Tea Bag Shelf Life?

Frugal Sunnie
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January 16, 20130 found this helpful

The answer depends on several things-how many bags are you trying to keep fresh at a time, what quality is the tea leaf blend, and how humid is your storage area.

I live in the UK and buy a FairTrade breakfast blend that comes in boxes of fifty bags per. I usually have around 500 bags in the house at a time; I keep 50 in a tin tea caddy (with a VERY tight lid) and the other boxes I open, place 200 tea bags into a vacuum bag.

Seal properly, use a permanent marker to write the date on the vacuum bag and keep in the store cupboard (pantry in the US) for as long as a couple of years-I recently found a vacuum bag that was about 20 months old and when I brewed a cup with one of the bags I found it tasted just as good as a 'fresh' bag.

I did the same thing when I lived in the US Deep South-I bought Twinnings English Breakfast blend there-but found there that humidity made a difference in 'shelf life'. I could store tea bags in the vacuum bags for at most a year before the taste weakened. I did try storing a vacuum bag in the freezer, oh ick did that tea taste awful after only two months in the freezer, WOW!

I also used Lusianne for iced tea, and had the same results. LOL, we don't drink much iced tea in the UK but we sure drank a lot of it when living in AL, FL, and NW GA!