Friends who love tea usually have a lot of tea at home.

Some friends will store tea in the refrigerator, and even buy a small refrigerator to store tea.

In fact, this is a misunderstanding. Whether the tea is kept in the refrigerator or not must be treated differently. The following is a detailed explanation for everyone: some common sense of storing tea in the refrigerator.

01 Tea suitable for storage in the refrigerator

Green tea and fresh oolong tea.

Among the six major teas, green tea is the most prone to spoilage and requires extra attention when storing.

You can put the tea leaves into the tea cans, seal them, and put them in the refrigerator with a sealed bag.

There are also dehumidifying teas in the fragrant Tieguanyin and Phoenix Dancong tea, which can be stored in the refrigerator.

02 Tea not suitable for storage in the refrigerator

Dark tea, Pu'er tea, traditional craft oolong tea, aged tea and white tea.

Pu'er tea, white tea, and dark tea pay attention to the drinking value of later aging.

Putting this kind of tea in the refrigerator, in addition to the moisture problem mentioned above, in the low temperature environment of the refrigerator, the activity of biological enzymes in the tea will also decrease, which will affect the efficiency of tea conversion.

Traditionally crafted Oolong teas, such as Wuyi Rock Tea, Phoenix Dancong, and Baking Tieguanyin, are already very stable after being roasted, and they don’t need to be stored in the refrigerator.

Due to its own aroma, jasmine tea will gradually become thinner if it is placed in the refrigerator.

But there is a special case here, that is Bitan Snow.

Bitan Piaoxue added jasmine in the later stage of the production process. Putting it in the refrigerator is good for the preservation of the fragrance of the flowers, but the fragrance will be lost after long-term storage.

03 Tea leaves stored in the refrigerator depending on the situation
Studies have shown that temperature has a great influence on the storage quality of broken black tea. When tea leaves are stored for one year at a lower temperature (0-5°C), the quality components change little, and the moisture content only increases by 2.11%.

In the tea leaves treated at room temperature, after one year of storage, the decrease in theaflavin content was 18 times higher than that in the low temperature treatment, while the increase in theafustin was 2.76 times higher.

This keeps the tea leaves stored at low temperature fresh and rich, while the tea soup stored at room temperature turns brown and the aroma becomes dull.

Because black tea is a fully fermented tea, it is allowed to store at room temperature in most cases, and it has little effect on the quality of tea.

Some black teas with higher quality and tender raw materials (such as Jin Junmei) usually have higher theaflavins content.

In the case of sealing, it can be stored for a period of time in a low temperature environment in the refrigerator, which is beneficial to slow down the browning speed of black tea.

04Precautions for storing tea in the refrigerator

In the home, if it is not a refrigerator dedicated to storing tea, it usually puts some other food.

And tea is extremely easy to smell, so when storing, be sure to seal the tea.

In the case of loose tea, it is recommended to put the tea in a clean, odorless airtight bag before storing it in the refrigerator.

If it is non-loose tea, it is recommended to check the tightness of the tea package first, and then put in a clean airtight bag, so as to avoid mixing the taste of the tea with other things.