Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake Honeybush

Finally! I found this tea’s sweet spot, after brewing up not one, but two HUGE mugs of this earlier this evening. Slightly overleafed at 1.25 tsp/cup, 200F, and a longer-than-normal steep time made this utterly delicious. Still just a bit off on the peanut butter, however definitely taste the cheesecake and chocolate in there.

Sipdown!! (138)

The key to this tea is lower temperature and steeping for a long, long time. I tend to let this steep for as long as it takes for me to cook dinner and wash the pots/pans. That means it steeps for upwards of 15-20 minutes. There is a salty peanut butter flavor to this with a hint of cheesecake tang. It is good but definitely not the flavor I was expecting.

Ugg crappy day. Standing in lines at the Immigration office. Headachey and sore neck from jiu jitsu.

This is my first honeybush tea off 52 teas for me to buy, I’ve mostly bought blacks and greens and got rooibos/honeybush off trades.

STEEPED: Deep brown colour with smells of crumbly chocolate and peanuts. Mmmm. Bit of dark debris at the bottom of my cup that my Steeper didn’t pick up. I went 2tsp of PBCCH for an big cup of tea.

TASTE: HOLY CRAP

Okay okay. This tea tastes like a peanut butter cup but not as sweet. I get the smooth peanut taste with a hint of chocolate edging around the peanut flavor. The cheesecake twang is so there. The peanut sweet flavoring sticks to my mouth for a moment after each sip. The chocolate tastes kinda cookie like sometimes. Is it the honeybush doing that cookie taste?

Sweetened, HOLY COW!

Even more peanut buttery cup taste, smooth and cookie like. Cheesecake twang floats in and out. I think I like unsweetened more, but sweetened is good too.

COMMENTS: Wow, very very good! I’m kinda sad as I want an unlimited supply of this tea.

I actually ordered 1 more bag of this right now, despite logical thinking that 1 pouch should last me awhile. But there was only 2 left in stock. Whatever, it’s MIIINEEEEE! MINE! I’ve been looking for a great caffeine free tea, and this is it! I’m gonna make another cup.

Today was expensive…well worth it, but still… expensive.

I registered for classes for next semester. They say “you can’t put a price on a good education” but according to my university’s balance owing that’s not entirely true now is it? lol

I decided not to go too crazy with the Black Friday sales today, but I did indulge in one fun purchase. I’ve been keeping an eye on a couple of tea companies that I’ve never bought from and finally decided to place my very first order with Della Terra Teas. My Dad keeps asking me what I want for Christmas so I figured I’d place a tea order and pass some of it to him to give to me as a gift. Oddly enough, most of what I decided to buy wasn’t even part of the Black Friday sale. I wanted to get a little selection, so I bought a bunch of the try me packs. Looking back on it, I now wish I added one of the holiday packs, but I didn’t want to go too overboard on the tea order (I already have 52teas 12 days of teas on the way and really there seems to be deals on tea all the time).

I’m taking my hubby shopping tonight for his Christmas presents. He always wants cycling gear, and his favorite brand is having their annual warehouse sale, so I am prepared to get my Christmas shopping done for him tonight. Another name off my Christmas list – hooray!

Over the past few weeks I’ve been drinking this peanut butter cup honeybush over and over and over again…rarely logging it. I do this with the cinnamon roll honeybush also- I don’t know why.

I had put my name on a wait list for this tea a super long time ago. So when I got the email saying it was back in stock for Black Friday, I thought, I don’t really want that. Then I thought about it for a bit and if I put my name on the list I probably want it. And if I don’t get it now, then I will kick myself. So I ordered it. This one is also one of the higher rated 52 teas on steepster, so it must be pretty good. For some reason I thought this was a black tea, there is a black tea version of this, but this one is the honeybush version.

I have tried enough 52 teas to know that I do not like the honeybush base. It tastes so peppery to me.

The dry tea has the usual 52 teas alcohol smell, but there is a chocolate and nutty smell as well.

I brewed this up with 1 tsp and a few pieces of rock sugar. Initially when hot, right after steeping, I could only taste the super peppery honeybush. After about 5 minutes of cooling, it began to take on a chocolate taste. And after about another 2 minutes of cooling, there was definitely a peanutty taste. The peppery honeybush is still strong but there is still the chocolate and peanut taste with it. The peppery taste mellows a bit the more the tea cools. This one reminds of Kirkland peanut butter cups (Costco’s brand).

