Any advice on how to store black tea for aging?

I’d be interested to hear as well since the subject of aged black teas just doesn’t come up much. I can’t imagine air contact or humidity could potentially help such teas, so I’m thinking quite well sealed. It’s more interesting to consider how they might change since aged pu’er, oolong, and white tea are discussed, and I’ve even ran across the idea of aging green tea (although that runs counter to standard conventions), but not black. A friend kept a Nepal black (orange, variation of black) around for a few years based on having kilos of it to begin with and it just faded a bit.

I think it’s better to keep our teas away from: direct sunlight, high temperature, moisture, air and odor.

Here are some tips for back tea storage, hope it may helps you:

1. Store them in iron tins
2. Store them in vacuum flask
3. Keep it in airtight ceramics Jar
4. An airtight container

I use a vacuum method where I put the tea in a jar without a lid, then put that jar in a food saver bag and then vacuum seal it.

It’ll still be better to store them in a dark, sealed container. They don’t age as sensitively as greens but they’re not the same as puers either.

I would imagine you can age them as oolongs age very well. And a black tea really isnt that far from a dark oolong.

I don’t think black tea ages very well.

This is sort of the interesting part of the question, isn’t it, if you take a Dian Hong, or Taiwanese black, or a better Ceylon or Assam, and set it aside for 5 to 10 years what changes occur? I’ll ask in another place too and see what turns up.

I forgot I ran across a reference to aging one particular type of black tea I reviewed not long ago (hard for me to keep track of what I’ve written; that idea was included there), for a sun-dried Yunnan Dian Hong. I’ll post the link and citation about it here. As far as storage details it sort of doesn’t say; I just assumed they meant well-sealed, with absolutely no air contact.

https://www.farmer-leaf.com/collections/yunnan-black-tea/products/jingmai-sun-dried-black

Sun-dried black teas are less impressive when they’re just out of the factory, but the main difference is they have more potential for aging well, just like Pu-erh tea. Their scents are totally natural, only the result of oxidation. The mouthfeel is more similar to Pu-erh tea, featuring thicker soup and some Huigan (sweet and fresh feeling in the throat). This tea will certainly please people who’re looking for unadulterated fragrances and want to drink their tea on the long run. You will see it evolve over the months, and we are confident it will remain attractive for three years or more.

an online contact in Taiwan with a deep knowledge of tea mentioned this: Here in Taiwan, we think that high mountain black teas actually taste better after eight months to a year and a half after production. It needs to rest and settle into its different components, aromas and “body”. Especially honey scented black tea.

Young black tea has a lot of aroma to offer but it’s not settled (hope that makes sense?).

I’ve not seen or heard of people purposefully aging black teas. It loses too much character after a few years. Although I have had 40 year old black tea brick tea (black tea powder pressed into mini-bricks). It was an experiment in Sunmoon lake area. It was nice, smooth and strong but not much aroma.

this is starting to drift off topic but someone mentioned more about that sun-dried tea type (just not the same version): https://www.teasenz.com/chinese-tea/sun-dried-black-tea.html

There is more discussion there, some other teas and ideas mentioned, but this already seems to run long for a chain of comments and I’ve already copied over the basics. This is in a Facebook group I helped found and am an admin for, by the way, International Tea Talk, so if that’s of interest people are welcome to sign up:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1647370545538088/permalink/1853917708216703/