Honeybush

Tea type
Honeybush Tea
Ingredients
Honeybush
Flavors
Sweet, Wood
Sold in
Loose Leaf, Sachet
Caffeine
Caffeine Free
Certification
Not available
Edit tea info Last updated by Michael
Average preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 5 min, 30 sec 9 oz / 268 ml

From Our Community

1 Image

3 Want it Want it

47 Own it Own it

  • +32

30 Tasting Notes View all

From Adagio Teas

Honeybush is a sibling of Rooibos, cultivated in South Africa’s Eastern Cape region. Its flowers smell of honey, earning this plant a sweet name. The taste of our honeybush tea is similar to that of rooibos, though arguably a little sweeter. It has a smooth, gentle roasted flavor and slightly fuller bodied than rooibos. Clean, refreshing finish and naturally caffeine-free.

Ingredients: Honeybush herbal infusion

Steeping Instructions: Steep at 212° for 5 minutes.

About Adagio Teas View company

Adagio Teas has become one of the most popular destinations for tea online. Its products are available online at www.adagio.com and in many gourmet and health food stores.

30 Tasting Notes

60
2238 tasting notes

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.

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 0 sec

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

323 tasting notes

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.

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 0 sec

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

80
892 tasting notes

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.

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

92
84 tasting 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.

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 5 min, 0 sec
Ricky

Last time I had Pu-erh before bed…. I didn’t pass out until four hours later. Worse idea ever. I tried making my own honeybush yesterday and it was the worse tasting thing in the world. I took some Rooibos and added some honey, maybe a tad too much. I took a sip and threw it out. I’m sad for the wasted honey =(

Kitch3ntools

i was deff wired for a while but when i finally went to bed i did fall asleep at a normal amount of time. losing honey is no fun! that reminds me we need more honey lol

Jillian

Honeybush actually goes really well with some actual honey, I’ve found.

Kitch3ntools

ill have to try that! the sample adagio sent me is jam packed with honeybush so i have plenty of tea to experiment :)

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

34
2036 tasting notes

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.

Preparation
Boiling 8 min or more
Angrboda

‘untea’. I like that. :)

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

65
371 tasting notes

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.

Preparation
180 °F / 82 °C 7 min, 0 sec
~lauren.

I don’t understand why that first employee said ‘2 hours later’ when she meant ‘2 hours later NEXT sunday’ ???? Might have saved you some time but then again, you did get some Rishi teas and your friend liked her loose tea and you got to pick up some more tea! A nice trade off!

Rabs

It took two employees to give me the misinformation. And according to the original email the class is at the time I thought it was. My friend thought that the staff (except for one we met during our second visit) seemed a bit snobby. I didn’t think as much, but I won’t allow anyone to make me feel inferior so it kinda bounces off me unless it’s blatant. I mentioned that I found them via Steepster and the guy kinda shrugged it off and said that they had looked into it and left it at that. I thought, wow, depending on how next Sunday goes they might be getting a really less than warm-n-fuzzy review on here. (they had also “misplaced” my online order for my first teapot – I contacted them a week after not hearing anything and they found the printout among a stack of papers. And they were out of the color I wanted). I really want to support a “local” small business, but they’re making it hard on me!

I was so excited to check out Whole Foods’ tea selection since I hadn’t been there since I’d gotten into teas. I was so sad that I didn’t have any way for me to look up teas on steepster while I was there – lol! My next online order is gonna be with Rishi anywho since they have the iced tea pitcher that I want to buy. It’s like I’m getting a preview! And it really was neat to experience a tea high with someone else. Okay, so there were a lot more bright spots to my day than I’d thought. :)

~lauren.

Good for you for finding the good in a day but I have to agree, that particular local business does not seem to want your business!

Shanti

Wow…that’s awfully rude of those employees. I’d be so angry that I wouldn’t even give them my patronage (and money) on Sunday.

Also, LOL at not being able to use Steepster while at Whole Foods….I actually browse the site on my phone while in the isle! But most of their teas is bagged but in jars (deceptive!) and not very well rated usually, so I rarely buy anything.

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

1812 tasting notes

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

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

77
117 tasting notes

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.

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 30 sec

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

76
180 tasting notes

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!

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 0 sec

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

5
41 tasting notes

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.

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 0 sec

Login or sign up to leave a comment.