shopping for teas here in Darjeeling lies more in the huge selection (and free samples ) than in monetary aspects. Here you're able to snatch pretty rare teas (invoices) that don´t make it to the US or Europe but usually end up in Japan. However, if you buy any highgrade teas here you´ll find that they are not much cheaper than in the west, these guys know what their stuff is worth and since I don´t buy whole chests/invoices I have to pay full retail.

Karsten

Michael Plant wrote:

Of course Lewis, I'm just a traveller, been here 6 times (like said before), this is my 4th longer stay (4-5+ months). I just love to travel in areas where tea is grown (China, Malaysia, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka),. As time allows I visit the gardens, chat with the planters, tasters and sellers and spend a lot of time sipping my way through my collection of samples.

As far as I can tell you're right. This is the maintenance season, machines get repaired, the gardens rearranged, after the autumnal flush some plants are cut back and so on. Everyone is looking forward to late February 2006 when it starts all over again with the FF, hopefully with some better weather than we had this year (almost no rain). I'll be going down to Siliguri (Terai) in a couple days but I don't think they're too active at this time of the year.

If I find the time I'll post some reviews on some of this years great seconds and Oolongs.

Cheers, Karsten