Do you like the taste of sweet tea?

I’m with you, @rockfan! I love iced tea and drink a lot of it, but sweet tea—ugh. Just a few days ago I accidentally bought a couple bottles of the vile stuff and wound up throwing out one, returning the other.

You mean some tea that comes pre-sweetened? Can’t stand that. If i need to sweeten my tea, let me do it myself.

Even when I was a kid that put a lot of sugar in tea, I hated the pre-sweetened ice tea mixes like Nestea.

Too sweet. There is a ton of sugar in it. I sometimes sweeten my tea with a shot of sweet tea.

I’m an equal opportunity tea drinker. Hot, cold, with milk, without, black, green, red, white, herbal…

I like cold sweet tea, but not syrupy sweet. A lot of sweet tea ismeantto be put in a glass full of ice. But I have sensitive teeth, so no. Instead, I usually order tea half sweet, half unsweetened.

Love it! I like un-sweet too, hot, cold, any kind of tea.

I like hot sweet tea a lot. I usually have a cup of sweet tea in the morning but I tend to avoid putting sugar in my tea every time I have a cup just to make sure I’m not having too much sugar (I have a very sweet tooth so have to watch my intake!!!). I don’t like iced tea which I saw a lot of when I was in the States but don’t see it so much here in the UK.

@Leanne1986 I think maybe you are talking about sweetening your own tea rather than “sweet tea.” Sweet tea is pre-sweetened. You see it all over the southern US and only some parts of other regions. The recipes call for anywhere from ¾ – 1½ cups sugar to a gallon of tea. American gallon.

I live in the south – it’s sort of a prerequisite to love sweet tea.

I hardly ever drink it, though, because it’s very seldom that a restaurant makes decent sweet tea and I never make it at home. If I’m at my mother-in-law’s house and she makes it, though, I could drink the whole pitcher. So many calories, but oh so tasty!

Not all sweet tea is made equal. I’ve tasted some awful versions before. You’ve got to get it all right – the tea can’t be too strong/weak and there’s got to be just enough sugar in it. (I like mine pretty damn sweet. My friend calls it “crunchy on the bottom.”) Oh, and it’s got to be cold. I like hot tea with sugar and milk, but that’s not “sweet tea.” Not down here, anyway. You’re a freak in the south if you drink hot tea.

My guess is that many of those that claim to dislike sweet tea just haven’t had it made correctly.

@JLeslie Pre-sweetened in what way? You mean when you order it out and it’s already sweet when you get it? Or are you referring to a beverage you can buy from a jug/can/bottle at the store that claims to be sweet tea? The latter simply isn’t sweet tea.

Ordering unsweetened tea and putting a packet of sugar in it isn’t sweet tea, either, which I believe is what you said. I just can’t do that – it doesn’t dissolve right and it still tastes unsweetened no matter how much you put in there. It probably doesn’t help that I hate unsweetened tea. The sugar should be added to the tea when it’s still hot and then the whole thing should be chilled. This is what they do at restaurants that sell sweet tea, but it’s still 100 times better made at home by a southern woman. :)

No, because it is too sweet. I’d rather do it myself. ( I live In the north, and sweet tea is an abomination!)

I can’t stand it, but I love unsweetened tea. For some odd reason, restaurants in my area (central Texas) have begun offering the stuff as if we’re “southern.” I like my tea like I like my champagne—cold, flavorful, unsweet and free!

@livelaughlove21 The jug, if you make it at your house, if you order it out at a restaurant, all of those if it has that huge ration of sugar usually added to hot tea or water and then addition cold water added, which makes it “southern sweet tea” then it all qualifies to me.

What you describe in your last paragraph, adding some sugar to regular tea to sweeten it a little is not sweet tea in my book. Growing up we did not have any “sweet tea” around. Zero versions of it, whether you think it isn’t real tea made by a southern woman or not, It did not exist. There was no choice at a restaurant for sweetened or unsweetened. That is a southern thing that has been transported to other parts of the country in the last 20 years, because now there are national chain restaurants and teas are sold nationally in supermarkets like soda. Still today when I am in the northeast usually there is not any sweet tea offered in restaurants. We did sweeten our tea, but after it was served unsweet.

I doubt where @Leanne1986 lives there is such a thing as sweet tea, the way a southern American thinks of it.

Oh, I found this, a conversation on tripadvisor about trying to find sweet tea in NYC.

I love it. I grew up on it. My grandfather made it so sweet a spoon would stand up in it. Now, I don’t do sugar so I have mine with artificial sweetener, but it is a taste of my childhood.

I don’t even think I can get into tea, much less artificially sweetened tea.

I love sweet tea! Do not ever drink the canned or bottled kind, because none of them taste good. But freshly brewed sweet tea? Yum!

Blech, no! I don’t like tea, period, except an occasional cup of green tea when I am sick.
I’m a coffee girl through and through.

I am a huge tea fanatic as of late (I think I have something like 25 varieties in my cupboard currently) I enjoy tea both hot and cold. The whole sweetness thing for me depends on specifically what tea it is. Some teas when cold tend to taste a bit more acidic so a bit of sugar helps cut that nicely.

I don’t like overly sweet, sweet tea though. There is no flavor anymore, it’s just sugar water. I also tend to stay away from most stuff like that in general though because it’s rarely tea at all anymore(powder packet crap) or low quality tea bags.

The closest thing I’ll get to sweet tea is when I make sun tea. I tend to put more sugar in that than any other tea I make but still it’s only around ⅓ cup per gallon.

No, my Mom stopped putting sugar in her tea (from which I often sipped) when I was about 3 years old. So we both learned to enjoy the delicious flavor of the tea without any sweetener.

The idea of putting sweetener in tea is just gross and wrong. Tea has really a savory kind of flavor. It would be akin to putting sugar in a bowl of split pea soup or a mushroom quiche.

Earl Grey tea, is of course the best tea of all time.

I couldn’t get enough of it while I was pregnant. Now it has no real appeal. I’d probably drink it if it was in front of me though.

@Kardamom Yes! Earl Grey. No sugar. Best tea ever!

I do like sweet tea, on occasion, but I prefer it unsweetened.
McDonald’s has the worst sweet tea ever. It tastes like overly sweetened water.

I don’t buy bottled tea (the sacrilege!) but I do add a bit of sugar to tea I make for myself. Its not terribly sweet though, and I can just as easily drink it without. I never add milk, but sometimes lemon.

@JLeslie Oh I see. Yes, what you have described is totally different to what us Brits call sweet tea. Thanks for explaining.

Yes, but I’m very picky with what sweet tea I’ll drink. Personally I think that Gold Peak sweet tea is the best. Most other sweet teas I don’t care for, and I can’t get my homemade tea to taste like Gold Peak.

I love it when I sweeten it myself. It is great at The Outback, for example. But at other places it’s way too sweet sometimes to the point I won’t drink it.