Hopefully you all know what I’m talking about. It’s iced tea that tastes fine when you first put it to your lips but soon after you get a funky after taste. The biggest offenders of this tend to be fast food restaurants. So much so, I don’t even attempt to drink tea at FF restaurants.
Where is that funky after taste coming from? Dirty tea urns perhaps? Tea sitting too long at room temp?
Another thing, my mother is oblivious to the funky tea after taste. She claims not to be able to taste it when it’s blindingly obvious to me. I wonder how common that is?
Dirty dispensers? I know I’ve had more skunky tasting drinks of soda (any kind) in fast food restaurants, because no one cleans the machines and tubing, and mold grows.
A generalization, but during a car trip from Arkansas to New Hampshire it seemed to me that day old tea was regular in the North, and a rarity in the South.
Of course, we have the odious sweet tea.
Most likely an ice machine that has never been cleaned…or dirty water lines. The ice machines can get as dirty as a just used toilet bowl-bacterial levels even higher. For some reason, many restaurants do not clean them.:smack:
Another factor is that a lot of places make their tea from a mix. A number of those are sub-standard, and those that are passable have a very narrow dilution factor.
Soda dispenser nozzles get dirty fast - they’re constantly moist, rarely exposed to light, coated in sugar, and right in the temperature zone that mold and bacteria loves. If they’re not being regularly and vigorously cleaned it only takes a day or two for dirt and mold to start forming inside the nozzle, and since iced tea usually has more sugar in it than other soft drinks, it takes to tea dispensers even faster.
If you’re sly, you can easily remove the nozzle from the machine with your bare hand and check the underside of the white diffuser tip for any signs of black mold.
Depends on your jurisdiction. I don’t recall the health inspector ever looking at our soda nozzles at all (they were more interested in sanitizer strength, holding temperatures, and whether everyone’s food handler cards were up to date), but the corporation had in-house inspectors who came by four times a year and were more thorough than the city was.
If you ever go to Canada, (or at least Vancouver Island) be aware that they do not actually have Iced Tea. They have some gross canned lemony dishwater stuff that’s LOADED with sugar. However if you ask if they have unsweetened iced tea most places will say yes and bring you a glass of this sugary disgusting crap and watch you add your splenda packet to it.
One place was good though. They also did not have unsweetened iced tea but brought us hot tea (with bags) and glasses of ice. Loved that place!
I don’t know how often they check soda dispensers, but they ice makers (at least the big ones in the back room) are usually on every heath inspectors list. I’ve never had the pleasure of working on one, but I understand they get pretty gross (as mentioned upthread).
My heath inspector comes once a year to do an annual health inspection. Plus he’ll come by any time there’s a complaint. He also wears a few other hats so even when he’s not playing heath inspector he still shows up and I’m sure if he noticed something he’d point it out.
Commercial ice machines (the ones that your ice comes from when you’re in a restaurant) need to be cleaned regularly otherwise they get covered in slime mold. It’s pretty common. If you do a google search for it, you can find plenty of pictures as well as a lot of hits on local news reports doing scare stories about it.
Also, take a paper towel and wipe the aerator on some of the faucets in your house. You’ll probably find it there too. I assume it’s the same stuff, just left unchecked for years since it’s in an area that no one looks at unless it breaks.
many places don’t sell as much unsweet tea as sweet tea so they they try to stretch the time that they sell tea for a day or so by storing the unsweet in a tub in the refrigerator over night and then putting it bak out on the counter the next day, some for many days.
Some places just don’t clean the dispensers very well
Some places, Jason’s deli in particular switched to some nasty tasting tea bags. I watched them brew fresh tea and it still tasted old as soon as it was made.
I had one place tell me that tea can’t go bad becasue it is just water, I have other places tell me that the tea is just strong (bitter). I tell them no it is rotten and you must not drink unsweet tea.
almost as bad is places that “Accidentally” put sweet tea either in with the unsweet or do so in my glass, like I can’t tell. I make them dump and give me a fresh glass. If the tea is bad I make them refund my money. if they are consistently bad I don’t go back (except for jason’s deli, I drink water there)
