Honey Pear

Double honey pear honey honey. I’ve only ever had one pear tea before, and I hated it, so I was really kind of reluctant to try this one. In the end, I’m a bit torn about it, and not for the reasons I expected.

The dry leaves smell really strongly of pear. It’s a heady, fruity, very slightly floral (honey?) fragrance. Just lovely, lovely stuff. At this point, I was still really hesitant, but also a bit hopeful: surely something that smells soooo good couldn’t taste bad, right? The tea smells a lot more like honey and a lot less like pear. Given my prior experience, this was actually encouraging to me, alleviating some of my anxiety.

The first (unsweetened) sip was okay. The honey and pear were there (honey honey pear honey), but so were some bitterness and astringency, of which I’m not a fan. I added my sugar and settled in to enjoy my mug.

Happiness: this tea has replaced my awful pear tea experience. Sadness: Too much honey, not enough pear. This was what surprised me—I actually wanted more pear. Happiness: It’s a pretty pleasant tea, one that I would put in the dessert category. Sadness: the bitterness, while not present throughout, randomly pops up now and again; it’s jarring and mars an otherwise nice experience. Further sadness: this tea’s dry mouth factor is higher than I anticipated. Do not like.

The great thing that came out of this is that I am now willing and looking forward to trying more pear-flavoured teas.

I was really excited to try this one because I like honey in tea and I like pears (not in tea, but by themselves).

The dried leaves have a faint aroma of pear with an obvious scent of honey. The aroma, once brewed, is overwhelming. It smells like a lot of honey, then slightly of pear at the end. The taste of it (hot with no sugar or milk) is good; it is not overpowering like the aroma, it is pretty neutral honey tea with pear.

I think the aroma is so powerful because they probably used real honey in there, and when you put a decent amount of honey in anything hot, it is a very strong sweet scent which does not always come through in taste.

Overall, the tea was alright, not Golden Moon’s best.

Update:

So I’m getting to the end of this pot and its getting bitter, not like pears are bitter and honey certainly is not bitter. Hmm. Will not be resteeping.

GM Sampler #1. got this from the GM sampler on “Select” last week (or so) and this is the first out of the grab bag. I used the whole sample in a large mesh ball, boiling water and about 1 minute steeping. The dry leaves had a pearish smell, sort of like dried pears. The brew is light red/brown, plenty so given the short steeping time. The taste is, as I read someplace, all the flavor of honey without any of the sweet. Not something about which I am particularly enthusiastic. There is a definite pear flavor, again missing the sweetness that should accompany the flavor. Not quite a medicinal flavor, but it could go that way in a hurry. I’ll give this another try tomorrow, perhaps with some sugar, although I suspect that would make it worse, and as an iced tea…where I suspect it could be good.
Edit: Next day…I left the leaves overnight, intending to brew them again this morning to take as iced tea, to work. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it…you know that comment about the medicinal tincture? Well, they went there overnight in a BIG way. Chemical, medicinal, artificial in some way bad. Tossed them and thats that.

Reading the reviews about this had me pretty excited to try it, despite my trepidation — the last pear-flavored tea I tried was Teavana’s white pear tea, and it sort of chased me off.

I think the strong smell coming out of the brewed cup was a little bit frightening. It was cloying and heavy and dark, more like honey-stewed fruit than fresh pear. The taste is better than that, thankfully; it reminds me of the flavor of those straw-like plastic tubes of honey you can buy at certain candy stores, combined with an obvious pear flavor. That shouldn’t really be too daunting, but somehow it is. I’ll finish the cup, but I can’t picture myself craving this, out of all of the teas that I could select.

I do like pears and I certainly love honey, but maybe the pair of them together and hot are just not my bag of tea, so to speak. Maybe it’s just ‘hot pear’ that gets overwhelming. This one might redeem itself for me over ice, where the perfumey honey-sweetness is more expected. In fact, I’m guessing that’s almost true for a certainty, as the more the cup cools the sweeter the flavor gets, balancing out the stewed-fruit taste to replace it with a more alluring sugary aftertaste. I’m curious enough that I might try it that way. Maybe I should try Teavana’s white pear that way, too, since I haven’t even touched the stuff since that first ill-fated cup.

