Honey Pear

GM sample #2/31

The boyfriend requested something “fruity” from the GM sampler, so this seemed like the one to try. This is… interesting. Not what I expected. The honey is the strongest flavor, but it’s not sweet exactly – like someone separated all the honey flavor from the sugar and just added the flavor. Well, the ingredients do say “pollen” so I guess that makes sense. The black tea base is actually a little harsh for my taste – even at 3 minutes I can taste some bitterness. The pear comes through more as the tea cools.

Will try this chilled next. Used 1/3 of the sample (~1.3g, hooray for tiny scales) with 3.5oz water.
ETA: Very good chilled, on the second and third infusions; the sweetness comes through more. The 3rd infusion was looking pretty weak though, so I’ll stop here

Didn’t get to have this at work so I’m having it now that I am home.

Holy crap does the dry leaf smell like pears! Big, juicy, mess-making pears. Wow! That’s a slight, possible floral smell added to it that is maybe the honey? No idea. 98% of this is full on pear smell.

So my timer went off and I went into the kitchen to pour my cup? HOLY HONEY MONKEYS, BATMAN! I was still a few feet from the counter when I got slammed with succulent fruit juiciness and honey. The honey smell is very obvious now and makes it smell like pears, soaked in honey. Quite why they are soaked in honey, no one knows, because it stops them tasting like pears and makes them taste like honey… and if you wanted honey, you could just… buy honey. Instead of pears.

ahem But I digress.

Sipping on the tea though and the BAM ness of the honey pear is in the scent and the actual taste is much more normal and sane. There is honey, then tea, then pear, then honey again. It is like a lightly flavored pear tea was sweetened with honey. Or maybe a gentle tea was sweetened with honey and then had a splash of pear juice added.

This is smooth with a little dryness showing up right after I swallow but quickly fading. It’s sweet but in a wild, honey/musky fruit way. And the body is pretty light. No desire or need to chew the tea here (which I might actually enjoy…) I really want to see how this will turn out when cooler, but I may be too impatient (and it may be too yummy) for me to see. I think a bit more pear is coming out, but again, I’m impatient.

So this all sounds great, right? So why is my rating just at the lime green happy face and not higher? This seems like it has all the elements of wonderfulness: strong and recognizable smell, no chemical taste, the flavoring doesn’t overpower the tea, no additives needed to make it yummy….

I dislike honey.

Yeah, I know. I’m weird. Just not a big fan of honey. Sure, I’ll mix it with mustard and dip chicken into it. I have occasionally put it on a biscuit. But generally, I’m pretty particular about my honey. I go for the lighter, sweeter honeys – orange blossom over plum (which strikes me as a very dark-tasting, wild honey), the local wildflower honey over sourwood honey. I don’t even really like the taste of the ‘typical’ clover honey. And this honey strikes me as a slightly-darker-tasting-than-clover honey. So while I recognize that this is a good tea, this is just something that’s not up my alley.

However, those that like pears and honey both? Will probably love this one. Now I vote that GM makes a pear tea (I don’t think there is one in my sample box, right?) because this tea minus the honey, I think I’d LOVE.

GM Sampler | Tea 3 of 31

Honey Pear | http://bit.ly/cy1HXR
Gotta Catch ’Em All | http://bit.ly/bDtnNn

This tea made me so angys!!!

Like, for real, pissed. I want to photoshop a big frowny face all over the Honey Pear picture.

I think I’ve professed my love for pear in enough gory detail already, but if you missed that log – I LOVE IT. Like, scary love. And I like honey well enough. So to say that I was excited to try this tea is a bit of an understatement.

The dry leaf smelled like bazooka joe. And medicine. This put me on edge right away, because it tripped my WTF alarm straight off. But I dumped the sample into the infuser and began the process of making the tea.

When I pulled out the infusing basket, I smelled the wet leaves.

Strawberry runts and banana boat suntan lotion. I’m really confused at this point, but I sip it anyway.

You might have read my post about how much I loved Art of Tea’s Caramelized Pear, which uses apple bits to achieve the pear taste to great effect. This tea is like what I imagine using the power of apple to pear for EVIL would be like, because the tea tasted like bad, mealy, apple. It was Bad, Bad, Mealy Brown apple. Once I had that mental image in my head, it was impossible to shake and there was no way to enjoy the tea after that.

Building upon the suck that is mealy apple, the tea had this bitterness to it that would get really high and sharp at some points. And to make matters worse, at the back of the throat the tea created this horrible sour taste.

I sat with it long enough to eventually get a hint of sweetness at the tip of my tongue, but unfortunately it was impossible to recover from all the bad. I had to dump the cup, but I consider it an accomplishment that I got halfway through it.

