The same is true for coffee: coffee beans keep quality for much longer than grounds. If you combine those two facts (intact leaves last longer and are usually only found in loose leaf tea), it’s clear that tea leaves tend to retain flavor better than tea bags. Of course, some tea bags (usually those pyramid-shaped ones) include whole and broken leaves, but those are the minority. While containers of loose leaf tea contain mostly whole and broken leaves, tea bags usually are filled with fannings and dust. That brings us to the difference between tea bags and loose leaf tea. The first two are much larger than the latter two.Īs I mentioned in the previous section, the more intact the leaves, the longer they last. Tea leaves can be separated into whole leaves, broken leaves, fannings (small pieces of leaves), and dust. You don’t need to run around with a reference card, though.Īll you need to remember is that tea should taste fine for at least a couple of months past its date, and know how to tell if yours is fresh or not (more on that later). For example, black teas come with a shelf life of about 12 to 24 months, while green and white teas have much shorter ones between 9 to 12 months. Those differences between categories are also noticeable if you compare dates on various teas in the supermarket. And whether those leaves end up as black, green, white, or oolong tea depends on the processing after harvest. In case you didn’t know, all popular teas come from one plant: Camellia sinensis. That’s because the more fermented and intact the leaves, the longer they retain flavor. Whiteīlack teas tend to keep fresh for longer than white and green teas, and oolong is somewhere in between. Or the higher quality tea you should buy, as that too plays a role in the equation. In short, the more important the taste of your tea is to you, the sooner you should use it. And loose leaf tea typically keeps its flavor for longer than tea bags, because the surface area of the leaves is smaller.īesides that, the actual shelf life also heavily depends on personal preferences. Tea usually retains quality for at least 2 to 4 months past the date on the label, assuming that you store it properly.
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