I can’t drink unsweetened ice tea. Sweetened iced tea is the only way to drink it…and no you can’t add sugar to iced unsweetened tea. Come on yan…err…northerners…wise up!
I agree with you on unsweetened ice tea, Asmodeus. I love sweetened ice tea though, my fav!
Actually, all iced tea sucks. Same with hot tea, while we’re at it. Bleagh.
Well, here’s a vote for cold unsweetened iced tea. No sugar, no chemical sweetener, no lemon, no mint, no “hint-of-raspberry” or such. Crisp and refreshing. I go through a pitcher every couple of days.
I’ve lived almost all of my life in the South, and this is the way I’ve always had it.
My Floridian wife (her family’s been there for generations) converted me to sweet tea a long time ago.
And no, you can’t make tea sweet by stirring sugar into cold unsweetened tea. The sugar all sinks to the bottom; you get most of a glass of unsweet, and about an inch worth of stuff that’s too sweet for consumption by anyone whose age is in double digits.
Is this right?? I seem to remember from my chemistry classes eons years ago that a liquid can only take so much solid into solution, and no more. Hot or cold – though now that I think about it, it seems that heat increased how much you could get into solution. However, if it were more, it would come out of solution once it cooled. The reason I remember is that putting sugar into iced tea was used as an illustration.
Ye scientists? Can ye explain?
(A linguistic aside: Usually in the South, you hear it referred to as “ice tea” though “iced tea” is correct: tea that has been iced.)
Here in Kentucky we seem to be split on the sweet vs. unsweet issue. Most restaurants serve it unsweetened and you have to add it yourself. Go further South and it comes sugared. Personally, I like it with lemon only, or maybe a sprig of fresh mint. Julip, anyone? 
Hell yes. Unsweetened iced tea blows. It’s undrinkable. I have to add 8 packets of regular sugar to it before I can even think about taking a sip.
Stop on by - I’ll share a glass with ya!
Sugar, lemon, flavorings, blech! And don’t get me started on flavored “Coffee”!
Thank goodness for people like divemaster and Missy2U. They’re keeping the world safe for those who like the taste of tea, as opposed to the taste of sugar. 
I’m with you, Asmodeus et. al. Unsweetened tea tastes like it came from the rain gutter. I’m also a fan of raspberry iced tea (made with real raspberries, though.)
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I love these conversations… I feel like I’m back in study hall. Without being told to shut up every five minutes. And the spitball fights. And the homework.
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Sweetened iced tea makes me do spit-takes. Blech!
You Southerners are all a bunch of heathens.
Call me ignorant, but how do you make sweetened tea if you can’t add sugar to unsweetened tea?
I was assuming he meant you had to add the sugar when the tea’s still hot … hence my diversion into the whole “how much sugar will go into solution” thing.
Or, you could always sweeten your tea with honey. Or stevia.
Ewwww… I only drink tea when I’m forced to. I’ll go for days without drinking anything before I’ll finally make tea. Except the fake tea mix stuff that comes in a can… mmmm. Good stuff. I usually drink way too much and give myself a bellyache.
The last time I went to the states I forgot about your unusual attitude towards iced tea. It was a hot day and I decided I wanted a glass, so I ordered some with luch. I took one sip and I just about spit it across the restaurant. In Canada if you ask for iced tea it comes with lemon and sugar so it was quite a shock to drink a tub of cold, STRONG tea. In a couple of restaurants I asked for chips with my hamburger and I got strange looks. I realized why when they brought the burger garnished with a bag of potato chips instead of french fries. I guess the British influence is stronger up here than I realized.
Keith
First off, I must add to the debate: Unsweetened iced tea is like drink a glass of wet dust… I’d rather drink my own enema than have to choke down unsweetened iced tea. I never understood drinking something that makes you MORE thirsty (as this invariably does).
now, as the resident chemist here, to answer this minor hijack question:
Well, please remember that life is no where near as simple as things were made out to be in High School Chemistry class. It is true that solubility curves (which relate solubility to temperature) work fairly well for ionic substances (salts, like sodium chloride), some things should be kept in mind:
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The absolute amount of an ionic substance that can be dissolved in water is dependant on the temperature of the water, so long as the water is kept at a constant temperature throughout the experiment. It is possible to get more into solution (creating a supersaturated solution) by dissolving the substance and then cooling the solution down.
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Sugar is not an ionic substance, and so behaves differently with regards to dissolution.
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Dissolving is not one process, but several. The energy barrier for getting sugar into solution may be very high (and thus adding sugar to cold water doesn’t get you very far) but the energy for keeping sugar dissolved in water may is very low. These are not neccearily the same process. If you have a solution of sugar and water, and boil it to remove some of the water, for instance, you never get back crystaline sugar, like you will with salt. You merely create thicker and thicker sugar solutions, until the sugar itself chars (carmelizes). If you heat all of the water off of a salt solution, you get crystaline salt. If you keep heating a sugar solution until all of the water stops coming off, you get pure carbon, not your original sugar.
Now, I’ve gone way off track, but I wanted to emphasize that dissolving sugar in water is not as cut-and-dry of a process as was taught in High School Chemistry.
I like sugar
I’m with David B on this one.
All tea pretty much sucks. Same with coffee.
Thanks for the explanation, jayron 32, thought I didn’t mean to hijack! (That seems to be frowned upon 'round here. Since it was brought up, I thought it relevent to ask the question.)
And … hey! I took chemistry in college, too! :: takes a swig of unsweetened, lemony tea, sticks out tongue and flounces off ::
I have to make a confession here which is tantamaount to treason: I am from Georgia, and yet I prefer unsweetened tea. Lord knows I never got a taste of unsweetened tea growing up. It was all sweetened to the point of syrupiness. As I got older, I just started putting less and less sugar in my tea until I realized that I really enjoyed that pure tea flavor, unadulterated except for an accent of lemon juice.
Where do I turn in my Southerner card?
(And can I keep it if I write an essay on my love for pecan pie?)