Neapolitan Honeybush

We just had a very bizarre power outage – I came home to no electricity! – but thankfully everything is now fixed thanks to some long hours from the power company – at 8 pm we shouted “Let there be light!!! (and internet!)”. The first thing I did when the power came on was make tea! I chose this one because I wanted something sweet to ease all my worry.

I was a nervous wreck making it – in a mad rush to try and reset all the clocks in the house, make sure everything was now working, etc and I was too heavy handed with the leaves and probably steeped it a bit too much. I tasted a strong, delicious strawberry flavor and my first taste of honeybush! Yum! Sweeter than rooibos and less cigar humidor-ish! I fear that my heavy steep and the addition of honey masked the vanilla and chocolate flavors. Nevertheless, it was very delicious! I love the honeybush and the strawberry was so natural and good. It does not need honey at all, and I think a 5 minute steep would be more suitable.

Another foray into honeybush courtesy of Mercuryhime!

Steeped, this smells a bit like that characteristic 52teas smell. With maybe a hint of cream and/or strawberry. Oh wow though, the flavour!!! I initially got chocolate, followed by a combination of the three flavours, and it’s finishing off with strawberry. Delicious! Yes, this is so neat – initially intense chocolate, then obvious creamy vanilla (maybe with a bit of chocolate), then strawberry at the end. This is great! And the honeybush isn’t making a big fuss about being around; I can barely taste it. I can see why this blend is popular. Now I want to buy the iced teas more than ever :( Need to calculate how much of my cheese panel money is left over (although I really want to make a Butiki order soon too…)

ETA: Second infusion isn’t great, maybe because it’s cold.

Finally decided to get a pouch of this with my latest 52 Teas order… in the bag it smells delicious.

This is a fairly nice tisane, although I wouldn’t say it really tastes like ice cream. I am picking up definite notes of strawberry and vanilla, the chocolate is a little more subdued. This also has a slightly “sour” flavor from the honeybush. It’s okay but I don’t love it.

I want a dessert tea and a dessert tea I shall have! I’ve been drinking oolongs all day so it’s time to switch gears. I may have too much caffeine coursing through my body to sleep currently, but I’m going to try to settle down with this lovely honeybush.

Neapolitan Honeybush tastes like warm melted ice cream. That may sound gross, but let me assure you it’s darn pretty fantastic. At first sip, I taste creamy vanilla which develops into a rich chocolate flavor, and then it finishes with the wonderful taste of fresh strawberries. Amazing! I suspect that this beauty may be even better iced.

Yum! Dessert craving satisfied.

This was in my Easter basket this morning! I was going to hold off on drinking this until I got home, but I just couldn’t resist, even after way too much food today.

This is SO GOOD I can’t believe I didn’t get it earlier. Neapolitan used to be my favorite ice cream. I used to avoid eating much of the chocolate ice cream. I’d have like 40% vanilla, 50% strawberry, and 10% chocolate. That great brick of ice cream in a cardboard box is not representative of chocolate ice cream I know now.

I taste the chocolate and the strawberry and a bit of the vanilla. It’s really creamy without anything added to it. I let my mom have a sip and she said she can really taste the honey flavor of honeybush. It does add the perfect sweetness to the flavors.

It really tastes like neapolitan melted into some tea. This is definitely up there in my favorites now for sure after just one cup.

Backlogging from the weekend.
Thank you tattooed_tea for this sample!

This was SO good! I am really enjoying honeybush blends. Frank does an amazing job.

This is a great blend, slightly creamy, and I certainly get strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate flavours. The flavours are not all at once though, they come at ya at different times in the sip, so strange but I like it. Like a transformer….lol.

I will certainly have to try this next as a cold brew.

This one came to be as part of the enormous box of samples I purchased from LiberTeas months ago. The smell is very faint, but creamy and a hint of chocolate. Ordinarily I shake the “powder” out of my infuser before steeping (I hate floaties in my cup!) but as I was doing that with this one I came to the conclusion that I might be shaking out the flavourings, which would be pretty dumb. So, I am doing it with all the dust (and there’s a lot of it). Since there’s no proper tea in here, I hope that won’t be a problem.

