A honeysuckle bud and a honeysuckle flower are two different things in the cup. One is green, sweet and slightly grassy. The other is hay with a memory of perfume. Here is how to tell which one you have before you buy 200 grams of it.
- Botanical
- Lonicera japonica.
- Part used
- Flower buds, picked just before opening.
- Origin
- Henan, Shandong, Hebei. Fengqiu county in Henan is the best-known source.
- Flavour
- Sweet, green, faintly honeyed, light bitterness at the end.
- Use
- 2–3 g per 200 ml at 85 °C, two minutes. It goes bitter fast.
- Keeps
- 12 months. Honeysuckle fades visibly — it browns, then tastes of paper.
Bud, half-open, or open
The commercial grade is the bud: picked in the week before the flower opens, when the tube is still closed and the tips are pale green. That is the form with the highest aroma and the least bitterness. Half-open flowers are acceptable. Fully open flowers are what you get sweeping the field after the good picking is done, and they taste of almost nothing.
This is why cheap honeysuckle is cheap. It is not adulterated; it is just late. The difference is entirely visible: buds are small, tapered, greenish-white, and uniform. Open flowers are ragged, yellowed, with visible stamens.
Colour, and the sulphur question
Good dried honeysuckle is pale green-yellow with a faint bloom on the surface. Slightly uneven colour between buds is normal. Bright, uniform, chalky yellow-white with no green at all is usually sulphur-fumed — it photographs well and tastes flat. Rub a bud between your fingers: natural lots leave a faint green-yellow stain and smell sweet; sulphured ones smell sharp and leave nothing.
In the kitchen
- Plain, cold. Brew strong, cool, refrigerate, drink over ice. This is the standard Chinese summer drink, and it is better cold than hot.
- With chrysanthemum. A warm-weather infusion; the two together are lighter than either alone.
- With a little rock sugar. Only if the batch is bitter. Good buds do not need it.
- As a syrup. Strong infusion, sugar, reduced; a spoonful into soda water. Unusual in China, obvious once you try it.
The one rule
Do not use boiling water. At 100 °C the green note goes in thirty seconds and what is left is a thin, bitter, hay-like cup that makes people conclude they do not like honeysuckle. At 85 °C for two minutes it tastes like the flower smells. If you have no thermometer, boil the kettle and let it stand for four minutes.
Who should skip it. Honeysuckle is traditionally used for “heat” and is regarded as cooling and drying; it is not a drink for a cold, and it is commonly avoided during pregnancy. If you are already taking a lot of cooling herbs, this is not the one to add on top.