Review of Arizona's Sweet Tea

While at the Jessup, Maryland Dollar Tree about a month ago, I wanted a cheap caffeine fix. I decided to try their Arizona Sweet Tea. It costs only a $1, comes in a 42 ounce plastic bottle and, they had it in the refrigerated section so, it was already cold.

In my opinion, the tea turned out to be pretty lacklustre i.e. it wasn't terribly good. For starters, it didn't seem very sweet. This may be because they used high fructose corn syrup instead of real sugar to sweeten it. Sweet tea is supposed to be so sweet that you would get a huge sugar high from drinking it. I didn't get that from this product.

One slight plus to the product is they add ascorbic acid so you get 100% of the vitamin C you need in an 8 ounce glass of the tea.

Arizona claims the tea is real brewed. Maybe but, the tea itself isn't noteworthy either. Some teas have particularly nice flavors depending on what you like example: Russian Caravan tea has a nice smoky taste to it. This tea didn't have any noteworthy flavor to it. I would guess they used plain black tea.

Overall, the best thing I can say about this tea is it's cheap. As I mentioned previously, a 42 ounce bottle cost just a $1 at Dollar Tree. I don't know how caffeine it has in it so, I can't say how much of a charge you'll get from drinking some of this tea. As far as thumb scores go, I give this tea 2 thumbs down. I'd recommend you drink some other kind of tea. Happy drinking all!

Review of Wegman's Loose Tea Selection

One of the things Wegmans supermarkets has really impressed me with is their loose tea selection. In some supermarket chains, you'll be lucky if you find any tins of loose tea. For tea aficionados, loose tea is the way to go even though it does create more of mess as you have to clean the diffuser or the tea pot out afterwards depending on how you have the tea steep i.e. does it float loosely like in my Teavana Teaperfect tea pot or does it steep in a diffuser where the tea floats in a holed container (many times of some kind of metal) of some sort. Loose tea supposedly brews a better cup of tea as you can get more of the ingredients in the tea vice ground up bits example: in the Wegman's Masala Chai Black tea blend I tried this morning, one the spices in it is cloves. When I spooned out the tea into tea kettle, I could see entire cloves in the mix.

Wegmans offers an incredible 51 tin selection of loose teas where customers can scoop out what blend they want into seal able bags which you then put on a scale, enter the product code, find out how much your quantity of the tea will cost and if it's agreeable with you, hit the print button to where it prints out a sticker with the name, amount, price per pound, price of the purchase and a bar code that you can scan at the register scanner.

Prices on the loose tea vary depending on how fancy a blend you're buying. Wegmans sells Brazilian roasted mate tea for $14.99 a pound. The chai I tried was $29.99 a pound. They have an organic Assam tea for $35.99 a pound and, I believe they have a Japanese green tea which sells for $99 a pound. Keep in mind a pound of tea will go a long way as you'll only be using one teaspoon or more per 8 ounce cup of tea.

The chai tea I tried this morning had a nice flavor though I did brew it longer than the recommended time as I like a pretty strong cup of tea. I plan to try other blends of theirs and see how they stack up.

I do have one complaint with them though the problem may be with just their Columbia, Maryland store. They can be bad about keeping the stock on the shelves. I visited their Columbia store to get some the mentioned Masala Chai tea and, they were out. A sales assistant told me they should get it back in within a week. They didn't. After repeated visits where they were still out, I went to another Wegmans (their Crofton, Maryland store) where I was finally able to buy some of the tea.

Overall, as I mentioned, I've been really impressed with Wegmans choice of loose teas. They also offer tins of Twinings loose tea which I like. Wegmans in my opinion is one chain that offers one of the best selections of tea among supermarket chains though I understand that folks in the United States of America aren't the biggest tea drinkers. Still, I give them a big 2 thumbs up on them for this. It's one thing I really like about their stores and will keep me coming back to them. Happy tea drinking all!

Update: November 9, 2020 I'd read on a different website that Wegmans was doing away with their loose leaf tea tins. The report was true as that is what has happened at their Columbia, Maryland store. In it's place, their offering various loose leaf teas in pre-weighed bags. Wegmans still has a good selection of teas in both forms: loose leaf and tea bag. So, I'd still recommend them to someone if they like tea. Still, it is a real bummer that they got rid of the tins.