Brewing / Storage
Light. Air. Heat. Moisture. Garlic.
The five things that kill a tin. Four of them are obvious. The fifth is the one most people forget — tea picks up smells from whatever it sits next to.
A good loose-leaf tea has a six-month window where it's at its best, a year where it's still very good, and an open-ended afterlife where it slowly becomes something flatter than it started. How fast it slides down that curve is almost entirely about how you store it. The leaf doesn't have a chemistry problem. The cupboard does.
Enemy one
Air.
Oxygen oxidizes the volatile compounds that give tea its top-notes — the floral in oolong, the muscatel in Darjeeling, the marine in sencha. A bag with a foil liner and a fold-over closure loses freshness in weeks. An airtight tin loses it in months. Decant from the shipping bag into a sealed double-lid tin the day it arrives.
Enemy two
Light.
UV breaks down the chlorophyll in green teas first — the bright vegetal note goes muddy, the colour shifts brown. Clear glass jars look beautiful on a shelf and ruin the tea inside them within a month. Opaque tin, opaque ceramic, opaque anything. If you can see the leaf through the container, the leaf can see the sun, and the sun is winning.
Enemy three
Heat.
Warm storage accelerates every other form of degradation. The shelf above the stove is the worst place in the kitchen for tea. The cabinet next to the fridge radiator is the second worst. A cool dry cupboard, ambient temperature, no direct sun. The pantry. The bookcase. Anywhere that isn't trying to cook the leaf at 50% intensity for years.
Enemy four
Moisture.
Dry leaf wants to stay dry. Humidity above 60% pushes it toward stale and, if sustained, toward mould. Don't store tea above the sink, near the kettle, or in a bathroom (you'd be surprised). Don't refrigerate most teas — pulling them in and out condenses water onto the leaf every time. The two exceptions: matcha (refrigerate sealed, then bring to room temp before opening) and very delicate Japanese greens.
Enemy five
The wrong neighbours.
This is the one most people miss. Tea is hygroscopic and aromatic — it absorbs moisture and ambient smell. A tin of jasmine stored next to an open garlic clove takes on garlic. A tin of Earl Grey stored in a spice cabinet picks up cumin. Even tightly sealed tins are not perfectly inert. Keep tea away from coffee, spices, cleaning products, and other tea varietals where cross-scent would be a disaster. Jasmine in its own jar. Lapsang Souchong in its own jar, ideally in a different room.
Shelf life by leaf
| Type | Peak window | Drinkable until |
|---|---|---|
| Green | 6 months | 1 year |
| Matcha (sealed) | 1 month opened | 2 months opened |
| White | 1 year | 2 years |
| Oolong (light) | 1 year | 2 years |
| Oolong (roasted) | 2 years | 5 years |
| Black | 2 years | 3 years |
| Pu-erh (sheng) | improves with age | decades |
| Pu-erh (shou) | stable | decades |
Pu-erh is the exception
Air, not the absence of it.
Almost everything in this guide is about isolating the leaf. Pu-erh wants the opposite. Sheng pu-erh cakes need a slow, gentle exchange with the air around them — that's how they age. Store cakes wrapped in their original paper, in a closet that breathes a little, away from strong smells. The famous Hong Kong storage was a humid warehouse; the famous Kunming storage is a dry closet. Either works. A vacuum-sealed pu-erh cake is a dead pu-erh cake.
House note
Buy less, more often. A small tin you finish in a month beats a stockpile you ration over a year. The leaf doesn't get better while it waits for you.