I honestly think that this was defective because it does not at ALL sound like what the majority of the other people got, and while I think that tastes diverge this was just…wrong.

Many many thanks to the benevolent RICKY who sent me a generous sample of Honey Pear. Like others have said, the dry tea does not give away much in its odor. The brewed tea is sweet and delicious. It is very pleasantly sweet, just slightly astringent, and while the aftertaste of pear emerges quite nicely, it does not taste overtly of pear.

All in all, I don’t think I would buy a full order of this tea, but I might consider it. I think that the flavor of pear is elusive and delicate and hard to capture. When I think of Golden Moon’s Melon Tea, which I adore, I think that this one is a failure—perhaps a noble failure, but it just does not hit that great mark of prominence. If I wake up tomorrow jonesing for this tea, I will be certain to revise my note.

One aspect of tea that is important to me is “memory”. Do I remember the tea when it’s not in front of my face? Do I think of it fondly? Do I make up endearing little nicknames for it? Do I anthropomorphize the tea? I can remember good teas that taste wonderful. That’s a bit different than remembering a tea because of the time and place (you can bet I was thrilled with myself to be drinking tea in London’s Tate, but I am not certain that it was the tea as much as the location and the Turner excitement).

So we will see if Honey Pear makes another entry into my life. Will it be a very minor character or will it become a friend? Is it merely going to flirt with friendship? Or am I the one flirting with it?

“Th’event”, as Shakespeare often and very economically said to indicate that time and the future will reveal the outcome.

Sample two out of ten this week!

Actually this one is sort of cheating a bit, because the whole point of these sample challenges is to get some of the older ones that I’ve had around for a while used up, and this one I just got today. I did a swap with Infusin_Susan and this one was included as one of a couple of bonus samples.

It’s even more cheating for sample week, because this isn’t one that I think would end up lying around untried for very long anyway. It sounds so interesting! I’m totally intrigued by the idea of honey flavoured tea. I’m not sure honey and pear would be something I would come up with on my own, but why not?

The aroma was definitely strongly honeyed, both dry leaf and after steeping. I didn’t get much pear on the aroma, mostly just the honey. I find this odd, because it seems the majority of people have found it to be strongly pear with a little honey around it and my impression is exactly opposite. Maybe they’re right? Now I’m sniffing at this and am suddenly unsure of what I think it smells like. But I do still think it has more honey than others seem to think.

The flavour is strongly pear, definitely. It makes me think of the big light green ones that turn yellow as they ripen and they have little brown dots on them. I can’t remember what the sort is called. Lukas?

I’m getting honey almost exclusively on the swallow and the aftertaste, but not in the flavour proper. But is this a bad thing? No, because that’s what honey taste like. It has a stronger flavour just when you swallow and it leaves a good strong aftertaste, and this is exactly what this tea mimics. It’s not enough to make something taste like something else. One also has to pay some attention to how that something else is actually experienced in its proper form. I think I’ve just realised when a flavoured tea is the Perfect One and when it’s just good.

That said, I wouldn’t call this the perfect pear tea or the perfect honey tea. I don’t know, I find the combination a bit odd, I suppose. I’m sure it’s great as a dessert, but I’m not sure I think it works super-well as a tea flavouring.

I’m not getting any real impression of the base black, other than I seem to be picking up a small amount of astringency, but not very much. It could be anything really.

I’m glad I got to try this one. I’m quite enjoying it.

Wow! I don’t think I ever had a tea quite like this! It was STRANGE and DELICIOUS! I felt as if I was having an exotic treat from a far off land…in the middle of my parlor in New Jersey! The pear really did taste like a perfectly ripe pear – I loved the taste!! and the honey was really flavorful in almost a musky sort of way, and I didn’t find it overly sweet. It’s certainly not something that I’d want every day, but when I’m in the mood for something unusual, this would be a perfect one! I would purchase a full size of this tea for when the mood struck.

As you can probably tell, my Golden Moon sampler came yesterday :) I ordered it on Monday afternoon and it arrived on Wednesday – excellent turnaround! The ordering process was painless, and I was updated with a tracking number when it shipped.

Hrm, this one is a bit confusing.

So if you’ve been keeping up with the Golden Moon sampler count on this end, we’re up to the second to last sample here. I happen to adore both honey and pear, so this one is guaranteed to be a knock-out.

Or is it?

Well, to start with the smell coming from the packet. It’s a big strong, and smells sort of musky. And rather honey-like. But a dark honey… very dark. Fermented, almost? That’d make MEAD. w00t, learn your alcohol. There’s a pear overture as well, but to me, it wasn’t that juicy and strong and succulent. And I heart pear. Hard. It’s one of my favorite fruits! Messy, drippy, ripe pears! MMMMM.

