The Worst Bottled Sweet Tea Comes From This Grocery Store Brand

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Sweet tea should be a refreshing, energizing beverage to drink while relaxing on a porch during a hot summer's day. Each sip should have a strong hit of sugar, with the earthy and bitter undertones of the black tea rounding out the taste. Our reviewer tried nine different sweet tea brands to find which ones achieved this deliciousness, and which others fell short. Unfortunately, when our reviewer tried Walmart's Great Value brand, it fell so far short that they found it "disgusting."

Sugar was the dominant flavor of this sweet tea. The brew was weak, so the earthy bitterness as a counter to the sweetness was not there. Instead, there was a strong chemical flavor that our reviewer said "clung to my taste buds like they'd been glued there." Sounds like a nightmare. They ended their review of the tea by stating they wouldn't drink it again, even if you paid them.

While the Great Value brand of sweet tea has little online discourse, when it is brought up, the opinions on the drink are mixed. On Reddit, a poster was "not impressed." On another Reddit thread, a commenter called it just "fine." From the sound of it, the few people on Reddit who talk about Great Value sweet tea feel it falls short at best, much like the brand's showing in our review of eight store-bought grape jelly brands.

Reviews of the company's sweet tea on Walmart's website are a little more charitable. There, it received 4.6 stars with over 14,000 ratings. One telling review says, "This is one of my guilty pleasures. I love the taste. My wife calls it, 'Caramel colored sugar water' but she drinks coffee so what does she know? (I guess she's kinda right, but don't tell her)." The tea seems to have an audience — one that prioritizes sweetness over balance. 

Those who do want more than "caramel colored sugar water" may be best served by our reviewer's top-ranked sweet tea, Milo's. Or, if you want to have full control of the balance of sweetness and other notes, you can always use our recipe to make your own sweet tea at home.