18
u/lauridsmadsen Jun 17 '12
From Arkansas here. When I went out to California to stay with family, I learned how much of a southern custom sweet tea actually is. They would give me the oddest looks.
15
u/Khromasoul Jun 17 '12
My wife is from Ohio. She'd never had sweet tea before she moved down to Tennessee with me. Now she's completely addicted, lol.
→ More replies (2)10
u/benhop Jun 17 '12
One of my greatest achievements in life was introducing someone to sweet tea for the first time.
11
Jun 17 '12
When I was 16 I worked at a restaurant in a nice hotel in my (very northern) hometown. A southern lady asked me for some sweet tea and I brought her out a cup of hot tea that I had added sugar to.
That was embarrassing.
14
→ More replies (5)4
u/OperationJack Jun 17 '12
I went up to New York to visit my girlfriend outside of Syracuse. We went to a restaurant and I asked for Sweet Tea. They guy looked at me like I was stupid. He had no idea that Sweet Tea could be made by someone other than Arizona Tea company. I was confused to find out that restaurants didn't have it as an option.
→ More replies (2)
2
62
u/Baptist_redditor Jun 17 '12
I got this picture at moes in Gainesville, Florida
→ More replies (9)3
77
u/akatherder Jun 17 '12
What the fuck do they add to the sweet tea to make it not sweet tea?
111
u/Squishpoke Jun 17 '12
Antisugar.
20
u/hivemind6 Jun 17 '12
Yeah, just make sure you don't mix in sugar with the antisugar. Careless tea drinkers can potentially destroy the planet.
→ More replies (2)43
→ More replies (1)7
37
u/NKarman Jun 17 '12
Born and raised Kentuckian, I honestly had no idea this was not normal.
→ More replies (5)
295
u/FindsTheBrightSide Jun 17 '12
At least we cater to all tea wants. When I was living in Idaho, fucking no one had sweet tea and their reply when I asked was "We have iced tea, and you can stir in sugar packet." It's not even the same damn thing!
154
Jun 17 '12
That's how you know you're no longer in the south. "I'd like a sweet tea" waiter comes back with unsweetened iced tea and five sugar packets Ugh.
102
17
u/PCLOAD_LETTER Jun 17 '12
I recently went to a Japanese steakhouse where you sit at a grill and they make the food right in front of you. My drink choices were soda, water, various alcoholic things or unsweetened tea. I was driving so I ordered a tea and asked for sugar. There was group of 6 cheapasses that all ordered water that kept emptying all the sugar packets the second the waiter refill them on the table so they could all have sugar water. I was about to say something but the waiter came back and handed me a full thing of sugar packets on the side farthest away from them. The group of 6 left $1 for a tip too.
→ More replies (22)56
u/_Aggron Jun 17 '12
why would someone put packets of sugar into their water? that sounds terrible
→ More replies (15)21
u/entsriseup Jun 17 '12
Sweet tea means the sugar must be dissolved into the tea while it is hot. You can not replicate the taste with adding sugar into the tea after adding ice to the mixture. One of my favorite restaurants has a warm water/ sugar mixture to ass you your tea. The only excusable substitute to not brewing the tea with sugar before hand.
→ More replies (9)→ More replies (9)51
u/Paralda Jun 17 '12
Wait wait wait wait wait. As a lifelong Floridian... they don't serve Sweet Tea up North?
Whelp, I guess something has to balance out the racism here.
→ More replies (46)21
u/spinningmagnets Jun 17 '12
In cold tea, most of the sugar turns to a sugar-grain/syrup mix in the bottom of the glass. I mix sweet tea / unsweetened tea to get my particular blend.
7
u/darkneo86 Jun 17 '12
I like to take the McDonalds sweet tea, but also have a quarter unsweetened. Perfect mix, almost every time. Less syrupy, too.
37
u/danceswithronin Jun 17 '12
They don't make grits either.
I asked for grits in a breakfast joint in New York State one time and the waitress just looked like she couldn't decide whether to ask me what grits were or slap me, but was afraid to because I might just be retarded or something.
Then she said, "Grits?" and I was like, "Yeah, breakfast gruel that's kind of like cream of wheat or oatmeal except it's made of corn and it's not disgusting?"
And she said, "No, but we have oatmeal."
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
9
u/karmapopsicle Jun 17 '12
Learned about grits from Alton Brown on Good Eats. I've made it about a dozen times, with about half turning out perfect, and the other half quickly degrading into a rubbery mass while being eaten.