The leaves here are of a fairly standard, flavored black tea size. I don’t really see any bits or pieces of anything else other than leaf, although that could mean I’m blind, since the ingredients list pollen pieces.

So we steep this one up, and the resulting liquid’s color is somewhat akin to the color of buckwheat honey. The smell coming off of it is very similar to the dry leaf; the wet just smells like spent black tea leaves. There’s a bit of sweetness highlighted in the aroma, but it’s nothing that’s going to kick your socks off.

Okay, let’s get to the taste, because the taste is strange. In a pretty good way, but still, it’s kind of weird. The honey is definitely the dominant flavor here, but it’s a pretty floral honey component. Maybe even a little soapy? Or maybe it’s that soapy that comes from some floral-tasting things. Anyway, it’s a pretty interesting dark-sweet taste. Very dark. I’ve tasted buckwheat honey before, which is closer to a woodsy brown than a golden color, and this tastes even darker here.

The pear definitely plays second fiddle to the honey. I mean, it’s clearly there in the aftertaste, but it’s not as strong as I would have hoped. It’s an echo of pear. Like if you ate a pear about a half hour ago and the sweetness is still lingering in your mouth. That sort of thing.

Basically, it boils down to this (hurrhurr boil get it tea joke woah I’m tired right now): the tea is not an every day drinking tea. At all. It’s kind of funky, in a good way. Like a weird ethnic food you’ve never tried before, and you’re compulsively eating it, even if you’re not sure if you really like it or not. This tea is akin to that experience. I had a quizzical expression on my face the entire time while drinking it.

It’s certainly thought-provoking, but I’m not sure in which way.

In any case, this is a tea experience that I’d definitely recommend, because the weird factor is way up there. I think this is also a love it! hate it! kind of deal, where the flavors either appeal to you heavily, or you think this is one of the grossest things you’ve ever drank.

This is the lapsang of fruit teas.

Golden Moon sample No. 26 of 31.

I’m conflicted about this one. On the one hand, there’s something interesting and nice about it. On the other, it’s weird.

The dry leaves have small light brown pieces in them that look like little seeds. This must be the pollen. They smell of pear, and there is also a very heavy floral scent. Honey is there, but around the edges.

The liquor is where the honey first shows up in force — it’s a dark honey color. The aroma has both pear and honey, but mostly honey.

The taste is unusual. To me it is floral more than anything else, but I’m not sure what flower. There is some pear, but it is not strong. And some honey, but it isn’t strong either. The tea isn’t bitter, there’s nothing really objectionable about it. It’s just kind of strange and unexpected. The weirdest part is a waxiness to the mouth feel. The finish does have a lot of pear to it.

Not sure enough to buy a full size of this, but not ready to give it a pass. I’ll likely buy another sample when I place my order and give it another try.

holy honey! its has that distinct honey flavor with the back note the pear taste. the tongue feel reminds me of a juicy pear as well. it smells so much like hot honey. im very happy with this sampler.

I really wanted to like this. I really did. After reading several reviews of it I thought it would be nice. I like honey, I like pears, I like black tea. Honey pear black tea? That’s a no brainer, right?

Wrong.

The dry leaf smelled weird. Extremely vegetal with a sweetness that just seemed not to belong. A tragic foreshadowing….

The smell of the liquor was nauseating. I don’t know what it was. It smelled bitter, flatly sweet, like it had splenda or sweet and low in it. And it had that bad vegetal smell to it. Like boiled weeds.

I sipped it twice before dumping it in the sink. Tasted like sweetened bitter greens. The Flavor was muddy and disjointed with a slight whisper of pear dropped in there somewhere.

I wish this tea would have been good. I really do. I don’t know what happened but it was just awful…

Ahhh…deliciously smooth, a light hint of ripe pear with a bit of a floral pear blossom note with a sweet honey undertone. The main taste is of a quality black tea…maybe a ceylon or darjeeling? I wish it were more specific as the type of leaf.

I felt like something fruity and sugary, so I chose this.

Oh, this is honey alright—pure wild honey. It’s a musky, pollen covered, honeycomb dripping of honey one day old. The scent is like a sticky, sappy honey-coated pear so sweet and overripe it’s almost turning to brandy!

The taste is less brazen, more candy-sweet and “translucent” like a lollipop or pear jello. Underneath, the black tea base is toasty but sweet—as if the leaves have been so completely infused with the flavorings that they’re almost indetectable.

The tea is cooling now and I really am reminded of Middle Eastern desserts! Something about it reminds me of pistachios and saffron and rosewater…and syrupy baklava.

