Honeybush Caramel Tea

The honeybush is really lovely. It was hard to get that caramel flavor BUT I DID IT! I had the bag in there for about 15+ minutes! As it cooled in that time I could then pick up the caramel. It’s alright flavor-wise but takes a lot of TLC for the caramel!

Again thanks to Sonia for the sample! This one is a winner in my book. Really sweet and full of caramel flavor! Best part there was no need to add anything extra to this one. It really has it all! Plus it also happens to be caffeine free….which now makes me wish I had tried this one tonight before bed and not first on my list of teas to try today. Ah well live and learn. :)

Backlog:

I enjoyed this tisane. I like the combination of rooibos and honeybush – I think that these two herbs work very well together to bring out the best in each other. The caramel is sweet here but not overdone.

Here is my full-length review: http://sororiteasisters.com/2013/01/24/honeybush-caramel-tea-from-revolution-tea/

I’m a bit daunted by all the negative reviews this tea has – well at least I’m not going into this with ridiculously high expectations. The smell is quite nice, though more of a honey scent than caramel. The taste of the liquid isn’t anything remarkable, it’s basically like a blend of un-flavoured honeybush and rooibos. A thought occured to me that maybe this tea isn’t supposed to be flavoured at all and the ‘caramel’ in the title is just refering to the natural sweet flavour of the honeybush. Hmm…

*goes to look for an ingredients list *

When Revolution sent me some of their Earl Grey for the Battle of the Earl Greys, they included a whole passel of various single-servings, and I am having a lot of fun sampling through them. This sachet was in a little individually wrapped box. I couldn’t find a suggested steep time on the box or their website, so I went by the steep times other Steepsterites mentioned on here. I started at five minutes, then bumped it up to eight after a quick check-in.

The rooibos is definitely the primary note, although after increasing the steep I am now enjoying the hint of caramel. I did add some raw sugar, but only a teaspoon… and for me that’s showing a lot of restraint! On its own, this blend is so sweet that it doesn’t really need it.

After a couple of really positive first experiences with Revolution Tea, this was a bit of a letdown. Couldn’t coax any caramel out of it at all. Just honeybush.

I got a sampler of revolution teas from amazon and I decided to try this one first last night. First off the packing is adorable. Each tea bag has it’s own tiny little box which probably isn’t very environmentally friendly, but it does really add to the cute factor of the tea.

This tea mostly smells of roobios in the bag and when steeped it smells like roobios and molasses. I didn’t find this tea terrible like everyone else who rated it seems to of. To me the roobios overpowered the honeybush, but it tasted pretty standard. My only complaint would be that I tasted molasses instead of caramel, but it certainly wasn’t a bad cup of tea.

The cute little boxes are admittedly totally unnecessary- and disguise, I think, pretty mediocre tea. I think this might just be plain honeybush-and the caramel tacked onto the name to describe a characteristic of the honeybush itself. Mostly this tastes of pencil shavings- take the taste of rooibos and make it just a little dryer. Not very tasty at all, no sir.

Smells like rooibos with a hint of honey and burnt sugar. Tastes much sweeter than I expected (nothing added). The rooibos overpowers. For a blend that doesn’t even mention rooibos in the name, that’s not good. I think I’d rather have an actual caramel honeybush blend, sans rooibos. I can’t really identify the caramel, or rather I can’t tell where the honeybush ends and caramel begins. They are in there somewhere, sweetening things up. I’m getting a bit of a burnt flavor – not sure if it’s overdone caramel or the woodiness of the rooibos. sigh Three’s a crowd when it comes to this tea.

The date between my nose, taste buds and this tea was an unmitigated disaster. Firstly, the tea is over-packaged in a tea bag in a little box covered with cellophane and a rip cord. Secondly, the tea had no discernable flavor. Just a tad of sweet earthiness, but nothing I would call caramel. Aftertaste is nil.

The problem might be that the more loose tea I drink, the harder it is to find a tea-bag I like. And I know that I like huge bursts of flavor, the more so when I drink a non-caffeinated tea. But there are some Numi bagged teas that are worth-while. This tea might be perfectly delightful for someone with a much subtler sensibility than I have.