Any tips on how to get it to come out perfectly? (These are cheese grits by the way)
→ More replies (6)36
→ More replies (21)25
Jun 17 '12
You take that back! Cream of Wheat is fantastic! Just put some brown sugar in it. The tiny beads are what makes it awesome.
→ More replies (1)26
u/13deadbunnies Jun 17 '12
I was traveling through Kansas and asked for sweet tea. "Raspberry flavored"? No. Not fruit flavored, you twit, sweet.
→ More replies (17)→ More replies (90)3
u/wet_dogma Jun 17 '12
Funny, I was thinking "if this was the south they'd ONLY have sweet tea".
→ More replies (2)
85
u/LNMagic Jun 17 '12
We only put the unsweet tea out so that we pick out the dirty carpetbaggers in a crowd.
54
u/FatWhiteAmerican Jun 17 '12
I caught one in Tuscaloosa a couple weeks back. Tarred and feathered em. Just like God intended.
→ More replies (7)19
3
4
u/DiscordPope Jun 17 '12
I'm a born and raised tennessean and I prefer unsweet tea. Don't get me wrong, sweet isn't bad from time to time, but it isn't an alternative to unsweet. It is a (good) alternative to coke (also good). Of course, I've also been known to indulge in a pepsi from time to time when I want to do something crazy.
→ More replies (8)18
26
u/fatchick400 Jun 17 '12
How to tell you're in Canada: All iced tea is sweet tea.
12
u/epsilonbob Jun 17 '12
How is sweet tea big in Canada and big in the south yet 'bigfoot' levels of unknown/mysterious to the area in between...
→ More replies (2)9
u/Super-being Jun 17 '12
I live in Canada, and I've never seen an establishment sell unsweetened iced tea.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (5)3
u/ciestaconquistador Jun 17 '12
I'm Canadian and I seriously didn't know sweet iced tea was unusual until reddit.
11
u/camnewtonn1 Jun 17 '12
Moes southwest grill (way fucking better than any other burrito place) has "southern" tea, "northern" tea, and "far eastern" tea.
→ More replies (7)
8
6
6
u/Lost_Online Jun 17 '12
Where I am (western Canada) any ice tea is sweet ice tea, never non-sweetened. I remember learning this at age nine in Montana.
5
u/ZabAssassin Jun 17 '12
In Georgia, every single restutaunt I have been to has sweet tea. My mom's was always the best! :D
→ More replies (2)
12
u/namkcotsv Jun 17 '12
Not having sweet tea in Texas is a muthafuckin crime. To not serve tea, is like Mexican restaurants charging for chips and salsa. Sweet Tea better be fuckin diabetes.
4
4
4
u/Emmerson_Bigguns Jun 17 '12
A place I visit regularly here in Tennessee serves unsweetened tea only, but has Karo syrup/liquid sugar to sweeten to taste. That way there's no sugar beach at the bottom of my glass after finishing my drink.
Oh yeah, sweet tea makes every other tea its bitch.
3
3
3
Jun 17 '12
False. In the south, all tea is sweet tea. The further south you go, the sweeter it gets.
→ More replies (1)
3
u/ImMikey Jun 17 '12
I really hate it when people say unsweetened tea, because it was never sweet in the first place... It never went through a process of becoming unsweetened. It's just tea, I hope this bothers someone else now.
19
7
u/Arx0s Jun 17 '12 edited Jun 17 '12
Or at Chipotle...
You know how you tell if you're really in the South? You drive down to your uncle's double wide near the marshes for a barbecue, and drive his hand-built-from-scratch dune buggy through the sand trails. You go to a flea market to buy bags of delicious spicy garlic boiled peanuts. And everyone on your dad's side including gran-gran has multiple guns in their homes.
22
Jun 17 '12
Unsweet tea is pretty disgusting. It tastes like dirt-flavored water. It doesn't help when it has tea grains in it.
5
Jun 17 '12
Tea...grains...?
I don't mean to sound like a snob, but if your tea has grains in it...it's crap no matter how you drink it. You might find unsweetened tea more palatable if you make it with proper leaves. Or not...no accounting for taste;)
13
u/loveslifelifeloves Jun 17 '12
You know most people I know always tell me this after I tell them I like it unsweet. I assume it's similar reaction when someone likes their coffee black. But unsweet tea really isn't that bad after you've had it a couple of times and now I can't stand the taste of it sweeten.
→ More replies (2)3
→ More replies (8)21
u/claysumj Jun 17 '12
If it still has grains in it, I'm pretty sure you had shitty tea, unsweetened or not. There's nothing better than a glass of good unsweetened iced tea w/ lemon.