Yummy tea..I like it!

I took the day off yesterday and spent it out and about, hence my lack of tea notes. This is the last black tea I have to try from my Golden Moon order, and I can see that it seems like I will like this tea, or just think it’s too weird.

The dry leaf gives the aromas of what I might expect: intensely pear, with a strong accompanying note of rich, floral honey. It smells a bit like a pear hard candy, with actually a hint of “green apple”. I dunno, I can’t quite place the particular aroma that smells like a candy I’ve had before.

Brewed up, it smells much more like the black tea base. As it cools a bit I get more of that honey and pear aroma from the dry leaf starting to take over the cup. As to the taste, you can count me in the fans of this tea. The aroma of the dry leaf is pretty faithfully translated to the flavor, but with a lovely black tea base that fits in well with the flavors. It’s a bright base, and not especially malty, so that it reminds me of a darjeeling. I would consider the pear the primary note, with the somewhat floral honey backing it up. This honey reminds me of eating comb right from the beehive: it’s fresh and dark and wild (and delicious). I don’t find the tea “weird” at all, like many others, but perhaps that’s because the flavor is already one in my repetoir. I’m really enjoying it and it’s one I would probably keep around.

I am trying to switch back and forth between the higher and lower rated samples from my GM sampler so as it’s the lower scores turn I am trying the Honey Pear. I used a little under a cup of boiling water with the whole sample which was 2 full teaspoons. Wow—this is definitely exactly what it claims…honey, then pear. I always take a little taste without sweetener before I add my usual agave nectar, I almost always sweeten. Not this one—it’s perfect as is. This is so different from anything I’ve tried so far in my tea drinking journey and I LOVE it!! It’s very layered, reminds of a good red wine in that way. It doesn’t taste like wine, just the layering of the flavors. I am so happy with this tea…I am definitely ordering more.

I must confess that I was becoming jealous of all the posts today that mentioned their GM sampler had arrived. Then I went out on an errand and came home and saw the package in my entryway. I let out an earth-shattering “squee” that sent my cat tearing across the room for cover. But I digress and would like to post my tasting note and then re-digress so anyone who wants the review can read it up front and then ignore the rest of my rambling.

This was the first tea I chose out of the 31 even though so many called out to me. I have never tried a black/fruit tea combo (oops – just realized that I’ve had decaf apricot ::facepalm::) and this one just sounded happy. I’m also hoping to expand my understanding of black teas. I’m generally not a fan of many of the black teas I’ve had – I’m turned off by their astringent bite. I popped open the bag and holy schnikees! It was pear. It was uber-pear. It was pear that shouted “I will suck your soul!” Underneath that there was a bit of musky-polleny smell.

I steeped that sucker and held off eating (I was really hungry) just to try this without distraction. I found it utterly yummy. I’m not a fan of pear and I’m not a fan of honey. Who knew that this blend would do a dance of happiness in my mouth? I drank the whole cup without eating since I was enjoying it so much. Afterward I did get a dryness to my mouth, but that doesn’t bother my noob palate – not yet. I’ll try more teas, but so far this is on my shortlist for my next GM order. And I’m dying to try this one iced. TG

Okay – so now I wanna have a moment to express my utter joy with tea. I’m a HUGE lover of books, but I can’t recall squeeling over a new book’s release. In the short time I’ve been discovering tea (with loose leaf being a mind-blowing new experience), I have fallen in love with the drink/experience. I love tea. I love the process. I am a tea-aholic and that brings me joy. I’ll find myself running my hands over the tea pots as the tea steeps and that makes me happy. I wish I had better words to express how much tea has rocked my world and I’m so very grateful that there’s Steepster. I’ve gained so much insight and pleasure from reading others’ thoughts. Happy, happy, joy, joy!

That is all :)

Edit: Okay, so not quite all. After my second steep I think I was coming down from my first ever “tea high” – like a runner’s high only yummier. There was something odd about this tea that I couldn’t put my finger on, so I read through more tasting notes and takgoti nailed it: “strawberry runts and banana boat suntan lotion.” And after reading others I thought that there must be a better fruit tea out there – so I bumped down my rating a bit. I still like this tea, but I’m more uncertain about reordering. The TG stays for now since at that time I definitely was euphoric, but not due to this tea alone. I shall try this one more time in a saner frame of mind and possibly readjust the rating one more time.

Zarafina: black, loose, medium
sweetened with rock sugar

There’s a strong musky honey note dominating this tea. Detecting the pear taste is difficult, and I’m realizing that I much prefer teas flavored with actual bits of whatever rather than flavor oils.

I got this as part of Golden Moon’s sampler set, but I won’t buy it.

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.