A Week of Tea Exploration
I’m disappointed that I had to work today so can only do one oolong; Western steep to reduce caffeine at 5 PM. I’m doing Zen Tea Dancong. Yesterday was my only Yellow tea, from What-Cha, and two really good young puerhs. Green was the only disappointment. I don’t drink green very often and one of my teas was 3 years old and so oxidized that I just threw out the rest. The others were long in the tooth but drinkable. Tomorrow is another work day so I won’t be able to do justice to the black tea selection.
Arg, I’m so picky with green tea. I can hardly keep it longer than a year without tossing it. I feel the bitterness creeping up and the rest of the flavors diminish. It is a type I don’t drink often too, mostly b/c I find it harder to store and I guess I only like to buy it when it’s in season soon after harvest.
That’s right. And it snowballs: you have a bunch of old tea that’s kind of meh, so you just avoid green, but you can’t buy more since you’ve got 10 ounces lying around. Before you know it, most of it is 0ver 2 years old.
Haha ain’t that the truth? Do you store your green tea in refrigeration? I’ve read that a lot of people store it that way to help preserve its freshness. I have been experimenting with that for about a year now and I do find that it adds months to the shelf-life if you do. You just have to be really sure that your bag clips or containers are airtight to avoid moisture and food smells, and let it come to room temperature before opening so that you don’t attract moisture to it from the temperature difference. It has kept my unused green teas fresher for surprisingly longer periods than storing them in the closet with all my other teas, though I still tend to cut the limit off at somewhere between 6 months to a year before it’s too “meh” for me to continue with it. I’ve tried to change my buying strategy to only buying an ounce at a time and not holding back on drinking it often as soon as I get it.
It’s hard enough to wrangle shelf space from my wife. I’m not even going to try to get refrigerator space.
This has been a lot of fun. Today was the first time this year the temperature in the Boston area was in teh 90s, so I had my favorite iced tea: Art of Tea’s Summer rain. Now I’m drinking Harney’s Florence, and tonight I’ll have my second-favorite iced tea: Harney’s (decaf) Paris.
Thank you to everyone who joined this week-long activity. I will leave the post up and encourage anyone new who sees it and thinks it is interesting to join in in the future and add your thoughts to ours. Really you can do this any week you choose to.
It’s been fun. I’ll check back periodically to catch up on everyone’s comments!
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