LuckyMe said

Green oolong packaging

A few days ago, I received a 50g packet of Taiwanese high mountain oolong from a reputable vendor. It arrived in one of those brown ziploc pouches widely used for tea. As soon as I opened it and took a whiff, I could tell the tea was stale. Green oolongs typically have a sour, seaweed-ish flavor when they’ve lost freshness and that’s exactly what it smelled and tasted like. When I bought a sample of the same tea a few months back (near harvest time) it tasted great, but now it was totally flat.

Everyone knows TGY and green oolongs degrade rapidly as soon as they are exposed to air. Asian vendors understand this and almost every Taiwan-based shop I’ve ordered from vacuum seals their teas with oxygen absorbers to preserve freshness and flavor. Yet western vendors don’t always follow this practice and the result is the tea has less than optimal freshness at best or goes stale. It’s happened to me more than once now and is frustrating to say the least. I wonder why they don’t vacuum seal their oolongs? Is it because of the extra cost involved?

5 Replies
Rasseru said

seems a bit odd, vacuum sealers are really cheap! My friend bought one for food and it cost all of £20 or something, and bags are cheap too

AllanK said

I have heard that cheap vacuum sealers will crush the leaves, in my understanding it requires a professional vacuum sealer that will not crush the leaves.

LuckyMe said

Yeah I experimented with sealing tea using a FoodSaver once and it wasn’t pretty. It handles ball rolled oolongs okay but everything else gets crushed.
Professional vacuum sealers can control the vacuum pressure to prevent crushing delicate items.

I think western vendors don’t understand the importance of preserving freshness of certain teas and/or don’t want the added expense/hassle.

Rasseru said

ah! didnt know that. I wonder if there is a cheaper model that has pressure controls

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You contact the vendor? That is the kind of feedback you need to give. You don’t want to know a number of times I’ve complained about gone off matcha to vendors who send me stuff for my blog. You can’t just blanket all western vendors negligent, it very well could have been they don’t because most western buyers want resealable packages instead of vacuum bags. And the vacuum reseal bags are bulky and crappy in my experience.

More often than not, I tend to see stuff gets vac packed only if it is rolled or you are buying a full bag (and they sell by the bag, which is like 4 to 6oz).

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