New Zealand medicine?

Manuka and Kanuka are in the tea tree family and related to the familiar Melaleuca quinquenervia that is a plague in Florida. The flowers also smell basically like melaleuca flowers, so I would assume that honey made from them would have a similar taste.

Putting sweetener in tea is a waste of good tea, but putting a strongly flavoured sweetener in tea seems to miss the whole point of tea.

--scott

I agree with you on the high quality teas it would spoil the delecay, however In an iced tea I always add something to lift out the tanin taste, for some reason my palette gets a stronger hint of bitterenss when I drink the teas cold, and that is mainly black teas. Rather than sugar I always found a nice honey does the trick , but only a little.

If any honey could taste medicinal this one is it. It smells like cough syrup. I have a jar I found in an Asian store. It is distributed by Prince Of Peace in the US. You can buy it by the 'Active Rating' online. The higher the better if you want the 'medicinal' version. Besides looking for tea in ethnic stores I also look for honey from other countries. Honey is different in taste as any tea. I only recommend 'raw' honey which is unpasteurized and unfiltered. The USDA might be too late but honey bees in this country could disappear. There is a local hive about 5 miles away and those bees are already in my maple tree. I often stand in the low branches and drink a cup of tea while the busy bees buzz around me with no notice. One or two might be attracted to the aroma from the cup but the heat keeps them away. My only regret in life I never started my own hives.

Jim

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I met a chap today who knew about honey and discussed the topic with him and turns out he has bee hives that are in the ground and they are not for the normal bees but for BUMBLE BEEs ? Huh never knew that honey could come from a bumble bee... Mauirce

Hi :o)

I'm from New Zealand, I love Manuka Honey on my toast! Manuka Honey is very nice but as Scott mentioned it can be fairly strong flavoured which I'd say is probably not suited to many varieties of tea. In fact I'd say it's worse off being used in lesser quality tea because the flavour of the honey will be less complimented by the flavours of the tea, or vice versa... simply because lesser quality tea lacks any fresh distinctive flavour. The higher quality teas are just more complex in thier flavour, so I guess it's true that the complexity is a delicate balance... that's not to say the flavour is always light and delicate? perhaps used in small amounts the Manuka Honey could work well within that delicate balance without throwing it off. It's not easy trying to describe something as subtle as taste is huh? Flavour can be subtle yet distinctive all at the same time?! :o)

Just a suggestion but I would think manuka honey if used at all would match best with earthy or woody tones, some of the distinctive flavoured teas... probably not suited to the delicate(light) teas. You may just need to experiment to find what suits best depending on your teas and which manuka honey you have... some definitely have a more medicinal flavour than others which you might want to avoid.

I don't think there's anything wrong with adding a touch of honey to some teas though, as long as it's just complimenting the tea flavour, not detracting or overpowering it. It can be a good way of weaning people onto pure tea without milk :o)

Jon

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Right from the horses mouth!! great stuff. I am attemting to convert as many people as possible to becoming tea drinkers and as they know little about tea they always want something that is sweet and exciting , so I I offer them flavored teas like strawberry , lemon, passion fruit etc and they like to add a sweetener and I just think honey is so much better than sugar. The people who I have converted to tea will hopefully learn to appreciate the natural and origional taste of the teas .