I think next time I brew this, I am going to use a bit more leaf and a bit more sweetener as well.

I thought I would try this again and steep for 7 minutes, but that only improved the flavour slightly. I guess I just want more peanut butter in it. But I have my matcha, so I’m happy!

Also, this is an easy sipdown! (152/201-with all incoming incl)

Well to finish the disappointing trifecta of a night, of course I taste nothing but honeybush in this tea.

I bought a set of 5 James Bond movies, used for like $30 on Amazon, THROUGH Amazon at that, not another seller. Here I am looking forward to watching Tomorrow Never Dies…and the menu is skipping. I take it out and clean it…only for it to not be able to read the disc completely.

I made popcorn to go with this and it tastes like stale olive oil. I JUST used this same olive oil days ago in cooking so what gives.

And then finally, this tea. I know, maybe it’s just in need of a bit more time, but I made an entire teapot for movie watching, and all I can taste is honeybush. I tried sweetening it, and it improved nothing. So I stuck the infuser basket back in. It steeped for a long time while I was busy making terrible popcorn.

I’m guessing maybe this bag was actually from a reblend and not from when it first came out? Didn’t bother to think of that. Well, in that case, I wish I had only made a cup first :/

I even tried putting the basket back in the tea pot and letting it sit for nearly 20 minutes more and there’s a little chocolatey taste now, but I will have to try again far later I think.

And now I’m going to go sulk some more.

So. Funny/possibly not so funny story. Last night I brewed up 9 cups of tea (yes, 9) and brought them upstairs. Six new 52teas, resteeps of Kamba Berry, Premium Taiwanese Assam, and the Premium Taiwanese Assam Upgrade. I tried all six of the new teas (so I thought), and didn’t drink the others. So, just now I went to finish everything off… and discovered that I had put one of the cups on a shelf that was hidden from view while lying in bed… and… it tasted like a rooibos. A fruity rooibos.

So. I’m about 99% certain that the tea I identified yesterday as PB Cup Honeybush was, in fact, a re-steep of the Premium Taiwanese Assam Upgrade. I mean, I should have known – it didn’t even taste rooibosy, just very plain. And now that I found this fruity-tasting rooibosy cup, I’m thinking that I misidentified Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Honeybush as well, and the tea I reviewed as SRPH was, in fact, PB Cup Honeybush. In which case, it was delicious!

So! My apologies for my temporary terrible rating of this one, as it was my own stupidity/tea brewing excess that caused the problem! I will clearly have to give this another shot later, and pay more attention to which cup I put it in. What I find somewhat amusing, though, is how I was able to convince myself that a peanut butter cup tea tasted like strawberry rhubarb pie. Also, I swear I was tasting the slightest bit of peanut in that assam. The powers of the mind, right? Yeesh.

ETA: Flavourless re-steep as well (the right tea this time). Ah well.

I forgot I had this in my cupboard, heh…

Anyway, I pulled it from my sample bags in the closet and moved it to my sample drawer in the kitchen so I can work on sipping it down. There’s no reason to keep hoarding a tea I forgot I even had, right? Right. So now there’s only one more cups worth of leaf left!

Try saying that five times fast: Leaf left. I had a hard enough time typing it, but saying it trips you up too…

This tastes decent enough; you get the honeybush, and a tang from the “cheesecake” and then this funny peanut/chocolate aftertaste. I guess I must have liked it a fair bit last time too – I rated it ‘80’.

When I saw this pop up on the 52Teas website, I knew I had to buy a pouch. It sounded like the perfect caffeine-free dessert tea. I don’t have any tea like this in my collection! It was just Halloween and I definitely had my fair share of peanut butter cups.

This tea is sweet, smooth and slightly creamy. I am disappointed that I don’t taste any bit of peanut, peanut butter or chocolate. Bummer. Isn’t that what this blend is all about? I taste mostly honeybush with some kind of strange flavoring. It doesn’t taste like cheesecake or peanut butter cups. I’ll still drink the rest of this pouch because it is sweet, but honestly, it really tastes nothing like its name. As a side note, this tea leaves a bunch of gross sediment at the bottom of the cup.