Harmful Smells vs. AirScapes
Hello fellow Steepsters,
I have been a lurker for a while, but have finally decided to come out of the shadows! I love tea and have been drinking it ravenously for a few years, and Im sure many of you are the same. I am currently in the process of opening up a small individual tea shop but I had question that I would love to get your input on.
The location for the setup is quite small, and it is in a neat little market area. However, there is a chinese food setup right next door, and although they do not cook the food directly there, the wafting smell from the 10+ dishes is quite (read:VERY) strong. In your experience, over a perhaps 1-2 month period, could that smell impart itself into the tea even in these super air-tight tins? Of course I will hopefully be rotating the stock out, but just incase some teas do not sell then I hope they dont end up smelling/tasting ‘off’.Here are the tins:http://www.planetarydesign.us/categories.html?cataction=airscape
Has anyone had any experience with these things?
Thanks for your time! I love this place!
- Glory
Disclaimer, I have no practical experience with this sort of setting but it has been a fun topic to kick around with friends who sell tea in different settings such as a mall, and near beauty salons and the like. And our general consensus usually goes as follows.
Tea is very susceptible to flavors and scents, hence why flavored teas are so prolific. Therefore anytime tea is exposed to the air its going to be vulnerable. This is also true of teas sealed in air tight containers, basically your trapping your defenseless tea with “bad” air.
I’ve never used the airscape tins however the design is intriguing and the concept brilliant. If you go this route I’d be eager to hear your impression of them. In theory at least they would remove the “bad” air from the tea and thereby only leaving the tea exposed while the tin was actually open.
That being said Chinese food along with other marketplace scents can be quite pungent, if you rotate your stock every month or two and sell manly in bulk rather than having to open the tins many times for individual cups I’d think you’d be fine. Much longer or more exposure than that and I’d be concerned with them developing a funkiness, and not a good one either.
Other options would be to order small tins, therefore having only a small amount of tea in them, to insure a quick turn-around on the tea stored in each tin, then having larger containers stored safely away in which to refill the small tins. This would help insure fresh tea, although would incur more expense and space needs.
You also have to figure that only the top layer of the tea is exposed to the air and since you are continually removing the top layer this will mean that the tainted tea will be removed fairly quickly revealing new layer of fresh tea.
My biggest concern would be that as a customer I enjoy smelling the tea that I am buying, and if the conflicting smells are really quite strong it could be somewhat damaging to your business.
Thats my my tuppence worth, perhaps someone else will have direct experience to draw from. However best wishes on your business venture.
Thanks for your time!
There are a few videos on Youtube about the Airscapes. I will definitely be purchasing the 64 oz ones and I will be sure to let you know about their performance! The plan is to store smaller amounts onsite and hopefully rotate stock as much as possible. The top layer of tea having the most potential to be tainted is a good one though, I tended to think that possibly the whole tin could be affected. Oh well, ill just make sure the customer really gets a good wiff of the tea when I open the can and maybe install some air filters if things get really smelly.
keep ’em coming!
Glory
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