Jin Pin Black Tea

From the Nanhu Mountain range, China.
In Chinese, Jin Pin means gold personality. The dry leaves do have a fun personality; they are small, thin brown threads mixed in with golden blonde threads that smell malty.
I brewed this tea Western style, tasting at every minute and steeped for a total of 3 minutes at 190F.
The wet leaves smell like baked brown peasant bread with a bit of citrus peel.
The liquor is a dark orange jewel color that smells like malt, honey, touch of cocoa.
The flavor is well balanced with a citrus note up front, a brown bread note, smoke, small cocoa, and a honey note on the nose more than the palette.
Overall, smoky tea with lots of interesting flavors supporting it. Golden personality indeed!!
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7/23/14
Brewed this Gong Fu style this morning. 190F water with short steeps—immediate rinse, 6-4-6-8-10
This tea is smoky. It seems more smoky Gong Fu style than when brewed Western. Still getting the other flavors that I did before but smoky is dominant this way today. Love Yezi teas!!

This is the second Jin Pin I’ve had and I’ve come to find that I am quite fond of these teas.

This tea has a strong roasted scent in the first steep before it settles down in the background. It has consistent tones of cocoa and butter toffee, and longan.

The initial steep had a fruity top note of longan and peaches with cocoa over roasted grain notes,and a butter toffee where the candy has been slightly overcooked giving a stronger browned butter note and a little bitterness. The tea has a soft and slightly powdery texture.

In later steeps the peach dissapears, leaving only longan, the cocoa transitions to milk chocolate than Ovaltine and a nutty roasted cashew type note appears. As well a malt note becomes apparent. I steeped it 4 times( 20, 35, 50, 90s).

Quite enjoyable. Special thanks to Dexter3657 for the sample!

Thank you Kat_Maria for sending this my way. I don’t usually reach for straight blacks but for some reason, this has been calling to me. So today I finally decided to brew up a cup and I am glad i did. This tea is delicious! It is malty with notes of chocolate and caramel. There is even a hint of honey. Amazing! I guess tastes really do change :)

I’m up early so figured I would dig into this sample from Yezi tea. I’m also a bit lacking in dexterity so I didn’t want to fool around with a gaiwan this morning.

I went for one initial steep via mug method for the first cup. First impressions are that this is lightly fruity with some gentle notes of malt. Very mellow, lacking in bitterness which is a plus for yours truly. It’s easy to sip on plain. I am still sleepy but feel like I notice something creamy in the aroma of this tea, perhaps it’s coconut, hmm.

Second steep I did for 3 minutes to see what other flavors I could coax out of it. It still seems very light and mild with gentle cocoa notes. Other people have mentioned a smoke note and I think I’m getting a bit of that here in the finish. Also still getting a kind of creaminess with this tea.

I’d prefer to drink something mild like this in the afternoon but overall I quite like it. It doesn’t need additions at all but takes a splash of soymilk fairly well. This tea is like an easy going friend.

Aaah, yet another wonderful tea from Yezi. Chinese black tea of gorgeous, golden-licked, swirly, needle-like leaves. It steeps into a dark ruby brew that is slightly more on the copper side than I am used to with Chinese black teas. It is also very clear and I wish I was having it in a mug not quite as tea-stained as the one I am using (the only mug that comes with an infuser that I own!).

The aroma at first made me think of how a forest ground smells when it is moist – slightly needle-piney, earthy and sap-sweet. Later on I am getting complex sweetness of maple and burnt sugar.

But the taste of it… So malty! Did I ever mention that I love malty beers, like stouts and porters? Well, the way this Jin Pin tastes reminds me of sweet maltiness of some of my favorite stouts. It never transfers to the chocolate side, it stays on the sweet syrup side, and the tiny astringency in the aftertaste adds to its complexity. There’s also earthiness that I detect, and that the aroma hinted at. Not really like pu-erh, the earthiness seems more elusive here. I think, in general, this tea is full of notes that are very elusive – but exquisite.

I hope to resteep the hell out of it before I leave for work today :D

Tea & Cards TTB #10
I had my eye on this one as soon as I opened the box, so I’m glad that I finally got a chance to try it out today. I brought this in my tea tumbler to school. I’m not sure why, but all the black teas I love smell potato-y (in a good way?) when I steep them in my tumbler. This tea really reminded me of a mellower, less chocolate-y Laoshan Black (Verdant). Because I love LB, I ended up loving this one, too! It resteeped pretty decently as well. I’m keeping this one on my wishlist to remind myself to order some when I finally reorder from Yezi.

This tea reminds me of a golden monkey black tea but not as sweet as the one I usually drink. It has a nice blend of cocoa and caramel flavoring combined with nice bit of smokiness. The smoke flavor is subtle and not overpowering at all, which is the way I prefer it. It has a good range of flavor and is an enjoyable cup of tea.