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	ninwhore 2008-11-25 08:25 pm UTC (link)
	...Wow I didn't even realize there was really a difference. I always just call it iced tea at home and order sweet tea at restaurants. Though I guess I should have realized the difference when I went up north and all their iced tea was unsweetened. THE MORE YOU KNOW. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	keri 2008-11-25 08:35 pm UTC (link)
	THEY DON'T HAVE SWEET TEA UP NORTH? Oh my god i'm going to DIE when I move to Milwaukee (from NE Florida! It's practically Georgia!) next year for grad school. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

mindset
2008-11-25 08:43 pm UTC (link)

I know, it's terrible. I mean, I'm a Chicagoan born-and-bred and I hate the iced tea in restaurants -- it's never sweetened, and when you add sugar or Splenda after the fact, it just sinks to the bottom no matter how much you stir it. And so you suffer with your unsweet tea until like the last super-sweet gulp. >:(

(But some grocery stores do carry it bottled, at least. And for what it's worth, I've heard McDonald's sweet tea is as good as the Southern real thing.)

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	ninwhore 2008-11-25 08:46 pm UTC (link)
	That's why for me, it's sweet tea or nothing. And by nothing I mean soda. McDonald's has some of the best sweet tea I have ever had. 4srs. It beats my home brewed stuff any day. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	keri 2008-11-25 08:54 pm UTC (link)
	That's why for me, it's sweet tea or nothing. And by nothing I mean ~~soda~~ coke. This is why my diet isn't working. :( (Reply to this)(Parent)

	magnolia_mama 2008-11-26 02:56 am UTC (link)
	McD's sweet tea is pretty good, but nothing beats Hardee's IMO - if there is a Hardee's where you live. Dunno if Carl's Jr.'s compares. (Reply to this)(Parent)

keri
2008-11-25 08:52 pm UTC (link)

If it's the same that they have down here, yeah McD's tea is fantastic.

I'm probably going to have to invest in some sweet tea pots and jugs to make it myself, I guess. (Dunno about anyone else, but I was raised to never use my tea pots/jugs for anything else. It's a tradition thing, but maybe harkens back to making a new pot every day and not having to scrub it clean each time?)

Sugar into cold tea just isn't the same, you're completely right. :/

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	hilohello 2008-11-25 08:56 pm UTC (link)
	But...but my mom is always ordering unsweetened iced tea! Or maybe she just does that in South Carolina and I've never noticed because I stopped paying attention to her orders when I was, like, seven, OH GOD MY WORLD IS FALLING APART. (Reply to this)(Parent)

my thoughts on Tea.

platedlizard
2008-11-26 03:47 am UTC (link)

Oh man, I was about to wank about how adding sugar to tea is a terrible, horrible thing to do because it flattens out (ie, completely destroys) the natural flavor of the tea...

...until I remembered that not everyone buys their tea by the ounce from specialty stores.

/uses Jasmin or Lotus-scented green teas to make ice tea during the summer
//they're naturally 'sweet' without being sugary
///can't stand bagged, or worse yet, INSTANT tea. Loose leaf only, baby!

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Re: my thoughts on Tea.

wankismyfandom
2008-11-26 06:44 am UTC (link)

My favourite tea story is the time my English friend came to visit me when I lived in Kentucky. It was late when his flight got in, so we hit up the 24-hour diner, where he wearily ordered tea with his meal.

When the waitress came back with a tall glass of iced [sweet] tea, he looked at it like she'd just set a dead cat down on the table. It probably didn't help that I burst out laughing when it dawned on me what went wrong.

He still thinks I allowed this to happen on purpose.

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	Re: my thoughts on Tea. platedlizard 2008-11-26 07:04 am UTC (link)
	lol, poor guy. That must have been a shock. I remember my trip to Australia, I was so excited to discover that ordering tea meant that I automatically got hot tea instead of being asked 'hot or iced?'. (Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: my thoughts on Tea.

squeakytoy
2008-11-26 08:50 am UTC (link)

The first time I ordered lemonade in the US, I was distinctly non-plussed to get this glass of lemon cordial stuff, instead of the Sprite/7Up/Sierra Mist I expected.

My friends were, of course, highly amused.

Although not as amused as when I automatically took out my wallet with Australian money in it and offered to help pay.

"You can't pay with that! That's Monopoly money!"

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	honorh 2008-11-28 10:40 am UTC (link)
	Lovely thing about Japan: they realize that crystallized sugar just doesn't cut it for cold drinks. Thus, in restaurants, there's always "gum syrup" in with the sweeteners. Basically, it's like corn syrup, only not. But it doesn't have to dissolve in cold drinks, so more power to it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	anonyrat 2008-11-25 09:07 pm UTC (link)
	They have sweet tea up north. I know this, because I was fucking thrilled to leave the South and be assured that any restaurant would have unsweet tea, because a lot of places in the South don't and ARGH I hate sweet tea. It's still there, much to my chagrin, but at least I can get around it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	frenzy 2008-11-26 12:12 am UTC (link)
	Most restaurants don't, and the ones that do don't make it as sweet as native Southerners like it anyway. I just make my own. (Reply to this)(Parent)

quantumreality
2008-11-26 01:24 am UTC (link)

That always confuses me (the sweet tea/iced tea thing)... at least where I am (dunno about the rest of Canada, but we tend to be fairly monolithic in some respects), Canadians generally all agree that "iced tea" means a sweetened variant that is not really (or maybe it is?) made from tea.

If you want an idea of what I mean, it basically comes in bottles or cans that look like the pictures on this website:

http://www.liptontea.ca/icedtea_lemon.asp

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	keri 2008-11-26 01:29 am UTC (link)
	Just so you know, that stuff is disgusting. It's not proper sweet tea at all because of the flavor syrups. The worst part is that some chain restaurants down here? That's all they have, the raspberry one, because that's what corporate ordered. D: (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	quantumreality 2008-11-26 01:35 am UTC (link)
	Raspberry? Oh, lordly Mclord, I sympathize with you, Proper iced tea is lemon-flavored as far as I'm concerned. XD (though admittedly I don't mind the flavor/taste of the faux lemon iced tea we have here) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	kysen_ramses 2008-11-26 02:31 am UTC (link)
	I'm from southern Ontario and I agree with this statement. (I'm reading this thread going 'Unsweetened tea? Seriously? Where can I get some!') (Reply to this)(Parent)

panthea
2008-11-27 02:22 pm UTC (link)

Oh, genuine sweet tea is a completely different animal altogether. It's just tea and sugar (or maybe syrup?), and my middle school chemistry teacher in Georgia used it as an example of super... something? Supersaturation? Fuck, I forget what the word is, but basically the tea is heated to absorb more sugar than it could at room temperature, so it is sweet.

It's really very regionally specific. That's one of the very few things I missed when we left Georgia: real sweet tea.

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	magnolia_mama 2008-11-26 02:54 am UTC (link)
	THEY DON'T HAVE SWEET TEA UP NORTH? Even worse, they insist on putting those goddamn lemon slices in their tea. God, I hate lemon in my iced tea (sweet or not). (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	mochibuni 2008-11-27 03:01 am UTC (link)
	Oh noes, not the lemon~! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	panthea 2008-11-27 02:24 pm UTC (link)
	Chick Fil-A has sweet tea too! Or at least they do in Maryland. The sad part is, it took me years to figure that out, by which point I'd already suffered through sweet tea withdrawal. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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