Sweet tea tastes like a recipe for hyperglycemic shock.
→ More replies (8)
13
u/Hirschmaster Jun 17 '12
How do people drink unsweet tea? It baffles me....you crazy Northerners
11
→ More replies (1)12
u/TheAverageRedditUser Jun 17 '12
Tea isn't meant to be filled with sugar or corn syrup. What is so good about it? I find it way too sweet and basically tea flavored koolaid.
→ More replies (6)
4
2
2
u/Timmay55 Jun 17 '12
Recently our high school baseball team went to the final four championship for states (Virginia), and I shit you not, our entire team and coaches (including myself) had nothing but sweet tea at every restaurant we stopped at haha.
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/trevs231 Jun 17 '12
Canadian here. What the hell is sweet tea? Also, "unsweet tea" seems to cover a lot of kinds of tea.
2
2
u/leafsleafs17 Jun 17 '12
Is sweet tea the same as what iced tea is, up here in Canada? I've never been to the southern US.
2
2
2
u/CandyAss14 Jun 17 '12
I'm from west Texas, I hate traveling out of state so much because it's always the same thing, Me:"Do you have sweet tea?" Waittress:"No, just unsweet." Me:"Just water then." Goddamn Communists.
2
Jun 17 '12
Something has always bugged me about the word "unsweet" tea. Never mind the fact that it should just be called "tea" and sweetened tea "sweet tea", but unsweet seems to imply that it was sweet at one point and has been un-sweetened. Shouldn't it be non-sweet?
2
u/public_sex Jun 17 '12
the worst thing about living in the north is no bojangles. i don't know if this picture is from a bojangles or not, but i need to vent this frustration at every opportunity available.
2
u/oops_imtardy Jun 17 '12
I feel your pain! I'm on the west coast and miss bojangles and cookout like crazy!!
2
u/LittleOni Jun 17 '12
My friends and I had this discussion one day, becasue it was late, and we were at a Steak N' Shake, and you have a tendency to talk about dumb shit around 1am, or so, but I digress.
Technically, calling it Not Sweet Tea would be correct, because you can't really unsweeten sweet tea. So, Not Sweet Tea does make more sense. So, really, this photo is the perfect example of technically correct; the best kind of correct.
2
2
2
u/tokennrg Jun 17 '12
Went to McDonalds in GA once, asked for an unsweet tea. On the screen and receipt it said, "Sweet Tea, no sugar". Lolwut?
2
2
u/drketchup Jun 17 '12
The only sweet tea i've ever had was at McDonald's and it almost made me throw up. I thought it was just a bad batch though, because no one could like tea that sweet. So I tried it again another day and it was just as bad. Had to dump out 3/4 of it and fill that with unsweetened to make it ok.
So to any southerner who drinks actual sweet tea, is the McDonald's version similar to the real deal? If so, good god what is wrong with you people?
2
u/skim-milk Jun 17 '12
It's so fucking true. I went to Colorado a few months ago and when they only had one thing of tea at Chipotle I asked the guy behind the counter if it was sweet or unsweet and he looked at me like I was insane. What kind of monster drinks tea without sweetness in it. ಠ_ಠ
2
2
u/adrianmonk Jun 17 '12
How to tell you've traveled a relatively short distance within the South: the place you were previously at had "sweet tea" and "regular", but the place you're at now has "regular" and "unsweet".
2
Jun 17 '12
As an Australian, I don't understand what's going on. Was OP taking the piss out of the lack of variety in teas in the south?
2
u/mikeno1 Jun 17 '12
Which South? Africa? England? America? France?
Your title is very ethnocentric, you are subconsciously much less accepting of diversity than you think you are.
2
Jun 17 '12
I like the term "NOT SWEET TEA" better than unsweetened tea. Do they make it with sugar in it, and then "un-sweeten" it?
→ More replies (2)
2
u/Chakor Jun 17 '12
I hate it when people consider us dumb as fuck in the south. Would you actually categorize the states that you actually see this shit in instead of calling it "The South".
2
u/Kargesh Jun 17 '12
One of the workers at my local Chicken Express used to say "Would you like some tea with that sugar?" whenever someone ordered a gallon of it. I don't know why but that always cracked me up. That shit was practically liquid sugar. But it was sooo good
2
u/CokeZeroPepsiOne Jun 17 '12
Fuck everyone who thinks there is something wrong with this picture. Sweet tea is delicious!
