Schneider`s - 5 Reviews

A Schneider's beverage in a can just seems wrong to me. Actually any of the Pennsylvania tea company's products in cans just doesn't sit well with me. I am so used to them coming in plastic bottles/jugs or cartons and that is how I like them. Those packaging give them an air of cheapness that I find oddly charming. I mean I still drank the contents of this can, but the entire time I wish the packaging was different. I can imagine that anyone not from the area would probably think I was being insane, but I am a fan of tradition and the way things used to be.

This is a very sweet beverage. There are 72g of sugar in this 23.5oz can. Actually I take that back, I just did the math and 24oz of Coke would have 78g of sugar. 72 is still a lot, but not as obscene as I previously though. You probably shouldn't drink all of this in one sitting though. This claims to be 50/50, but in reality it tastes more like 75/25 with lemonade taking up most of the flavor, but neither it nor the tea taste very authentic. It's like they took their lemon tea and just added more lemon to it. I know that shouldn't be much different than a lemonade tea, but there is something different about it, and I'm not a huge fan. It's a perfectly serviceable drink that I'm sure most people would love, but it just wasn't sitting right with me.

While I think of this as a cheaper, average tea, I'm sure 99% of people in the United States think that this is what all tea tastes like. It's overly sweet, in a way that puts it on the brink of being straight up sugar water; there are 50g of sugar in this 16oz bottle. The thing that really saves this tea is that they use natural raspberry flavor, and it shows, as it actually tastes like berries and not just fake flavoring. It's not my favorite tea in the world, but I would happily accept it if it were ever presented to me. I would actually drink a couple gallons of this if they were places before me. I'm a glutton like that when it comes to tea.

What is it about Pennsylvania that makes them love iced tea so much? I'm pretty sure there are more tea companies per capita than anywhere else in the world. It seems that every little region of the state has it's own dairy farm that puts out tea. While we're at it, what is the correlation between a dairy farm and iced tea? How the world do they even come close to fitting together? Is it just because the farmhands like to drink it while they are working?

The Pittsburgh area has Schneiders as it's local dairy, and their tea is pretty standard for this sort of fare. It's made with a tea mix, which is a thumbs down in my book, but outside of their lemon tea the flavoring makes up for it. With this particular tea cooler you get an artificial lime flavor that could be likened to the flavor of a green Popsicle. It doesn't taste like nature's lime, but it's a familiar taste, so we accept it for what it is and enjoy it all the same. It's a very smooth tea, and not harsh as all, which is the case with a lot of lime flavored varieties. It's nothing to go crazy over, but it's good enough for how inexpensive it is, especially since they use real sugar.

When I was in 4th or 5th grade I got into skateboarding. It started out just skating in front of my friend's house, where we built a launch ramp and later had a quarter pipe. Eventually we grew bored of the scenery and took our adventure on the road. By that I mean we put on our backpacks, and fit our decks between the bag and our back so we could ride our bikes to new exciting places to skate. It seemed like we would ride forever to find a cool new spot. We would always end up at this one spot that had a little vending machine hidden amongst some bushes. It was no ordinary vender though because it only dispensed cartons of juice, well sugar water disguised as juice. They weren't very good, but it was always a spot that we would take a break, since they only cost a quarter.

While I was in Pittsburgh recently I found this carton of iced tea in a corner store. Sure they had the same tea in bottles, but the fact that it was in a carton made me think of all those days 25 years ago filled with riding bikes and skating. Holy crap I don't think I have ever felt as old as I do typing that out. The dust of my bones aside, I paid the 75 cents for the carton (damn inflation) with a smile and walking into the blinding sunlight.

As soon as I took a sip I remembered that some memories are better left in the past. The contents of the carton were the lowest common denominator of tea. The ingredients listed instant tea and powdered lemon juice, what on Earth is powdered lemon juice? It blew my mind that they would spend the money to use real sugar, but then skimp on the other ingredients. Overall it just tasted like overly sweetened tea water. After a couple more tentative sips I asked myself, “why the hell am I still drinking this?” and I dropped it into a conveniently placed garbage can. My childhood is now dead.

Western Pennsylvania is Tea Cooler Country. There are more dairies there that produce non-brewed iced teas than I have ever come across anywhere else. I must say that they are all delicious. Most companies that make teas like this overly sweeten them with HFCS to a point that it seems like it's flavored sugar water and not tea at all. PA knows how to do it correctly.

I would really like to visit one of these dairies. I wonder if it would be interesting, or just a bunch of barns filled with cows hooked up to those weird hose things. They are proof that technology can be terrifying. Other ways that technology is terrifying is that this drink is made with "instant tea solids." It just doesn't sound right. It sounds like it should be chunky and completely disgusting, but the drink is completely liquid and delicious. Sure it's on the very very sweet side of things, but it's a tea cooler and that is how they are supposed to be. What I found to be surprising about this drink is that it actually tastes like raspberries and not the weird sweet syrupy fake raspberry flavor that a lot of teas have. Well done Schneiders. I think Mike works for one of your relatives. Well Zach, are they your kin?