Honeybush

Backlog from Tuesday.

Last unopened Adagio sample bag, so I’m making progress here. I’ve got two tin sets and two fandom samplers to go after this, but they don’t count so much as they’re a bit special. There’s logic for you.

Anyway, I’m rather encouraged by the scent of this tea dry. It’s sweet, faintly woodsy, but not too harsh. There’s a vague honey/vanilla scent, also. Possibly this could be quite nice?

And it is. It’s very mild, delicately sweet and woodsy in equal measure. It’s very easy to drink, and it makes a change from some of the heavily flavoured blends I’ve been drinking recently. I don’t often choose plain honeybush, but this will make a pleasant addition to my evening rotation for a little while. It hasn’t got bells and whistles, but it’s soothing and comforting. Sometimes, that’s enough.

Had this tonight after not having it for awhile – it tasted kind of like wood to me, and it wasn’t especially appetizing. But today I was sort of craving a bland wood-y taste, so I made a cup of this.

It tastes totally differently from what I remember.

There’s still that sweetwood taste… but it’s somehow foregrounded by something I can’t name. It was a bit sour somehow and kind of vinegary, but there was a weird juiciness to it that almost reminded me of cucumber.

WEIRD.

Trying to finish off some of my older teas. It’s sweet and has a lovely flavor. It’s woodsy, sweet, and has light honey notes.

so i open my sample tin and all i can think is “tiny wood chips” lol. my sleep schedual is all crazy because of my sprained ankle and me laying on the couch bumming it all day (seance saturday the 2nd) i wanted something non caffinated because im wired from Ricky’s pu-erh tuo cha he sent me. holy strong lol but earthy.

on to the honeybush well the dry leaves? chips? gah what do i call it? they smelt woody and sweet with a somewhat fruity back note but almost non existent so poured some of it into a paper filter tossed it in one of the mugs i hate (there boring and not fun like all my others) poured the hot water in and watched the water turn burgundy! the tea itself smells the same as the chippies (thats what ive decided to call them) but it tastes much sweeter than i expected with such a woody smell. the first flavor i get is the woody then as it sits on my tounge i get sweet almost a creamy/sugary/honey sweetness and after i swallow it leaves a fruity taste :) i only added 1/2 a teaspoon of sugar to bring that middle flavor out a bit and it helped to amplify the sweetness and the fruityness but still keeping that woody flavor…i think i like the woody taste :)

the steep time asked for 7mins but 1- i couldn’t wait that long. and 2- i thought i used too much in the paper filter so i was afraid it would be bitter.

Hmmm. I thought I’d written a note on this one, but maybe not. Anyway, I’m drinking the last of the tiny tin sampler tonight because… I don’t have a good reason. Turning over a new health leaf perhaps? (How many times have I said that?) I did work out today and had some tilapia and couscous for dinner, and there’s no Diet Coke within reach so it seem like the right thing to do.

In any case, as is probably obvious from some of my more recent tasting notes, I have become an unfan of untea. I’m drinking this one only because some of the fruity flavor samples were better as honeybush goes, and there wasn’t much left in the tin so I could wave goodbye to another tiny bit of house clutter.

Honeybush is somewhat more tolerable to me than rooibos because of the (duh) honey aspect, but it still has that woody thing going on that makes me feel like I’m inhaling the cedar chips from the bottom of a hamster cage. It’s best and highest use, as far as I am concerned, is to temper the sour and bitter in blends that have a high citrus or hibiscus quotient.

Tonight, however, it is serving another purpose. It’s making me feel virtuous, which can only be a good thing. It’s not a bad honeybush if you like honeybush, but as I don’t, for me it was just part of a misplaced buying frenzy a while back and I’m not sorry to see it go.

Blues Brothers + this tea = the saving graces of this crappy day.*

So this is what plain Honeybush tastes like! As I suspected this is that “lotioney” taste that’s been part of the flavored versions of this tea. That lotion taste isn’t bad…it’s just different. I’m also having trouble with this note since I drank 6 steeps of a Jade Oolong that I picked up today at a tea shop that shall remain nameless for now. I feel like that oolong actually steeped itself into my tongue – is that even possible? It seems that l’m still tasting the oolong while drinking this. So I plan on drinking this again in the near future when not under the oonfluence. NE

*Here’s the summary of my crap day: I drove an hour to my closest tea shop to go to a green tea tasting class with a friend. This was my first visit there. After being told by employees that the class was actually 2 hours later we went to Whole Foods (bought a couple of Rishi teas!), and then returned to the shop. Um, yeah, the class is actually next Sunday. ::facepalm:: That last part was my bad – I got my dates mixed up. My friend can’t make it next week and they said that they won’t do a class if it ends up just being me. ::sigh:: We shall see. The other saving grace is that my friend experienced her first loose leaf tea today (an oolong) and LOVED it. So, I picked up 2oz of the oolong and a sample of their Lapsang Souchon and came back home.

I seem to be on a huge rooibos/honeybush kick over the past couple of days.

I think I’m going to retire this one to the back of the cabinet for a while. The woody taste was interesting when I first started drinking honeybush, but the novelty has worn off and the roughness of it is getting to me.

This is my first unflavored honeybush, and I think I like it! Bear with me as I do my best to describe this taste that I’ve never had before.

Piping hot, it isn’t overly sweet, and the sweetness that is there tastes more like raw honey than than the “Eww! Straight-up sugar water” taste of a recently-tried flavored honeybush.

As it cools a tiny bit (but certainly still hot), the flavor seems a bit more complex. I get that slight “woodiness” that others have written about, with a tiny touch of sweetness at the back of my throat. Post-sip, it leaves a sort of juicy flavor that I really can’t describe.

But my favorite thing about this cup is the way it smells. I didn’t notice much fragrance in the dry leaves, but now that it’s steeped, my mug smells sweet & sour and like just ever-so-lightly rained-on shaved wood bedding/chips… but in a very good way! It’s a pretty awesome and comforting scent.

As soon as this cup is empty, I’m going try mixing some with Dewy Cherry to see if I can get a sweet, tart, and mild woodsy brew. WIll post tasting notes on how it turns out!

I don’t think honeybush or rooibos teas are my thing. They all seem to taste like a mix of old tree bark and dirt.