Lemon Cream Cheese Danish Honeybush

(52teas (Anne) 2022: 50)

Well, I just ate a bunch of Hershey Kisses so probably not the ideal time to be tasting this tea, but I had a sip earlier too and was pretty meh about it. I guess it’s vaguely citrussy but that’s about it. I’m starting to wonder if flavoured honeybush just doesn’t retain flavours well? It’s 1.5 years old, which in the context of my tea stash, is very fresh, but I seem to have this issue with a lot of honeybush/rooibos teas that are a bit older. Hard to say. Anyhow, it’s alright, but I really feel like lemon cream cheese should be much more flavourful!

Also, wow, 50 52teas and January isn’t even over yet; at this pace I should manage to sample my whole stash by what, June? Out of curiousity, here are some stats on my spreadsheet…

This month, there were 303 52teas entries on my spreadsheet, which separately lists reblends, but combines pouches of tea from the same blending (or, time period of reblending, I don’t know if Anne blends a tea multiple times to fulfill orders!) 6 of these teas are MIA, which either means misplaced, sipped down but not recorded, or possibly, lost to the work mouse of 2018 (although most teas lost then weren’t even recorded). Removing reblends (only keeping one entry for each tea) drops me to 281 unique teas, with 5 MIA. So, if I keep up this pace then sometime in June I should make it through the whole stash… which will of course also grow by 5 teas each month as well, ha.

Also to note, looks like I recorded 5 sipdowns of non-duplicated teas in 2021, so really have not been making a great deal of progress here. Oops.

After waffling a bit on which tea to use for the January sipdown prompt “a favorite pie” I decided to go with this. I like a lot of pies (who doesn’t?) but I’d probably put pumpkin (with ample vanilla ice cream), lemon meringue, key lime, and cheesecake (which my brain places in the “pie” category rather than the “cake” category) at the top of the list. So I grabbed this lemon/cream cheese tea since I figured that checked off lemon meringue or cheesecake vibes.

It has a lovely fresh lemony fragrance in the dry leaf, which comes off with a pleasant tanginess in the steeped cup. The flavor is very lemon-toward, and it’s very bright and juicy with some lemon zest pithiness. I love lemon myrtle and it is really shining in this tea; the more herbaceous flavor I get from lemongrass is present, but more muted. While I can smell the peppery note I often taste in honeybush, I’m not picking it up on the tongue this time. The base is coming off more with a mild sweet and slightly nutty flavor. As the tea cools, I get a little bit of a sweet cream note coming out, which sweetens the citrus a bit, but not enough to take the edges off the bright tanginess. I think the sweeter/cream elements probably needed to be a bit buffer here to simulate a “lemon cream cheese danish”, but since I personally prefer my citrus when it is on the tart side, I’m finding this a wholly enjoyable cup.

Samurai TTB #28

The name of this tea sounded absolutely delicious and I was excited that it was honeybush instead of rooibos. However, the flavor didn’t quite live up to expectations. I got a very pleasant, natural lemon taste, but no cream cheese or pastry that I could discern. Still an enjoyable cup of tea, but not as special as I hoped.

Another late night cuppa from earlier in the week. I was so, so tired when I steeped this that I didn’t much mind the nuances of the flavour – and so I think I missed some of the creaminess that I enjoyed immensely my first go round. However, the bright sweet lemon note was so tasty and I loved how much is popped off the rooibos base.

July 2020 Blend

This did not last long enough.

52Teas does delicious “Danish” flavoured teas, as well as lovely lemon flavours. Combined, the flavouring is sublime (best of both worlds)! The cream cheese is pretty vivid here too and it’s just wonderful. Yeah… this is hands down one of my favourite flavoured honeybush teas; it hits all of my sweet spots.