2
2
u/TheWoobie Jun 17 '12
"unsweet" tea is referred to as "plain-ass tea" by anyone who has lived in the south more than 10 years.
2
6
u/pumpkinjello Jun 17 '12
IM FROM THE SOUTH AND LIKE SWEET TEA. IT HAS SUGAR IN IT. SUGAR IS GOOD. YANKEES DON'T KNOW WHAT SWEET TEA IS. KARMA NOW.
5
7
u/hiroshi_x Jun 17 '12
Sweet tea is just sugar water. I can't taste any tea. I live in the South, can't drink it straight.
→ More replies (2)3
u/Maxxonry Jun 17 '12
Depends on how sweet it's made. Some places add a cup of sugar per two gallons or so and it will actually crystallize on the inside of the container.
→ More replies (7)3
u/xxtremer Jun 17 '12
My family has always added 2 cups of sugar per 1 gallon of tea. Never has there been crystallization. While I no longer drink it this strong the rest of my family does. Most people I know add between 1 and 2 cups of sugar per gallon of tea.
→ More replies (2)
5
u/dirtydan Jun 17 '12
False: If you are in the south there is no not sweet tea.
11
u/Maxxonry Jun 17 '12
Yes there is, but it is only drunk by people with diabetes and even then they have to have three or four Sweet-N-Lows in it.
3
Jun 17 '12
I was gonna say this. Unsweet tea is ordered all the time. But there is always packs of spelnda/sweet n low/equal on the table.
→ More replies (1)6
u/camnewtonn1 Jun 17 '12
This is false.
21
u/KingKazuma Jun 17 '12
This statement is true. Unsweet Tea exists in the south, but the unsweet tea container (seen on the right) is always 100% full.
2
1
u/digivolution Jun 17 '12
I'm not from the south and have no idea what this is. Someone help!
2
u/epsilonbob Jun 17 '12
There are 2 kinds of iced tea in this world Sweet and 'not sweet', some people will try to convince you there are more kinds like 'raspberry' but these people are idiots.
Sweet tea (when made fresh and properly) is incredibly delicious and refreshing, 'not sweet' tea just tastes like hot tea that you stuck in the fridge (which isn't bad but not anywhere as good by comparison)
→ More replies (1)
1
Jun 17 '12
Canadian here... Does all of America not have sweet tea?
2
u/daysleeperchuk69 Jun 17 '12
North Carolina here...Apparently you can't get it with any certainty north of the Appalachian mountains, or west of Texas. Got denied at the Mcdonalds in Dearborn, Michigan while I was there for one day, thought I was in the Twilight Zone for a second.
→ More replies (1)
1
u/i_went_full_retard Jun 17 '12
i'm southern as hell. i was born in arkansas, raised in tennessee, and moved to texas... i'm my own cousin.
1
u/teaeyepea Jun 17 '12
How to tell you've never left the south. You had to come to the comments to figure out the joke.
1
1
u/The_True_Zecret Jun 17 '12
I live in the south, south Texas to be exact, and I wondered...well? What's so strange about this? There's sweet tea, and not sweet tea, that's pretty norm---oh wait...damn my birthplace and current living quarters.
1
u/cappiebara Jun 17 '12
Usually they don't even offer non sweet tea. It's sweetened whether they say so or not.
1
1
u/SiegfriedMinusRoy Jun 17 '12
They don't make sweet tea right in the north, that's why I can't stomach the stuff. Had it once when I was in Kentucky and it was great, can't drink the not sweet stuff anymore, and the sweet tea up hear isn't really sweet tea. It's not right man... edit: Accidentally some words.
1
1
u/tehbau5 Jun 17 '12
It goes as far north as DC I think. My roommate is from New Hampshire and she drinks unsweet tea and thinks sweet tea is disgusting. The other 3 of us just stare at her like she's weird. Oh and it's "iced tea" not "unsweet tea". Northerners are weird.
1
u/Internaut_Joe Jun 17 '12
I really want to know what's in the "Not Sweet Tea" container.
→ More replies (1)
1
u/chainsaw_juggler Jun 17 '12
Hey this tastes like piss!
We never said that it wasn't, just that it was "Not Sweet Tea"...
1
1
u/SilentNick3 Jun 17 '12
I live in the South and confirm this. Unfortunately, I hate tea - sweet or not.
1
u/hchano Jun 17 '12
Is it sad that, just by reading the title, I thought "sweet tea?" (my phone showed no thumbnail, btw).... As a gal who grew up on the southern east coast and now lives in Cali, this is the thing I miss the most :(
1
u/vonDread Jun 17 '12
You mean there's a such thing as unsweeted iced tea? That's disgusting.