Steeped, the aroma has a chickory note and reminds me of stale milk chocolate – you know when it gets old and turns white-ish. The liquor is a deep brown and quite fragrant. I’m really just getting the chocolate aspect of neapolitan, so far at least. I find that even in the ice cream though, that’s what happens. The vanilla and strawberry ( my favourites!) get buried beneath the chocolate.

The flavour is fairly bland, possibly because of age/storage. I get a hint of old chocolate, but it isn’t very assertive and if I were blind testing this I might not have got it right. I didn’t get any strawberry at all, and a sense of vanilla could only be present in a slight creaminess. Nothing objectionable at all, but certainly nothing special. I’ve got enough for another cup worth and I think I’ll take it to work to use up.

I’ve gotta learn to be careful with my honeybush/rooibos teas. After a long steep, the flavors I don’t like come out and ruin things. AFter 6-7 minutes, it starts to taste like sour wood.

Anyway, over steeping aside, this tea is nice flavored! It’s actually better than any neapolitan ice cream I’ve ever had. The strawberry was sweet and juicy and the chocolate was totally yum. I didn’t get much vanilla, but I’m betting it’s the stupid sour wood flavor that’s getting in the way. I’ll have this again soon, steeped correctly, and then we’ll see. I’m enjoying this one though. I’m glad I picked this one over the strawberry pie, though I’m sure that one’s good too. :)

Love this tea! Honeybush is one of the only teas that I like flavored now. This tea delivers, when you open the bag you get the strawberry and chocolate right off the bat. I almost never add cream or sugar, but I added a little and it was like drinking ice cream. Satisfies the sweet tooth. :)

My packet arrived today—so quickly too! Yay!!! :)

Even though I have countless teas to try, I just had to rip this open as soon as possible. I needed my honeybush fix! :P

I’m sipping this piping hot. I’m getting the sweet honeybush flavor very strongly. Then there’s the definite ice cream vibe—I’m not sure how I’m getting that since the liquid is hot, but somehow I perceive “ice cream”. Must be the vanilla with its sense of creaminess. The chocolate is bittersweet. The strawberry has cherry notes.

The scent screams Neopolitan Ice Cream! The classic boxed variety (just like in the picture). Makes me want to run out and buy a box right now. ;)

I like this very much and will reach for it often. As usual, 52teas doesn’t disappoint!

As an ice cream flavor, I’ve never really been into the Neapolitan thing. It’s not bad, just not something that I would normally choose for myself. I used to be one of those weird little kids who didn’t like their food to touch, so the thought of intermingling flavors just didn’t speak to me. Thankfully, I’ve grown out of that little food-touching neurosis, and broadened my taste buds to try new things.

Even so, when I ordered this honeybush, at the back of my mind I was expecting not to really love it. But I ordered it anyway because it had a lot of things going for it – it’s a honeybush (which I tend to enjoy), and it’s from 52teas (which makes flavored teas the way that I would do it, if I could do it for myself).

At first, I had some trouble getting the distinctive flavors out of this tea, and although I thought it was good, I didn’t love it as any of my strawberry honeybush teas. Finally, I discovered a special uniqueness to this tea- I can get the distinctive tastes out of it if I drink it with different types of food. What fun!

I just picked up a packaged from Doulton in the postoffice!!!
For those who don’t know (but I am sure you do) Doulton held a contest some weeks ago. AND I was one of the lucky winners!

So I picked up this package full of amazing teas (thank you, thank you, Doulton!) and the first thing I noticed was this wierd sweet smell. I sniffed every bag in the box until I found the sinner. It was a unopened bag but I swear I smelled it!

The color of the steeped tea is very close to rooibos color – if not identical.
It smells very sweet and… taste very good. The honeybush taste a lot like rooibos but it’s more neutral? And It really does taste like the icecream! Just a little cream or milk and I am sure it will be dead on!

Like it- love it – want it.

