Neither lemon nor tea before bed is good for a good sleep. It seems to me that your stomach is giving you warning to stop lemon before bed. Exciting the stomach with something so acidic when you try to rest is certainly not a good idea.
There are many things that goes well with honey and calms you for a good sleep. Milk, almond milk (get the almond powder from Taiwan in Price Mart, the best quality in town and the best price), malt (try to find one that is not sweetened like Horlick, that sugar they use is not good), etc are safe and satisfying. Make it quite hot for adding honey.
If you think that’s too much nutrition for you, try American ginseng. Be aware that it is quite cool in TCM so avoid it if you feel your stomach is week. In such case use jujube (red dates), nanzao (south date 南棗), or wolfberry (杞子). They are both comforting for a weak stomach and TCM neutral-warm. The shortcoming of these is that they need to be boiled for at least 30 min (shorter for wolfberry) or so for the contents to dissolve. One way to do it is to boil a large quantity in advance and store it in the fridge for a few days’ portion.
Eu An Sang, Dong Fang Hong, and Tong Ren Tang make various powdered red date/ginseng/ etc drinks for easy preparation. I trust only Eu An Sang for this type of things.
One other thought about this drink is why honey at night? I think this is much more effective in terms of its health effect when drunk in the morning, with tea. Best with green tea, or sharper taste black tea. Black sugar (real raw sugar) is a lot more effective after dinner for calming a restless day and clarifying the heat toxins in the blood that you may have gathered 😉
Black sugar goes well with any of the above, plus a lot more.
Happy that you asked. You should visit more often to share your thoughts and questions, like you used to have in the teabars. Let me know if I have not given you good enough solutions.
