Reviews you can trust.
See why.Bottled Iced Teas with Lemon
We were looking for iced teas that actually tasted like tea. Could any deliver?
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See Everything We Tested
What You Need To Know
Americans’ love of tea has blossomed in recent years, bringing new bottled iced varieties onto shelves and prompting familiar brands to revamp their formulas. We tasted seven top-selling brands of sweetened black teas with lemon, and not surprisingly, iced teas that actually tasted like tea (and real lemon) received the highest marks. The top performers extract flavor from concentrated tea leaves. Several brands we liked less use instant tea and seemed muddled. Tasters also liked balance. Our results didn’t correlate with the total amount of sugar; rather, teas with too little citric acid came across as “lemon candy” and teas with too much as “too acidic.”
Everything We Tested
Recommended
Tasters appreciated its "mellow tea flavor" and "good balance of flavor" and praised it as "bright" yet not "tart." Even the aroma won points for smelling like real tea leaves.
Some tasters liked the "lavender," "floral," and "refreshing honey undertones." Others faulted this tea's "minty finish" as slightly medicinal.
Recommended with reservations
This tea got mixed reviews. Some tasters praised it as "tangy and bright"; others criticized it as "vegetal," even "smoky." A few tasters complained it was "unbalanced between astringency and sweetness."
Snapple's brand-new formula got similarly mixed reviews. Its "strong lemon punch" spelled overload for many tasters, including one who assessed the tea as "bitter with a bile taste." Others, however, noted its successful balance between sweet and tart.
Not Recommended
The low price failed to make up for a drink that tasted "like hay steeped in tea." Although the actual sugar content was comparatively low, the extremely sweet, "medicinal" flavor prompted comparisons to "cough syrup" and "lemon candy."
"Cloying" and "fizzy," tasters complained, finding that its "artificial" and "overpowering" sweetness masked any other flavors, including that of tea. One taster compared it to "sweet, brown water."
Tasters compared this tea to "flat cola" and faulted it as strangely "bubbly." It lost points for its "medicinal," "fermented" taste. A few tasters said they'd never have known they were drinking tea if they hadn't been told.
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing.
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