Bojangles Hard Sweet Tea bests most bottled teas, but does that mean it’s good?
READ MORE
News & Observer Taste Tests
Food writer Drew Jackson is joined by others on The News & Observer’s staff to sample and pass judgment on new (and sometimes classic) food and drinks.
Expand All
Sweet tea was sacred to me growing up.
My family brews tea in an ancient enameled saucepan, the sides stained by the thousands and thousands of sweetened pots made over the years. We don’t measure the water, we just fill it to the darkened line, boil, sugar, dilute by half and pour in glasses absolutely filled with ice that hisses and pops as it’s bathed in the still-steaming tea.
There was a pitcher on every weekday dinner table, every holiday spread. We were brand-loyal to Luzianne like no other tea existed on earth.
Well, this new Bojangles offering ain’t that nostalgic tea for sipping on the porch with grandma.
The Charlotte-based fast food chain has launched its own hard sweet tea, partnering with Boone brewer Appalachian Mountain Brewery to make a spiked tea in a can. The new adult beverage from the biscuit-making giant joins the recent fray of nostalgic drinks made with alcohol. There’s now a Cheerwine beer from Charlotte’s Noda Brewing and even a new Sunny D Vodka Seltzer.
The new Bojangles concoction is available starting Monday, March 13, but The News & Observer received a pair of tasters in the mail.
Here’s what we thought.
Bojangles Hard Sweet Tea taste test
Poured into a glass, the spiked tea is rich and dark and surprisingly flat with a only the weakest pulse of carbonation. It says beer on the label and it’s brewed by a North Carolina brewery, but in even bigger letters it says “Hard Sweet Tea” and that’s what it looks like — as if poured straight from a gallon jug and into a pint glass.
On the nose, the Bojangles Hard Tea will be familiar to anyone who’s ever stepped out of the sunshine and into a darkened dive bar in the afternoon, faintly musty and sour with a bit of stale alcohol.
But the first sip is promising, tasting unmistakably like tea — sweet but not cloying, and with a bit more body than most beers, leaning towards syrupy. The tea completely masks any taste of beer or alcohol, even at 5 percent by volume.
The Bojangles hard tea seems intent to shake up the spiked seltzer market. This isn’t tea for sipping on a summertime porch, it’s for riding jet skis. And while it’s not as refreshing as a White Claw down by the lake, it offers a genuine taste of ice cold tea.
In fact, perhaps by accident, Bojangles and AMB have created one of the most genuine tasting packaged teas out there, topping the Brisks and Snapples of the world, which taste like days-old tea boiled with lemon candy.
Most people who love sweet tea find anything in the bottled undrinkable. There are so many brands promising to have finally solved the mystery of bottling a fresh-tasting sweet tea. Each one tastes old and stale and tooth-achingly sweet, or worse.
But that doesn’t mean the new hard tea isn’t itself bested by a fresh Bojangles sweet tea picked up at the drive thru and spiked with an airplane bottle of bourbon at a tailgate.
Hard tea v. soft tea (with Bo Rounds on the side)
For comparison’s sake, call it a control, we sampled the new spiked tea alongside a fresh 32 ounce sweet tea from the Bojangles on Western Boulevard in Raleigh. And as a pairing, we tried the teas with the finest of all fast food fixings, Bo’ Rounds, thinking if a sweet tea can’t dance with salty, crunchy perfection, it shouldn’t be dancing at all.
Right off, the fresh sweet tea offered clarity and comfort. Bojangles brews a top tier fast food tea, and despite being somewhat sweeter than the boozy tea, was lighter and more refreshing.
With the Bo’ Rounds the comparison was only clearer. The bite of crispy potato goodness turned the hard tea a bit sour and began to show some of the alcohol. With the drive-thru tea there wasn’t any great surprise, just the bliss of sugar and salt and ice cold tea.
Tea time: The verdict
Bojangles Hard Sweet Tea can top many of the non-alcoholic bottled teas out there, but it still pales compared to its inspiration, a fresh sweet tea out of a styrofoam cup.
Where and when to buy Bojangles Hard Sweet Tea
The new Bojangles Hard Sweet Tea hits shelves Monday, March 13, in the Southeast. It will be available in 12-packs of 12-ounce cans and as single 16-ounce tallboys. The hard tea won’t be for sale at any Bojangles location, but you can find it at select retailers in the Carolinas, including:
- Food Lion
- Lowes
- Circle K
- QT (QuikTrip)
- Sheetz
- Spinx
- Walmart
- Ingles
This story was originally published March 13, 2023 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Bojangles Hard Sweet Tea bests most bottled teas, but does that mean it’s good?."
.JPG)