7 Sweet Tea Brands, Ranked Worst To Best

My mom bought an iced tea brewer when I was a teenager and toyed around with the ratios and processes until she got her sweet tea exactly the way she wanted it. On the weekends, I'd sit on the computer chatting with my friends, going back to the pitcher for glass after glass of sweet tea until it was gone ... maybe that's why she stopped making it. Simple though it may be, not everyone has the time or the patience to make their own sweet tea at home (I certainly don't most days). But not all store-bought brands (or fast food sweet teas) can live up to the homemade version.

Sweet tea should be, of course, very sweet — somewhere in the same ballpark as soda and juice. Yes, that sweet. The reason is that Southern sweet tea is steeped to death: most recipes call for steeping 15 minutes or more in freshly boiled water, while some even recommend reboiling the tea bags until the water is clear.

This process extracts a ton of tannins, which give things like cabernet sauvignon and black coffee their bitterness. The sugar (and occasionally lemon) in sweet tea is meant to balance that bitterness, but not bury it completely. A hint of bitterness must still be there. Sweet tea without it lacks complexity. If it doesn't make me smack my lips a little bit, I don't want it.

I know, I know. I couldn't believe it, either. Lipton has always been synonymous with sweet tea for me, and I usually use its bags when I make sweet tea at home. But the brewed, sweetened, and bottled Lipton tea ... I wouldn't go so far as to say that it was bad (it's definitely not worms-in-the-tea-bag bad), but it didn't taste like sweet tea at all. It just tastes sweet.

And after looking at the ingredients, I can see why. Whereas nearly every other brand I tried was made of tea, water, sugar, and either citric acid or potassium phosphate (or, in one case, both) as a preservative, Lipton's sweet tea has more ingredients than Pepsi. I mean that literally — I have a bottle of each sitting on my desk right now. There are three different preservatives in Lipton's sweet tea, plus phosphoric acid (also found in Pepsi), citrus pectin, natural flavor, and sometimes Stevia Leaf Extract. It's not marked as "diet" or even "reduced sugar"; it says it has 50 percent fewer calories than soda, but so does every other sweet tea I tried. This is the regular Lipton sweet tea, and it's partially sweetened with an artificial sweetener. Whatever it is, it's not sweet tea.

I really wanted to rate Arizona (which isn't actually from Arizona at all) higher than this, for purely nostalgic reasons. I used to stop and grab a 99-cent can at the convenience store on my way to my first job at Kings Island, so sipping it now feels like a blast from the past. And it is still tasty. It has a mild tea flavor and just the right amount of sweetness, and it's certainly pleasant to drink over ice.

But compared to most of the other options I tried, it just can't compete. The tea flavor is mild, maybe even a little weak, with no tannin bite at all. It might work well in a tea-based cocktail or mocktail — I can confirm it is pretty good in a half-and-half with lemonade — but on its own, it's nothing to write home about. And at $3.89, it's not even the least expensive gallon on this list. So while I might still grab a can from time to time for nostalgia's sake, if I want to have a gallon in my fridge for summer, I'm going to look to other brands.

Gold Peak sweet tea is crystal clear, has a mild tea flavor, and an appropriately intense level of sweetness. Like Arizona, it's very pleasant to drink, and though the tea's flavor is more pronounced, it still tastes a bit weak, without any noticeable bite. I'm not surprised to find that it ranked poorly in our comparison of canned and bottled teas, too.

Admittedly, Gold Peak was a difficult one for me to rate. On one hand, I know this is exactly the flavor a lot of cafes and restaurants go for — the kind of places that ask if you want your iced tea sweet or unsweetened. But while the difference is subtle, I would argue that it's not sweet tea, but sweetened tea. And sweetened tea is fine — I don't mind getting it when I'm out to eat from time to time. But if I'm buying sweet tea, I'm looking for a very specific flavor profile, and Gold Peak sweet tea just isn't it. And at $3.68 for 76 ounces, it's not unreasonably priced, but it's still more expensive per ounce than even better sweet teas.

