Sweet tea

ickplant@lemmy.world to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 1907 points –
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Sugar will dissolve in unsweet tea, it's just slower. If you can't dissolve it in cold tea, then it wouldn't stay in solution in hot tea that was cooled down.

For someone complaining about northerners not knowing 9th grade chemistry, it sure sounds like they weren't paying attention themselves.

Chemistry knowledge! Sweet tea is actually a supersaturated solution. That means there more sugar in the water than could normally be held in suspension. This is achieved by heating the water so you can dissolve more solute in and then chilling it. Remember theres at least 2 diabetes worth of sugar per glass.

That's kind of disgusting. So southern style sweet tea is basically just tea flavored simple syrup?

Yea, when my family did a trip down south, i asked for some sweet tea, thinking it was like Brisk, but i couldnt believe how sweet it was.

if your drink is sweeter than pop, its.. scary.

Yes, yes it is. To be fair, what do you think soda is though?

According to Wikipedia:

it is not unusual to find sweet tea with a sugar level as high as 22 degrees Brix, or 22 g per 100 g of liquid, a level twice that of Coca-Cola."

Coca-Cola already has a disgusting amount of sugar. The mere idea of this makes me queasy.

Yeah, I don't like my sweet tea like that, but I've been to people's houses that it's just diabetes in a glass.

That's stupid sweet but not supersaturated though. Saturated would be ~200g per 100g of water.

Depends on who makes it... McDonald's, 7-11, and the like use about twice the amount of sugar that's really necessary and it does not make it better.

Where did you get that? It would be like honey if that was correct. Also, that is not called suspension but solution, since the particles dissolve (unlike fat in milk, but that is an emulsion since the fat is a liquid).

I thought a supersaturated solution could easily be brought out of supersaturation by something like sticking a spoon in it? Am I misremembering?

I highly doubt that, since any shock or impurity would cause a supersaturated solution to separate into a solution and the excess sugar.

You're technically correct, but completely missing the point that folks want to be able to actually drink it a reasonably short time after it's been served.

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