Rooibos Aloe and Honeydew Tea by Nothing But Tea

About 20 years ago, rooibos was a rare tea with a distinctive flavour. It wasn't liked by everyone. Many things changed. In the last decade, rooibos became a top herbal base for flavoured caffeine-free teas. Rooibos Aloe and Honeydew tea is far from a typical rooibos blend.

What is Rooibos Aloe and Honeydew tea?

Rooibos Aloe & Honeydew is a red rooibos blend with red rooibos as a base, liquorice root, pineapple cubes, melissa, candied aloe vera, honeydew melon cubes and some flavouring. It's not so often you see aloe vera and melon in a tea blend, so we were really excited about this one.

This tea smells delicious. It's exactly what you would expect from a honeydew tea (not that there are many out there), with a deeper red rooibos base note. It's difficult to talk about aloe, as aloe is quite neutral.

Aloe is popular for its soothing properties, especially when applied topically on sunburnt skin and wounds (Source: Natural Medicine Journal), and it's also available as a supplement (Source: NCBI).

This tea contains honeydew melon cubes too, which is also not a common ingredient in tea blends. Just looking at the ingredients, we expected a lot from this one – unique flavour, freshness, and enough natural sweetness because of the liquorice. Liquorice is a popular ingredient for sweetening tea without adding calories but does have some bad reputation. It's not recommended for people with high blood pressure or heart and kidney problems, but likely only in high amounts (Source: NIH).

How to brew this blend

We brewed this tea using a teaspoon of leaves per cup of water (150 ml) at 100 degrees Celsius for 5 minutes. And tasty it was! This blend really is all about honeydew in every sense. It tastes like a real honeydew; it smells like a honeydew and it's naturally sweet. You have to take a real deep sniff to feel the rooibos, even though it's a main ingredient of this blend.

This tea tastes great hot, and cold, but we preferred it iced. Even though it's light, you can use only one teaspoon of tea leaves for making an iced tea and it will still be strong enough, and sweet enough even without a sweetener. Honeydew really shines through, and when served cold, it has an incredible lightness and freshness too. If you are worried about all that extra sugar, don't be. Nothing But Tea states the amount of sugar and calories per 100 ml, which is truly negligible – 0.3 grams of sugar per 100 ml and 4 kcal.

You can re-steep the same leaves one more time. Liquorice will be stronger in the second infusion, especially if you steep it longer.

This is a caffeine-free tea, so it's great for any time of the day. Who might like this tea? Tea drinkers who usually drink fruity rooibos teas, tropical green tea and like honeydew melon flavour.