Chocolate, Hazelnut & Strawberry Honeybush

My tea ball opened and dumped all the leaves in the cup, so I had to what I think is the term grandpa style it? I saw this tea was from five years ago, but it still tasted good! Doesn’t it sound great! It seemed a little weak at seven minutes, so I didn’t steep it twice, but I’m enjoying this cup!

Oh NO

I love this. I love it a lot. And there’s none left on the site. Being a honeybush, this is a one and done steep, which means that I will only likely get a handful of cups out of this. I’m not sure how many pouches I have (Really got to get on that spreadsheet!) but I will be so sad when I run out of this.

It tastes like if you took a ripe strawberry, dipped it in nutella, then drizzled honey overtop. Mind you, that is with a single splenda added, but it’s also pretty good unsweetened. But add that little bit of sugar and wow does this pop.

I need ten more packets of this. At least ten more. Maybe twenty. I want to drink this all the time.

AWESOME Tea!

This one smells and tastes so peppery for some reason. As it cools, the other flavor that appears is NUTS – very unmissable, unmistakable nuts, but the pepper flavor is quite strange and out of place. I don’t know what’s causing it. The nuttiness is fun, but I wish there were other flavors in there complementing it other than pepper.

I’m definitely getting the chocolate, strawberry, and hazelnut pretty distinctly, which is impressive. I just don’t think the combination is for me. The nuttiness seems to be combating with the chocolate, and the strawberry is just a whisper in the background.

I’m a bit behind in my advent teas, as this is today’s tea, and I haven’t done write-ups for the last two… but I’ve been working on sipdowns to keep my inventory under control and today I finished off the packets for Days 1-3 (plus the 2017 packet of Day 4). And obviously hording tea is a major problem for me, because I also had a packet of this tea from 2017 that was unopened… a 50g one. So ya… better work on that before breaking into the newer one. Hopefully it will be okay, but I do worry that the sunflower seeds may have soured, I know nuts and seeds can have the same issues as coconut (though aren’t quite as awful as coconut tends to be).

I made a two-cup pot with a generous teabag in it and left it steeping while giving the cat her after-work run-down. It’s a beautiful red color and smells divine; it smells very nutty, and I do get a very sweet chocolate-covered strawberry aroma as well. I love strawberries in Nutella and I definitely can get that from the smell. The flavor is also quite nice; the strawberry has a nice, juicy, berry quality, when many strawberry teas taste more like strawberry candy to me. There is a cocoa note, but it is more of a subtle dark chocolate that comes out toward the end of the sip and blends nicely with the nutty quality of the tea. I’m not sure if I taste hazelnut, exactly, but I definitely taste nuts, and chocolate, so I think because I eat so much Nutella my brain tends to go with hazelnut… but it has almost a lighter, peanut sort of quality, as well. It’s pleasant either way. I’m happy this tea has held up so wonderfully despite the age, and that I happen to have such a large bag because I am foreseeing many happy nighttime cups. It is simply lovely!

Sipdown (1072)!

Another 52Teas sipdown that I’m a bit sad about. This isn’t on the top of my “best teas of 52Teas” list but it’s still a really good tea and I’ve always been super impressed by how Anne is able to capture these three distinct flavours so perfectly in the cup. Plus, her honeybush base is delicious! This was nice and nutty, with more of the strawberry and hazelnut coming through, and ultimately very soothing and well balanced without too much overt sweetness.

I don’t think I ever really cared for this tea, and still don’t. There is a nuttiness to it, for sure, and maybe a brush with chocolate, but I’m not getting any strawberry at all. I believe it’s flavoured with cacao nibs, which IMO just don’t have the same punch that the shells do, which I wish were used for chocolate flavouring everywhere!

Despite not living up to its name, I don’t mind this tea, especially if I think of it as peanut butter honeybush, which is more how it comes off to me.

I was in my kitchen and noticed a plastic bag hung on one of the cabinet handles. “That’s odd. What could that be?” Some tea my friend Sara gave me in May, which I had misplaced.

You see, I am absent-minded, forgetful, a bit of a slob, and a pack rat. I knew that tea must be around somewhere; I would never throw out a bag without inspecting its contents.

So I chose this one first, because it sounds delicious.

It smells of strawberries and carob.

It tastes like strawberries, hazelnut, and a little like chocolate. I wish the chocolate were a bit stronger. But wow, this is a good combination. Do they make strawberry Nutella? Cause now I think it would be great on toast.

Admittedly, i never seem to really enjoy honeybush from 52 teas. Not sure what it is, but it rarely works for me. Happily though, this one seems to be doing something right. it’s more chocolate, strawberry with a hint of hazelnut for me…but thankfully i’m not getting that honeybush taste that is jarring. yep, i can get behind this one.

Last year I passed a few blends to friends and tea-pals after just sniffing them. This year, I’ve decided to at least try every tea in this year’s 12 Teas of Christmas box.

Honeybush AND sunflower seeds? Nope.

While I understand the use of sunflower seeds in a tea blend, I do think they have their own distinctive taste. So, instead of just contributing an ambiguous nutty flavor, they make the tea taste and smell like, well, sunflower seeds. The chocolate flavor is there but only just. I don’t really discern any hazelnut flavor, but my taste buds may be overwhelmed by the sunflower seeds. The strawberry is present at the tail end of every sip. Black, I don’t find it to be particularly sweet. It might’ve been sweeter had their been more strawberries and fewer sunflower seeds. A bit of raw sugar helped me finish my cuppa, but I won’t be finishing my sample bag.