The Southern Sweet Tea Brand We Ranked As The Best In Our Taste Test

Southern-style sweet tea might be simple (all you need is tea, water, and sugar). However, that doesn't mean that all varieties of it are made equal, as Chowhound found when we ranked seven popular grocery store brands of sweet tea. The best? Milo's Famous Sweet Tea.

To make comparisons more fair, our writer only tasted the regular varieties of each contender brand, and not, say, lemon-flavored versions, or extra-sweet or low-sugar options. They were sampled cold, straight from the refrigerator, with no add-ins like ice or lemon that could water things down. Then, for the taste, she took the tea intensity and quality into account, the level of sweetness, and assessed whether there was a good balance between the two.

What set Milo's apart was the intensity of its tea flavor, as if the company threw in a few extra tea bags beyond what a standard recipe would suggest, and let them steep a bit longer. This gives the tea formidable tannins, but it can also add bitterness. No worries there, as Milo's balances this out with a solid hit of sugar (so, those who don't like their tea sweet should be warned). There's one downside to Milo's, and that's price: It was the most expensive in the ranking at just under $4 per gallon. Second-place Kroger, for example, was nearly a dollar cheaper, but considering that this is an entire gallon of tea, the difference arguably isn't that extreme.

It seems that Chowhound's ranking isn't alone in its positive view of Milo's: Other rankings tend to put it right up top for being the closest to a real, classic, homestyle Southern iced tea. The fact that the tea shines through, complete with its tannins, is usually held up as a key reason for this. If you were to ask the people at Milo's, they'd probably point to the simplicity of the tea: It's proudly advertised as only having three ingredients: filtered water, cane sugar, and tea. Some consumer reviews tend to agree that the simplicity is how Milo's comes out on top, with a homemade kind of taste to it. Perhaps most notably, a survey of thousands of Alabama residents also found that Milo's is a "cult favorite" and placed it on top. Considering sweet tea is the unofficial official drink of the South, this is probably a reliable group of people to ask about it.

Still, it wouldn't be fair to say that there's unanimous agreement about Milo's being the best. It does receive occasional criticism for being too sweet. There's a solution, though: Milo's also offers an unsweetened option, which you could sweeten yourself or mix with the sweetened version to strike the right balance.

And which sweet tea should you avoid? Perhaps surprisingly, famed tea brand Lipton came in last in our ranking, but not because of the (false) rumors that it has worms in it. Rather, it's too sweet, not helped by the addition of Stevia leaf extract — a processed, non-nutritive sugar substitute — into the mix.