Now some of you will say this doesn't belong here, I know.  But I had to post it somewhere, I was tired of mediocre iced tea at home, fixed it, and now I want to get the word out.

I "love" iced tea.  I drink it all the time.  I drink it without sweetener, without lemon, just straight.  Maybe you add things, maybe those things help you to pretend that the generic iced tea brand you buy at the store is as good as the last fine restaurant where you experienced "good", brewed iced tea.  Or maybe, even if it did before reading this article, now you'll forever be unable to ignore a subpar iced tea.

If so, I'll feel justified in writing this. :)  You'll be one less person who just "puts up" with subpar quality food at home.  I mean, home cooked food is supposed to be "better" than restaurants in this age of generic, cookie cutter restaurants, right?  So why put up with iced tea that isn't as good?

For a while, I was eating out nearly every night, and slowly, I began avoiding places that served subpar iced tea.  Then finally I couldn't even stand the taste of my own iced tea. 

First I began searching my local grocery stores, looking for premium iced tea.  There was one standard iced tea, one instant iced tea (blech!), one store brand iced tea, and about 30+ brands of herbal tea.  Umm, herbal tea is not the next step up from iced tea, its completely different.  You don't spend every day drinking iced tea and think to yourself "I want to drink flowers". 

So of course, being a web designer, my next step was to check the web.  I searched through a couple different sites, and finally after much scrutinizing, I found one I'm rather pleased with.  Harney & Sons.

Why aren't these guys in grocery stores?  How come more sites don't talk about them? How come they aren't paying me for this article.... ;)  Wait, scratch that last part.

I began with buying a variety of different flavored iced teas in nice little tin cans.  I wasn't sure about flavored iced teas, as my only experience with flavored iced teas were those syrupy things at some restaurants (such as the ubiquitous raspberry iced tea) and I was worried they would be sweet.  I was pleasantly surprised though!  Merely the flavor, if you want it to be sweet (which I don't ) you have to add sweetener. 

Of course my next step was to buy their larger quantities. 30 quarts worth for 12 bucks.  Dang!  Thats a heck of a deal.  I drink 2 quarts a day so I drink a huge amount of iced tea every day (with lots and lots of ice) and it only costs me about 1.25. :)

The flavor is great, better than most restaurants I've ever been to, cheap, and the service has been fantastic.  I order quickly and they ship it within about a week. 

Do you have another source for iced tea? Do you disagree with me?  Talk with me about it on the forums here, maybe we can start a iced tea lovers club or something. :)