Thanks to RICKY for this sample. This was a fun tea. …Neapolitan ice cream was a favorite at my house when I was growing up so I really looked forward to trying this…Of course, the chocolate disappeared first, and vanilla was the last to go…

On to the tea: First, honeybush is preferable to rooibos. The strawberry flavor predominates. I added sugar and then a bit of milk. Somehow, although I could not detect any individual vanilla and chocolate flavors, this tasted like melted neapolitan ice cream when all 3 flavors blend….

I couldn’t wait any longer for my friend to have time to come over to try these teas that JENN sent! I did manage to keep my hands off the piña coloda one, since we are both looking forward to those lovely tropical flavors!

This is my second honeybush ever, so today I decided to also look it up and find out a bit more about the plant and it’s benefits. Nice! I am not a fan of rooibos, so I really want to like honeybush tea!

I tried this one first because I am not a fan of Neapolitan ice cream, and I want to work my way up through the samples! See, I do have SOME self-control!

This is good. I took it plain and hot, and next I want to try it iced with a wee bit of raw sugar. I think I am definitely going to find some nice caffeine free options for evenings.

I mostly picked up the strawberry flavor, maybe got a little vanilla, and really didn’t pick up the chocolate. It could be that additions really enhance those flavors, so I expect it may change when I ice it and add sugar.

Thank you, Jenn! I am excited about trying all these new goodies! A “thank you” package is in the planning stages!

I opened the little sample pouch of this tea I got as part of the Valentine’s Swee-tea exchange (thanks AmazonV!). At least I think this tea is what the ‘Neapalitain’ lable is refering to… ⌐_⌐

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I love how Frank uses real flavouring that you can see right in the tea. I’m finding big cocoa nibs, pieces of vanilla bean, and bits of dried strawberry all mixed in with the honeybush – it’s great. The result does smell very much like Neapolitan ice cream which makes me a feel a bit nostalgic as I haven’t had that particular type of ice cream in years but it was a pretty common treat at my house when I was a kid.

The flavour doesn’t quite get there in terms of authenticity, although it certainly makes a game effort. The chocolate flavour seems to dominate everything else to some extent and I wish the strawberry in particular made up more of the flavour profile. Despite that, I’d still count this as another awesome blend from 52Teas. :)

This arrived in today’s mail and I am so excited to try it.

It’s really good! Because it’s hot it’s difficult for me to say it “tastes like Neapolitan ice cream” but the flavors are all in there… I can taste the strawberry and the chocolate and even the vanilla. There is a creamy-ish taste to it too…

I like how the honeybush interacts with these flavors. Very good.

This is my second tea from 52teas and the second time I’ve had to refrain from just typing expletives in capslock in conjunction with accusing them of witchcraft (I believe I just did the latter in my last tasting note). The flavours really are all there! I managed to pick out the chocolate and strawberry in the aroma of the dry leaves, with the vanilla coming in with both the aroma and taste of the resulting brew. I thought this would be nice with milk, but its already pretty creamy on its own.
Neapolitan ice-cream tea? This guy has nailed it!

I can’t believe I like this one, but I do. It is bizarre. It tastes like Neapolitan ice cream.

When I opened the bag and smelled it, I was really worried. It smelled weird, maybe even a little cough syrupy. But once brewed, more of the strawberry flavors came out. It definitely tastes like that mix of all three flavors of ice cream in the bottom of the bowl.

I sweetened it with a touch of agave nectar.

So many thankyous to Jenn!
I didn’t expect to like this one at all, since I’m not a neapolitan fan (esp with those little candies in it!) but this was surprisingly accurate, and overall tasty!!
My friend who was over enjoyed it as well.
However, I do feel that it was too similar to some of my other rooibos teas for me to go out and buy a tin. Rooibos in general, I find, has a hard time picking up flavours so I somewhat expected this to be mild, but pleasant.
I’d like to try it next time with milk but I think that may kill the flavour. Sugar definitely helped of course!

This is really, really good. I’m getting a lot of strawberry and vanilla with a hint of chocolate. It really does taste like Neapolitan ice cream! I knew it would be great though – Frank rocks honeybush! As a result, honeybush has quickly become my nightly vice. Delicious! My cup is disappearing way too fast…