Great Value sweet tea is remarkably similar to Gold Peak. The primary difference between the two is that Great Value has more noticeable tannins than Gold Peak, though still not quite enough for my liking. On top of that, it's much sweeter, in a way that's a bit overwhelming.

To its credit, Great Value almost admits it's not quite sweet tea: it's "sweet brewed iced tea." And while other sweet tea brands use citric acid (which acts as both a preservative and flavor enhancer, similar to lemon juice), Great Value sweet iced tea uses potassium sorbate, which brings nothing to the flavor party. At $3.27 a gallon, it's a very reasonable price, but it's still more expensive than teas that ranked even higher.

However, I will say, were I not sampling all of these teas side by side with the sole intention of ranking them methodically, I wouldn't complain about Great Value sweet tea at all. I would be perfectly happy to be served a glass of it at a cookout or a restaurant — it's just not quite as good as the top three on this list.

Pure Leaf sweet tea has just three ingredients — black tea, sugar, and citric acid — and it tastes very close to the sweet teas that my mom would brew at home when I was younger. Compared to Gold Peak, Pure Leaf's tea flavor is more intense, and though the bite of the tannins isn't strong, it's definitely there. Compared to Great Value, the sweetness of Pure Leaf sweet tea is more balanced — almost, but not quite, too sweet.

My main complaint is the price. At $3.69, it's in the same ballpark as the other teas I tried, but that's for 64 ounces. It doesn't make sense to pay that for a half-gallon when you can get a gallon of a better tea for less. If I were at a convenience store and they didn't have my top pick from this list, Pure Leaf would be my backup choice, but it just wasn't enough to come out on top.

If Pure Leaf sweet tea is almost what I grew up on, Kroger sweet tea is spot on. It has a really nice balance between the tea's bitterness and the sweetness of the real sugar. Its ingredients are almost identical to Great Value's, with the only difference being that Kroger's black tea blend includes hibiscus. I'm a big fan of hibiscus tea on its own, and I have a hunch Kroger sweet tea gets at least some of its pleasant bitterness from the hibiscus.

It's the only tea I tried that's even a little bit cloudy — all the rest were crystal clear. Though cloudy tea might be a little less attractive, it doesn't affect the taste or quality of the tea. It's just a reaction between the tannins and caffeine in the tea at a low temperature, and to me, it gives Kroger's sweet tea a familiar, home-brewed vibe. And best of all, at $3.29 per gallon, it's the least expensive of the sweet teas I tried. If I'm bringing beverages to a backyard barbecue, this is the one.

Once I tasted Kroger's sweet tea, I really thought it would be the winner. But I took one sip of Milo's, sighed, and said, "That's the one." It has the most intense tannins of any of the teas I tried. Where Kroger's tea is what you get if you follow the instructions on the back of the tea box, Milo's is what you get when you throw in an extra handful of tea bags and boil it 5 minutes longer — which is exactly how sweet tea should taste.

There's plenty of sugar in Milo's regular sweet tea to counteract the bitterness, but if you subscribe to the philosophy of sweetening tea until the spoon stands up in it, there's also an extra-sweet version, though it's more limited in availability. At $3.99, it's the most expensive gallon I tried, which makes it a little pricey to bring to a birthday party. But to have on hand in my own fridge for the summer, it's going to be Milo's every time.

I tried every sweet tea I could get my hands on from grocery stores near me:  Kroger, Walmart, and Meijer. I tried to get some from Aldi too, but it was out of stock every time I went in. Every brand has different varieties, like extra-sweet and lemon, so to keep things as equal as possible, I went with the regular sweet tea from each.

Then I tasted them at full strength from the fridge without any alterations (the ice and the lemon slices in the picture were just props for the photo shoot). I then ranked them according to flavor — specifically, the quality and intensity of the tea flavor, the sweetness level, and the overall balance between the two. I also considered the value of each relative to its price. After all, it's tea. Yes, it's delicious, but the only thing stopping anyone from making it at home is time and a pitcher, so unless it's the best darn sweet tea in the world, it shouldn't cost much. Of course, prices vary by store and location, so while I mention them here, they are for side-by-side comparison only.