Aged Tangerine Peel & Gong Ting Ripe Pu-erh Tea Cake

Having been inspired by Roswell Strange’s review of a kombucha, I decided to experiment with this tangerine peel (elsewhere called “chen pi”) shou cake by adding crushed fennel seed and dried hibiscus flowers. And it worked out nicely! (I commented on Ros’ review at http://steepster.com/roswellstrange/posts/453924 )

I combined 5 grams of the ripe gong ting cake (that breaks apart easily and is nicely loaded with large chen pi chunks) with 1.25 grams of crumbled dry hibiscus flowers and a large pinch (~ 1/4 teaspoon) of crushed fennel seed from my spice rack, in a stainless steel infusion basket. While the alpine spring water was heating up to ~95°C, I rinsed the mixture under a stream of hot tap water for 10 sec. The first and second infusion were 10 sec. and 30 sec. The next four infusions (after a half-hour pause) were again in 95°C water and increased stepwise from 15 sec to 4 min., 8 oz each time.

First steeping was a bit fennel-forward, but still the tangerine and puer flavors were in command, with a refreshing tang from the hibiscus! I would have liked a stronger and sweeter tangerine element, but won’t fault the ripe pu’erh cake for being what it is! I wonder what might have been the impact of orange blossoms, an aroma I fancy, but don’t have on hand. The chenpi is decidedly not like bergamot, which I do enjoy (per my moniker here), and it might be nice to play with hibiscus and fennel in other Earl Grey teas.

As might be expected, all flavors declined gradually in steepings #2 – #6, but they remained balanced and only the hibiscus was barely noticeable in #6. Consequently, in the future I’ll stick with these component proportions, but brew Western style in a larger (1 quart or so) teapot for 3 minutes. Might be nice with a little sweetener when iced. Thanks, Ros, for the inspiration!

Thin, inky, flavorful liquid. The first few steeps are more earthy, with that sweet dirt shou flavor, later on the tangerine peel comes out more. Forgiving to steep, I think there’s lots of potential here to play around with different temperatures and ratios. Nice big pieces of tangerine peel too, which gives a more intense citrus flavor than some other cakes with chenpi.

I’ve been drinking this for the last few days and it helped me through the freezing cold weekend. I knew I wanted a cake as soon as I saw it go up on the YS site. I have so many of these tangerine teas now that I’m not sure why I needed another one but I did enjoy it. Out of seven tangerine/mandarin teas and a couple of others in other citrus fruits, White2Tea’s Mini O’Bitters has been the only one I haven’t loved.

It smells deliciously orangey both dry and wet. The cake seemed more tightly pressed than some I’ve poked at but the large pieces of tangerine peel make it easy to chip off chunks. I was kind of surprised by the size of the tangerine pieces. When I brew the whole tangerines stuffed with tea I usually break up the peel pretty small and White2Teas chenpi cakes have had tiny bits of peel but this tea has some big bits. Very orangey flavor. It’s not a subtle “use your imagination and maybe you’ll taste orange” tea. The tea flavor is there too but so much oranginess. It makes me happy. I gongfu-ed a few steeps and then went to a more western or grandpa type style because that was just easier while I worked on things. I found the spare filter for my Thé de Chine mug (recently cracked the one that came with it but had I’d saved the filter from another mug that tragically died after being knocked off the side of the bathtub…tea and bubble baths, try it but maybe don’t knock your mug on the floor) so I was was using that and it was easy to adjust the water amount for longer steeps. One of these days I’ll try a tangerine tea in yixing but I haven’t decided which teapot will be the designated citrus pot. I feel like I don’t use my yixing pots enough but I find them more of a pain than glass or porcelain.