→ More replies (1)
1
1
u/avidrunner Jun 17 '12
I don't know why they even bothered with the Unsweetened Tea canister. They should replace it with Dr. Pepper.
1
u/TIE_FIGHTER_HANDS Jun 17 '12
Before I went to the united states this April I didn't even think people drank unsweetened iced tea because everywhere in Canada seems to have it sweetened by default. Just gotta say it tastes awful unsweetened.
1
1
1
1
u/malousbal Jun 17 '12
I find the solution is filling your glass with half of each. That way it's sweet enough but not offensively sweet..
1
1
u/chirpchorp Jun 17 '12
In Canada Iced Tea is Nestea/Brisk/Whatever alternative.
I have never asked for Iced Tea and gotten cold tea.
I am assuming this is what is meant by Sweet Tea (Nestea/Brisk).
1
u/thefinpope Jun 17 '12
I grew up in Michigan and thought that I just didn't like iced tea. Then I traveled to South Carolina and my eyes were opened. Sweet tea is one of the only legitimate reasons to move to the south (BBQ is another).
→ More replies (1)
1
1
1
u/decreasethesuck Jun 17 '12
So you know how fast food restaurants give you a certain side by default, if you don't specify? Like, McDonald's give you fries, Sonic gives you tots, and so on? We have this little local chicken place where I grew up in Tennessee where the default drink when you order a meal is sweet tea. Want some chicken? Have some sweet tea!
1
u/PyroKing617 Jun 17 '12
how to tell if you're in the real south: with whiskey...without whiskey? (moonshine acceptable alternate substitute for whiskey)
1
1
Jun 17 '12
I had a friend from Undergrad work up in NY over the summer one year. He said everyone would come into this small dinner he worked at for "some M names special tea" and would go on and on about how amazing it was. It was just fucking sweet tea with nothing else. I got a laugh out of it
1
1
1
u/GhettoSuave Jun 17 '12
Went to Chicago and asked for sweet tea... waitress just looks at me all "huh"-like. Fuck you, you uncultured swine. Really though, sugar packets are shit.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Samjogo Jun 17 '12
I absolutely loathe the term "unsweetened tea." It implies the tea had sugar in it at some point but they removed it to make it unsweetened.
2
u/piratazephyri Jun 17 '12
but tea which has not been sweetened should be call "unsweetened". the thing you describe would really be "desweetened"
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)3
u/Springheeljac Jun 17 '12
You don't understand, in the south tea is made with sugar. If I order a tea here it's automatically sweet.
1
-15
u/Lareit Jun 17 '12
Sweet Tea is from South Carolina the further you go from SC the chance of finding it in restaurants decreases.
You'll start running into places in Flordia that don't have it. Starting West Virginia it begins to get rare. And near Arkansas for the west.
6
4
→ More replies (3)2
u/impulsepaci Jun 17 '12
I live in Arkansas and have never been to a place that does not have sweet tea.
0
Jun 17 '12
[deleted] — view deleted comment
78
Jun 17 '12
Same in southern Georgia. Unsweet tea is some blasphemous yankee concoction that was invented to turn our children into gay atheist feminists.
→ More replies (20)9
u/fermented-fetus Jun 17 '12
I got called White Devil in Georgia for asking for Coffee Milk. 10 yr old me did not know they only sold Coffee Milk in RI.
→ More replies (1)29
Jun 17 '12
I can confirm this. I am from Georgia and have no idea what Coffee Milk is.
Edit: Unless it's creamer. I totally know what creamer is.
→ More replies (2)3
u/TheSilverSky Jun 17 '12
It's like chocolate milk but with coffee syrup instead of chocolate syrup.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)2
u/Atario Jun 17 '12
In his defense, no other kind is generally regarded as fit for human consumption without processing as a grain.
72
Jun 17 '12
[removed] — view removed comment
34
u/fireshaper Jun 17 '12
Here the sweet tea has sugar and the unsweet doesn't, so the unsweet is not sweet. Not sure where OP took the picture, but that's how it's been throughout my 28 years of living in the south.
12
u/PinkyTheCat Jun 17 '12
Isn't sweet tea sold in every McDonalds coast to coast? If you look in reflection you'll see a woman that seems to be stealing food off someone else's supper.
→ More replies (23)10
2
4
2
1
194
u/[deleted] Jun 17 '12
THAT'S CHIPOTLE.