Storing your tea                             

Once fresh tea leaves are plucked they pass through a number of processing stages. One of these is drying which removes around 97% of the moisture from the leaf. This makes it shelf stable but also very keen to cosy up to anything that will enable it to re-hydrate - this is perfectly illustrated when you brew the leaf and it expands to around 3 times the size of the dry leaf.  

If you expose your dry leaves to moisture (e.g steam from a boiling kettle) or strong aromas in the air (e.g open spices in your pantry) they will happily absorb these elements.  The leaf is also degraded by light and heat.

So if you want your beautiful tea to stay in great condition then simply:

Store your tea in an airtight container (not glass), in a cool dark place away from strong aromas.

Each time you make a cuppa try and minimise the amount of time the container is open so that you are not exposing the leaf unnecessarily to moisture and scents in the surroundings.

• Moisture – Tea is generally manufactured and sealed at around 3% moisture content.  Normal kitchen temperatures and humidity lead to a moisture content of around 8%.  At this level tea begins to lose its freshness.
• Air – Tea left exposed to the air will also be exposed to the moisture and contaminants contained in the air.
• Heat –If dried tea is exposed to heat its flavour is flattened and dulled. Even worse prolonged exposure to heat above 85 degrees can result in mould.
• Light – Fading in the leaf can be caused by light.  Light is also a source of heat.

P.S  A use for your spent leaves:
While absorbing moisture and smell is a disadvantage in the storage of tea it offers a number of options for using your spent leaves around the house as a deodoriser.  Use your spent dried leaves for soaking up any fridge smells or popping into animal litter.  Rub wet steeped leaves into your hands or chopping boards to remove fish or onion/garlic smells.

Our packaging journey:

When we released Stir in 2008 we extensively researched packaging options for loose leaf tea.  By selling tea in a loose leaf style we had eliminated any of the plastic associated with individual teabags however we had to come up with a functional solution for the outer packaging.  Because of the nature of tea we needed a robust food safe material that provided a barrier for moisture, light and smells.  We decided on resealable foil bags.

We have just completed a review of our foil outer packaging to see if we could find an alternative product that is easily recycled.  We have considered a number of packaging options that look really environmentally friendly on the outside e.g rice paper bags, manila paper bags but these can be heavily coated with plastic on the inside, may offer a limited (or almost no) barrier to the air for the tea and may not be any friendlier to the earth.  None of these options have proved suitable.  

We are very open to any suggestions you may have on alternative packaging.  If you know of a food safe material that can offer an outstanding barrier to the air and light over the life of the tea then we would love to explore this. 

In the meantime here are some things we can suggest:

Start a Tea Club - For online customers we offer our larger size bags which are discounted.  So perhaps a bunch of friends can start a tea club and place one collective order for a large bag and then have a tea party to distribute the larger bag into their own smaller airtight containers.   

Bring your refillable container to the Remarkables Market - At Labour weekend the new season of the fantastic Saturday Remarkables Market will kick off. We are really thrilled to be part of it again and this year we will introduce a new service whereby customers can bring their own containers to the market one week (this might be our silver foil bag used multiple times) and we shall bring it back the following week filled with their favourite tea.