Golden Snail Yunnan Black Tea

This is a well-reviewed tea so I will not go into specific details: they have been exhaustively captured already. Just my general observations.

This is the best Golden Snail/ Black Bi Luo Chun I have tried so far: intense aroma, strong, fresh and complex taste without any hint of bitterness. It resteeps well. Also, this tea is well-suited for both gaiwan and Western preparations and in general rewards those experimenting with times, temperatures and amounts.

Yay, one with lots of good reviews already. lol

Little cute snail looking things, smelled of bread, chocolate, and malt. After the rinse, they began opening up, it had a little stonefruit aroma, toast, malt and chocolate, sweetness aroma. It’s a very smooth, comforting (comforting is a big thing to me I guess lol), a tasty cup of tea. I can really get into black tea if they were all this good. I like to repeat myself so I’ll just say again that all my life I was a matcha and sencha type of girl until the last 6 months. Throughout all the infusions, I didn’t detect any bitterness nor astringency… Just creaminess, a buttery feeling, a thick mouthfeel and a great aftertaste of cocoa, toasted bread, some raisins and molasses.

5g, 205°F, 110ml, rinse, 8 steeps: 10s, 15s, 20s, 25s, 30s, 35s, 40s, 45s

Made a pot of this yesterday in my new big 4-cup (I think) teapot I got at the Queen Mary Tea Emporium when I was there last week. Very pretty, pansies, very british porcelain.

This is just as good as it has always been. Yunnan Gold teas are my favourite type of black tea and this one is no exception and is in fact a good exemplar. The dry leaf is so nice and pretty little curls and steeped, it’s delicious. I’m going to resteep the leaves today and have another pot. Mmm.

I had a delightfully puzzling experience with steeping my Golden Snails sample in a gaiwan. Compared to my Oolong drinking friends I’m almost blind to bitterness or astringency, but I had a hard time preventing this tea from hitting too hard.

Got a tip that could help me tailor my steeping? Take a look at my technique and let me know!

Setup
Water: In house R/O
Kettle: Electric Cusine-art Tea w/ temp control
Gaiwan: 100 ml

Steeping Technique
Tea weight: ~7g
Temp: Tried 190, 200, and Boiling
Time: Flash Steep (pour it in, pour it out asap)

Notes
+1st steep @boiling: Super sweet, but balanced by a flash of green-tea-like astringency and some umami qualities (brothy?) Loved this steeping!

+Steepings 1-8 had a sweetness detectable by the tip of the tongue. Steeping 9 and 10 did not.

+Steepings 2-9 had an intense, lingering combo of black-tea bitterness and green tea astringency that distracted me. Temps 190 and 200 made little difference in fixing the problem.

+Discovery: the practiced sipping technique of a person suffering from too much attention to detail took the spotlight off the bitterness. Aerate enough and coat the tongue from tip to tail and the balance starts to come back.

Edit

Tried 5 grams instead of 7 and this made all the difference in the world. It has a tiny bit of astringency but in perfect balance with the rest of the tea. Got this idea from the TeaDB youtube channel. One of the guys will, instead of lowering temp, drop the leaf to water ratio.

Savoring this lovely tea this morning and now pondering the need to get some Golden Earl from Brenden.

I was excited to try this tea, while it tasted good, it did not live up to the hype around it. I liked it, didn’t love it.

Very cool looking leaf – tight little spirals of gold. I did not use a gaiwan, brewing it western style (Bad girl, Sakura!) for the 5 minutes suggested. I’m getting a bit of earthy cocoa, and wish I could detect more than a hint of honey. I’m searching for it, and it’s there, just not as apparent as I hoped for. Really enjoyable tea, though, and I’m finding it comforting, a break from my all-too-usual flavored teas. I tend to not be able to get to a second infusion in one sitting, so what I’ve been doing with the second infusion is to take the brew and chill it for iced tea later. SO GOOD. I love it iced this way, and at least I get a second brewing out of it. I have to say, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the various WP teas I’ve been trying. I’m sticking with blacks, as that’s my preference, and I’m really pleased, overall. Good stuff.

this tea smells great, tastes great too. it smells of coco and malt in a compost kind of way.. not a bad thing. it tastes like it smells imo. it yeilds a nice reddish color. its not as thick as i would like in the mouthfeel. ive had this tea for a while, drank it once or twice in the past, now i review. theres a noticeable watery, slightly acidic dimention to this one. i dont remember this tea being like this in the past.. still good but maybe my temp shouldnt be 90C, idk.

i just steeped it again for less time and that undernote is less pronounced. this is the third steep. i used 6g for a 130ml pot. its a good black, would probably buy again, or something similar.

i like wp’s jabberwocky more though.

-nycoma

I first had this about one year ago, and it blew me away from the start. The burst of a very vibrant, sweet-ish scent I could sit and inhale for an hour, and the combination of malty and honeyed flavors (to my taste buds – I am a fairly novice tea drinker) made this an instant favorite, and the one I choose when wanting to kill a good amount of time relaxing with a cuppa.

Over the next year, I tried many other Yunnans and blacks, thinking that I might find something comparable to the Golden Snail. So far, nothing even comes close. This tea is otherworldly, smooth and so layered. Stands up to repeated steeps, too.

Along with Earl Gold and Imperial Gold Buds, this tea has solidified Whispering Pines as my ultimate go-to for spectacular teas. Brenden is on to something really special, and I am happy to be able to experience it. Peerless.

Okay, I’m finally back on Steepster after a nearly week-long absence. It’s not that I haven’t been drinking tea during this time, I just haven’t been posting reviews. Specifically, I have been working my way through larger amounts of several teas I have had for some time, one of which was this Yunnan black tea.

I prepared this tea gongfu style. After a very quick rinse to open the tea up, I steeped 6 grams of loose tea leaves in 4 ounces of 205 F water for 5 seconds. This infusion was followed by 14 subsequent infusions. Steep times for these infusions were as follows: 7 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 30 seconds, 40 seconds, 50 seconds, 1 minute, 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, and 5 minutes.

Prior to the rinse, the dry tea leaves emitted pleasant aromas of chocolate, malt, and wood. After the rinse, I detected aromas of brown sugar, toast, honey, sweet potato, and molasses as well. The first infusion produced a similar aroma with hints of butter, fruit, and vanilla bean. In the mouth, I picked up on gentle notes of dark chocolate, molasses, butter, wood, toast, malt, and brown sugar underscored by subtle hints of earth, honey, sweet potato, and fruit. Subsequent infusions brought out impressions of vanilla bean, baked bread, apricot, orange, maple syrup, honey, smoke, raisin, sweet potato, moist earth, and plum. The later infusions were smooth, offering hints of minerals, bread, toast, smoke, and malt underpinned by a slight honey and fruit sweetness.

I found this to be an extremely nice Yunnan black tea. It was a little more mellow than anticipated, but it had a tremendous amount to offer. It was definitely on par with the other Chinese black teas I have tried from Whispering Pines Tea Company. Of those I have tried so far, this one might be my favorite.