30 days later, I cracked open a fliptop and poured a glass. It's mellowed a bit, but still isn't great. It's not bad exactly, but it still isn't something I would drink readily. A few nights ago I picked up a spare Brita pitcher complete with charcoal filter in the hopes I could pull out some of the sour taste. Yeah, that just wasted $25 and an hour or so pouring the stuff through. I have 9 liters of the stuff laying around so I figured it would be a fun time to run a few experiments, strictly for scientific purposes. It really had nothing to do with me bored in the kitchen earlier. At least, that's the story I'll stick with.
I've been having fun lately making small batches of meads and ciders. So what little bit of knowledge of homebrewing has increased tremendously over the last few months. But I'm still very much a novice. As such, I turn to the world wide web for inspiration and recipes. Time and time again I found mead and cider recipes asking for black tea (as a source of tannins), or jasmine tea, or any of a long list of readily available tea leaves. Tonight's experiment would begin with black tea, and pu-ehr tea.
Into one bottle (they are 1-liter fliptops from Ikea and run about $2 each, I've stocked up heavily on them over the last month or two and highly recommend them) went 4 teabags worth of black tea. Into the second bottle went an equivalent portion of pu-ehr tea. Where I decided that 4 teabags worth would be a good starting point? I just guessed. But as long as I say it's in the name of science, I get a few points for creativity right?
On the left is the "clear" sake without any tea added. In the center is the black tea. And on the right is the pu-ehr tea. I'll give it a few weeks and see if anything is worthy of note.
