This is the somewhat delayed follow up post to my earlier experiment in jacking loose leaf shou Pu-erh with the flavour of Chinese mandarin peel – you can read that post here.

Just to recap – here the intention is to compare the method of steeping tea and fruit peel together as in the earlier post with tea that has been left to sit in a caddy with the fruit peel for a while in an attempt to get the fruity flavours into the tea before it hits the hot water.

The two weeks I intended to leave the tea somehow became just shy of four months – I’d quite forgotten what was in the small caddy lurking at the back of the tea overflow annex cupboard. Birthdays and holidays and what-have-you meant I’d taken my eye off the ball with this project, but still, no harm done. The gut feeling was that the longer this one sat there the better it might ultimately turn out to be.

Interested to see how, if at all, the tea had changed, I dropped a few teaspoons into a filter bag, minus the peel, and put the kettle on.

I have to say this method has so far left little to no mandarin flavour with the tea. It didn’t take anything away from the base tea – you were still left with a decent enough cup of shou Pu-erh, it just didn’t add anything extra.

My guess is that the tea will have to sit with the mandarin peel for much, much longer, years maybe, before it takes on any of the flavours of the fruit.

So, I guess my next move is to push the caddy deeper towards the back of the cupboard, and try again in about a year or so.

Watch this space, etc.