You are to store our green tea in a dark and dry place away from direct sunlight.
Where are you storing your Matcha during summer months?
Japanese green tea is made FRESH. I might have repeated myself but people still think they are like other teas and herbal teas. That is why the package is not transparent and has the zip so that humidity and odour will not affect the tea as much. Heat is also the cause of oxidation and in Malta it can get very hot in the kitchen cupboard during summer. You might have noticed that the colour of Matcha is not as green as when you first opened the package and that is a sign of oxidation.
Matcha green tea powder and Sencha green tea powder get oxidised more quickly than loose leaves so I store these two teas in the freezer.
Why freezer not fridge?
Because there are other odours in the fridge such as cheese, leftover food and etc. Matcha / Sencha and other Japanese green tea leaves absorb the odour and it will affect the taste and degrades the quality.
If you close the zip well, Matcha/Sencha will not become solid. They remain as powder. When you take Matcha/Sencha out of the freezer in a hot room, moisture will appear. So, be quick and when you take out the powder, put back into the freezer immediately. I am keeping a small amount of powder in a tea tin so I don’t need to take out the packet from the freezer every day.
The photo shows the solid Matcha like a hard rock. This happened only because I transferred the bag from freezer to fridge without closing the bag properly when I was defrosting freezer. Unfortunately moisture went inside the bag and got froze with moisture. I had the packet of Sencha green tea powder as well and did the same thing but it remained as powder since the zip was closed properly.
I keep the other teas (Genmaicha, Kariganecha, Sencha loose leaf) inside a big tin all together. I should put them in the freezer too but I was taking them for tea tasting, thus I thought that it was best to keep them in the same temperature, not moving from freezer to outside to stay for a few hours and back to freezing temperature.
What should you do if your Matcha green tea powder or Sencha Green Tea powder get solid like mine?
You can cut into small pieces with a knife and use it for porridge, overnight oats, or Ice-cream!
I didn’t try it but if you try to make Matcha latte or tea, I think some lumps will remain. What I did is I mixed with overnight oats. While mixing with oats, mylk and chia seeds, it dissolved and I didn’t notice any lumps.
I also added it to make Matcha Ice-cream. The photo of solid matcha in a large bowl is when I made Matcha Ice-cream. I left it for about 30 minutes to defrost in the dark (light degrades quality) then added it to fresh cream. I didn’t see any lumps and it became a rich Matcha flavoured Ice-cream and it was very very delicious (photo below).
