When people drink teas, you often hear people talk about the collection issues with black tea. However, everyone has their own opinion on whether black tea can be treated as collection. Nevertheless, the black tea has a shelf life.
The quality guarantee period of black tea is not long. Pu-erh tea can be stored for a long time. The longer it stores, the better the smells are. However, black tea is different than the Pu-erh tea. Black tea can only be preserved for a certain time. The longer it stored, the flavor of tea will be lost, which will further affect the taste of the tea. It means normally the black tea does not have the collection value.
Then, how long is the shelf life of black tea. This is depending on the package of the black tea. Normally, canned black teas have a quality guarantee period of 2 years. The sealed bag of black tea is 1 to 2 years. Without package, the black tea can be stored for 18 months. If the tea is stored right, the shelf life can be relatively longer. No matter what, if you want to taste the most authentic flavor of black tea, you should better drink them during the quality guarantee period.
How to preserve tea?
No matter what, once you opened the tea, you have to store them correctly. In household, the most common seen method is use can or bag to store the black tea. Canned storage is widely used by many households because it is to operate. However, many people will overlook this detail that tea absorb odor easily. If the can itself has smell, then it will affect the quality of the tea leaves. So, in the future, you can put a little bit tea leaves in the can and let them absorb the odor completely.
Bag storage is relatively more complicated. However, the advantage is economic and practical. There is some requirement on the packaging back, which has to be bags that can be used for food purpose. Also, the density and the strength must be very high.
Since black tea is different than Pu-erh tea and some other tea types, which has less collection value. And they should not be stored for a long time. So, if you have high quality black tea at home, you should store them properly. And it is suggested that you should drink them all within the quality guarantee period.