Storehouse Tea: August 2014

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Tea and Expiration Dates

In a recent discussion about dating teas for freshness, which is not required by the FDA, a born on date or good till drink date, here are some of the discussion responses:

A tea grower:
"Even though FDA does not require expiration or best before date, we feel obliged to print the best before date on the product package. We want the customer to taste fresh and safe green tea."

"As per our green tea item which we have hundreds of them, some have 6 month period, others have 12 or 18 months for the best tasting period(best before date) after production. Loose leaf tends to last longer than powder item in terms of taste. We mention the period for each of the item"

"Expiration dates and tea have a complex relationship. For years U.S. retailers tossed out their old white tea but now people have discovered that white tea can age in the same way puerh does. The same goes for oolongs. For greens I do prefer to drink within a year of production but I have some that have been around quite a bit longer that are perfectly drinkable."

Tea retailer:

"That was my understanding that some teas age like a good wine. One problem is that consumers need to be educated about tea and age. With most things, fresh is better."

At Storehouse Tea we agree that the vast majority of teas are better when they are fresher like any organic food product. We purchase our teas with in the current picking season so we know we are purchasing a fresh product. Since we small batch hand blend our teas shortly after receiving them, we date our teas with the production date plus two years. While it won't harm you to drink teas after that date, it may or may not taste the way we intended it when we produced it. Storehouse Tea is serious about giving our customers the best experience possible with our teas. Even though the Food and Drug Agency doesn't require it, we date our teas because we feel it's important for our customers to know they are drinking the freshest, most delicious and potent tea possible.

Please navigate to www.storehousetea.com to explore all of our 50+ fresh teas, tea ware and accessories.

About Storehouse Tea

Dan and I are part of the 76 million baby boomers who want to stay healthy and live longer. Seven years ago, we took that old coffee maker off the counter and replaced it with a beautiful functional infuser teapot. At first we both missed the caffeine addiction buzz, but we didn’t miss the jittery, anxious feeling we got when we drank it and the headaches and crabbiness if we didn’t. My husband, Dan, feels his health and overall wellbeing has increased and he has more continuous energy. I believe coffee caused me repeated kidney stones, headaches, bloating and fibroids. Thank God I have none of that in my life anymore!

Dan and I have left our coffee addiction behind and have fully embraced tea drinking as a lifestyle choice, and what a difference it has made in our lives, we are blessed! So with this new passion we’ve decided to share our knowledge and enthusiasm for high quality Certified Organic and Fair Trade loose-leaf teas, making them available to as many people as possible by turning our passion into a business, Storehouse Tea Company.

The art of drinking tea has been around for 5,000 years. It’s amazing to us that there are still a lot of people who have never experienced drinking loose leaf tea. Most of the world drinks whole leaf tea, unfortunately we Americans invented the tea bag and since then we have been missing out of about 300% of all the great health benefits, flavor and freshness that whole leaf teas offer us. So with that being said all of our teas are sold loose, which means they are not in tea bags. We purchase the most current crop from that picking season, and purchase as much Fair Trade tea and ingredients as we can. Most of what America drinks is produced by big industry making it just another bland, dissipated, expired, useless cup of nothing! The teas we’re passionate about offering you are the best you’ll ever taste, small batch blending using fresh organic ingredients which are the healthiest for you! Our customers won’t go back to tea bags again!! We love our teas, and drink them every day, so do our three teenagers, we would not give you something that we don’t absolutely believe in, trust and love. Here is what you won’t find in Storehouse Organic Teas …no carbohydrates, no calories, no fats, no sugars, no artificial colorings, no preservatives, no pesticides.

We offer a beautiful selection of Organic loose leaf teas and beautiful, practical and functional infuser tea ware. Check out our website storehousetea.com and go under "All about Tea" tab to "Tea and Health" to find amazing studies that point to all the great properties that fresh loose leaf teas contain.

Our vision for Storehouse Tea Company is to be ethical and socially conscious as well. So providing Certified Organic tea was only the beginning. We feel our customers want to be sure that people in underdeveloped countries are being paid a reasonable price for their teas. Fair Trade Certification empowers farmers and farm workers to lift themselves out of poverty by investing in their farms and communities, protecting the environment, and developing the business skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace. Our suppliers purchase from Fair Trade producer groups as directly as possible, guaranteeing to pay above market prices, eliminating unnecessary middlemen and empowering farmers to develop the business capacity necessary to compete in the global marketplace. Harmful agrochemicals and GMOs are strictly prohibited in favor of environmentally sustainable farming methods that protect farmers’ health and preserve valuable ecosystems for future generations. We try to purchase as much Fair Trade tea as possible, so that we can give back to the world. We also feel connected to the Farms that have so diligently provided this amazing tea for us. We know it has not been sitting in some warehouse for years, we know exactly where it comes from, how it was grown and we know it was from the spring or fall crop that year. Fresh is the best!

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Storehouse Tea in the news ... Cleveland.com

Switch of beverages turns into full-time tea business for Chagrin Falls woman

Report Finds 34 Pesticides in Tea From India

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Tea and Expiration Dates

In a recent discussion about dating teas for freshness, which is not required by the FDA, a born on date or good till drink date, here are some of the discussion responses: