Botswana Honeybush

So I’ve been putting off this last Bayswater tea for a few months now. The sandalwood is an interesting ingredient, but not one that yells, “Pick me! Pick me!” as I peruse my herbal tea tin. I felt sorry for it today, and gave it some love.

This is a decent tea. A bit of orange. A bit of wood. Sandwood of course too. It’s mild, but at 1:30 AM, I think mild is ok.

Yep. This is ok.
(Steeped for 10 min as directed. Also, I made another herbal the same time as this as I didn’t want to wait 10+ min for tea!)

Another one from cavocorax I’m not sure how i feel about this one yet…and i totally didn’t pay attention to steeping time. It’s got a honeybush woodsy, spicy taste to it. I like the orange and sandalwood flavouring….yep this is an interesting one. Different, not bad…and something i’m going to play with a bit and see where i end up feeling about haha thanks cavo!

This one’s pretty mild, except for a spicy and subtly orange-sweet finish. It’s very mellow with warming qualities, so it will be easy to drink the rest of. I don’t think I’ll get this again, however. I’ll try steeping it for +15min next time to see if that yields more flavour.

Still glad I got the chance to try a sandalwood blend; I wasn’t aware that it’s sometimes used as a spice.

Because Cavocorax said she wanted more flavour when she had the tea, I steeped it for more like 20 minutes. Maybe longer.

The honeybush is quite strong, I think. I haven’t really had enough to determine what part of that is sandalwood and what part isn’t. The orange is very much in the background, but it came out a bit more with the addition of a tiny bit of honey.

I don’t know that I love this one, but it is pleasant enough. I think I’ll try it iced and cold steeped before I make a final decision.

It does smell good. The best worst idea would be to put it in a mesh bag and toss it in the bath…

Edit: I’m dumping this. I probably oversteeped it, and there’s a terrible sour aftertaste. :/

Something is weird with this tea…perhaps it is the sandalwood. It is definitely tasty, for a honeybush/rooibos tea, but I think I’ll stick with Orange Blossom and Alpine Punch from Davids, or Nut n Honeybush from Della Terra.

Thank you for sharing some of this Cavocorax! It turns out I’m not a big fan – the aroma from the packet of dry tea reminded me of medicinal rooibos (blech), and although thankfully that didn’t really translate into the flavour of the tea, I wasn’t really keen on the somewhat spiced orange flavour. It wasn’t bad, just not to my preferences. I did finish the travel mug, though.

ETA: I did not pay attention to the fact that there was sandalwood in this blend. That makes me think soap, and that could easily have been the strange flavour I couldn’t identify in the brewed cup (possibly the medicinal aroma, too… I don’t really know what sandalwood smells or tastes like).