The leaves smell very intense, both fruit and honey smell. Tea smells similar which is actually really nice. Nice brown honey color.
Its sweetish with a strong honey taste. Not bad for a fruity thing. Pear is mixed quite well with honey.

For me this is pretty good…

After the last attempt with Imperial Oolong, I was looking for something to cleanse the palate of the lingering taste of lightly-toasted, semi-rotted wet leaves, and chose this one.

Whew, quite a perfume there on opening the sample packet! Very peary, pear-squared, pear upon pears. This should do it… Looking at the ingredients, I’m wondering if the pollen in the mix is the only additive to contribute the honey flavor?

After four minutes, I’ve got a clear, medium-dark brown liquor with great clouds of pear scent coming off of it. The taste is overwhelmingly pear, but now we’re getting into “too much of a good thing” category. It’s moving in the direction of pear incense or perfume (pearfume?), i.e. a little too artificial or at least overpowering. I’m going to add some cream and sugar to this one to see how it works out…

I think that’s better. The honey flavor is coming out more now, and combines well with the pear. Still, the pear component is a little too ramped up for me. I’d have another cup of this if offered, but won’t go out of my way to order it.

I don’t quite know what to think of this. The dry leaf has a very strong pear flavor, together with something rather astringent, like vinegar. During brewing, the honey and pear scents are overwhelming, and smell delicious. The tea has a strong pear/honey scent and much milder flavor, but the tea is . . missing, somehow. Possibly I need to use more leaf, but I certainly wouldn’t have guessed that from the scent. I’m wondering if mixing it with another plain black tea might provide a more satisfying cup, or if slightly sweetening it would reinforce the flavor.

Light brown in color for a black.
Dry leaf smells quite HONEY.
Wet leaf smells more like the Honey Pear Combo along with a woodsy-type scent.
After removing the steeping loose leaf there is an added floral scent as well.
It’s a nice even taste. I can taste more honey than pear.
It’s semi-refreshing. A nice blend.
I was nibbling on a piece of orange chocolate fudge while sipping and must say it pairs with Chocolate well!! :P
A comfort tea, perhaps!? But then again…aren’t most teas comforting!?

The smell of this is absolutely incredible. Strong honey and fresh pears. I’m at least considering buying some of this just to smell it/use in sachets/something because it is so impressive.

The taste of this is really good to me. I admit it’s not quite what I expected from the smell. It’s much more subtle, with more of a pollen-y taste than true honey (which makes sense considering the ingredients). The pear comes in at the end, very true to the fruit as I expected. With honey added this is just about perfect, exactly like honey-covered pears. The smell of this cup is also wafting all over the room! I think I’m in love.

After an outdoor concert, I am completely sunburnt. But right now I am freezing because we just discovered how to fix our thermostat and now I’m sunburnt and living in an icebox of 66 degrees. Time for some golden moon tea!

The color is very brown, and warm looking but there’s not a very distinct smell to it, though I think with all these fluctuating temperatures my sense of smell is not so good at the moment.

Well, it’s not that sweet and considering the name, I was definitely expecting a sweet tea. The flavoring tastes a bit weird. I’m not really tasting any honey … or pear. In fact, it’s almost really bitter and sour tasting. No matter how much I try to taste some flavor theres just none that really stand out to me. I’m thinking that the water wasn’t exactly boiling when I put it in but still, it shouldn’t make this much of a difference!

Ah! there it is. I think it was just a matter of it cooling off a little bit. I definitely got a taste of honey with some pear, but it still doesn’t taste sweet. I feel like I need to put some sugar in this tea or something! Not a bad tea, but every now and then I get this really weird metallic bitter ish taste that makes my teeth feel awful. It’s part yum, part yuck, and part indifferent.