Storing tea?

I store all of mine in the retail packaging.  Most of my tea, and all of my Chinese tea, is from TeaHong, which uses some nice foil-lined bags along with Mylar bags in cardboard tubes.  Seems to do the trick.

The rest of my tea is from Den’s, which comes in a ziplock style bag: 

https://www.denstea.com/images/Powdered-Sencha30g.jpg

The one Pu’er cake I’ve had I just left in the tissue paper.

Here’s a good article:  https://www.teaguardian.com/how-to-make-tea/tea-storage-container.html#.Ucx3r9jLsko

M.

When I began drinking good tea, I used only good pewter tea caddies, like Royal Selangor, which is produced in our neighbor Malaysia, the best pewter in the world:

They really look very nice. I bought one last time I was in Hong Kong, but since I have so many different teas I don’t really use it much. Like MEversbergII, I just keep mine in the retail packages. Tea Hong’s are really nice because they are thick and strong sealed paper bags with aluminum lining. I use them to keep my dried herbs and the scents and flavors keep much better in them than my old glass jars.

I agree the retail package should be the most convenient way of storing tea. If it is good for holding the tea in the shop until someone buys it, it should also be good enough to store tea in my home. However, some brands do not use good quality packaging. A lot of the aluminum packs are only plastic with silver color. This is not good for keep good quality of tea. I agree Tea Hong packaging is very good. It is thick paper and real aluminum inside. 

I also like having my own personal tea caddies so they can be displayed in my little tea cabinet together with my tea accessaries. I also have two small metal ones for bringing tea to work. One from Royal Selangor and a stainless steel one from a Shanghai teashop which name I forgot. 

Caddies do have a certain mystique to them, I’ll admit.

I use Co2 for preserving all my dried herbs and anything i dont want oxidation. Its an inert gas that heavier than air. I used to home brew my own beer,and thats where i got the bottle of gas. You can get it cheap enough on ebay. Depending where you are,its failry cheap. $100 per year. you hardly use any gas for Tea or herbs. On the bottle,there is “tap” that you use to attach a thin plastic pipe. I use one thats 300mm long. I then put the tube all the way to the bottom of whatever bag or glass bottle you use. Turn on the “tap” just so you hear a slight hiss. I usually wait 1 minute,then turn it of. If you have to fast a rate of gas,you cause lots of turbulence. Go slow and it works best. Ive noticed a big differance to freshness and when i dry 2 kilos of green tea leaves,Im going to use this idea. 

I am not sure CO2 good for packing tea. I saw some nitrogen pack before here in Japan but people use mostly refrigeration now, only for high price tea, of course. They used to put a little pack of oxygen absorber in the pack in most tea but not many brands doing this now.

Hokusai ,Co2 is an inert gas used even on grain crops to preserve and even kill insects. Being inert it will not damage tea.

Nitrogen is an inert gas but maybe CO2 not so inert. It is the gas that most plants use in photosynthesis. Although tea is a made product, I heard somewhere before that there may still be living enzymes in it. That is why I am not sure if CO2 is a good packing gas. I still need find out why nitrogen is not used in packing tea as some brands in Japan did before. There must be some reason.