Anybody who knows the Lady Doctor Burgers knows she loves two things: 1. talking in third person, and 2. drinking tea. She often gets tired of the first, but never of the second.

One of her– ok I’m tired of this shit– one of MY favorite varieties of tea is Thai iced tea, specifically the magnificently tasty kind you get in Thai restaurants that are hyper-sweetened and you have to stir the evaporated milk mixture in at the top. You know what I’m talking about, right? I’ve often expressed interest to others about making it at home, have researched the methods, but have never found the means to successfully recreate the experience at home.

I am told the key is:
-Thai red tea
-evaporated milk
-about 80 pounds of sugar

Serve chilled and enjoy the hell out of it.

The problem is the elusive first ingredient, the Thai red tea. I have been to just about every Asian market, small and large, in the Philadelphia area, and have never seen this stuff. Maybe it’s because I can’t read Thai (I am working on it, goddammit) or I’m overwhelmed by the amount of tea at these places, but I have just never encountered it.

In my journey to have THAI ICED TEA AT HOME!, I have experienced lingual hell. The first Thai Iced Tea product I saw was a friendly-looking orange beverage in a glass bottle at Assi, the large Korean market where all the non-Teavana products mentioned in this review were purchased. Thinking I had struck gold, I bought a bottle each for Reverend Evelyn, Commodore Xiane, and myself. I brought it home to refrigerate it, eagerly awaiting the moment I would finally have THAI ICED TEA AT HOME!.

It tasted like hot dogs. I can’t believe I was so surprised that something so orange tasted like hot dogs, but there it was. The drink was suffused with this awe-inspiringly disgusting Hormel brand smoked flavor, which is something I did not want anywhere near my tea. I was put off the idea of THAI ICED TEA AT HOME! (or elsewhere) for a while.

Tasting it again in its proper environment, a restaurant, I was once again enthused about trying to have it in the comfort of my own dirty kitchen whenever I pleased. I even had some from a street cart in Portland and it was just as delicious in a plastic cup as it would have been in those swanky tall glasses they serve you with at the restaurants. What was the secret to achieving perfect, portable Thai iced tea?

I thought I had found it in DeDe Instant Thai Tea Powder. I wasn’t completely naive going into it, but I was far too hopeful. I was given a brush with reality when I ordered a bubble tea, Thai Iced Tea flavor, from the Assi Bubble Tea stand, and it had a mild, but still unpleasant, smoky flavor. This should have deterred me, but I had already purchased the tea powder, and I knew at the very least it would be fun to write about.

Before I even got to try the DeDe powder, however, Prince T.J. gave me Thai loose tea from Teavana. I knew, then, that I could create

THE ULTIMATE THAI TEA SHOWDOWN

(I need some WordArt there. Send me your fanciest WordArt, readers)

I made them simultaneously, and tasted them at pretty much the same time (though I used a palette cleanser because I am a professional, you see.) to have a fair idea of how they measured up back to back.

Packaging:
DeDe Instant Thai Tea Powder:
The powder had a cute, cheery, colorful wrapper announcing the ingredients and the value of it being 3 in 1: sugar, milk, AND tea.
5/6 burgers

Teavana Thai Tea:
The loose tea was rolled up in a Teavana bag. Kind of generic.
3/6 burgers

Preparation:
DeDe:
Boil hot water, stir. Indeed instant.
6/6 Burgers

Teavana:
Holy god so you have to boil the water, and then pour it in a SPECIAL TEAMAKER or tea ball or whatever you use because it’s loose tea and requires all sorts of special tools. Then you have to wait 3 minutes for it to brew. Fortunately I really enjoy the Teavana teamaker; it’s extremely novel.
5/6 Burgers

Appearance:
DeDe:
Unbrewed it looked like chalk dust. Brewed it was bright orange, which was not a good sign to me. It was highly reminiscent of the first bottled Thai Iced Tea I purchased, and the thought of hot-dog tasting tea made me think it looked like food-processed hot dogs. Hot dog alchemy. This is making me nauseous.
1/6 Burgers

Teavana:
There’s something very pleasant and potpourri-like about their loose teas. Brewed it looked like any black tea.
5/6 Burgers

Taste:
This is what’s most important so I’m giving it a 12 burgers rating system.

DeDe:
It didn’t taste like hot dogs, that’s the good news. It took me a couple sips to figure out what it DID taste like, and I finally settled on kettle corn. What the fuck, guys. Tea should not taste like any savory junk food. Sometimes tea tastes like a basement. Sometimes it tastes like a flower. Way too often it tastes like someone’s front yard. But in my estimation, it should not taste like anything that you could buy at Wal-Mart’s HEALTHY VITTLES section.

I made my mom try it and she said there was something “oddly comforting” about it, and I felt less bad for basically treating her like a guinea pig and approaching her with the good ol’ “Here, taste this! It’s disgusting!!!!” maneuver.

3/12 Burgers for being “oddly comforting”.

Teavana:
It’s pretty good, though I detected a faint smokiness. I was afraid it was leftover burnt kettle corn from the other tea, but I am figuring out that people think that Thai tea should taste like something that’s been left to rot in a Jimmy Dean factory. Thankfully, it tasted less like smoked meat than slightly fragrant tea, and I was able to enjoy the whole cup. It does not taste like the tea they serve at Thai restaurants, unless evaporated milk is really that big a factor. Maybe it’s not amazing because it has Hawaiian coconut in it, which is a good way to ruin anything.

Do you want to ruin Christmas? Put Hawaiian coconut in it. The cult TV show “Twin Peaks” steadily got worse because of Hawaiian coconut. It is a well-known fact that every time a komodo dragon dies, Hawaiian coconut is found next to its body.

Teavana could have been onto something if not for Hawaiian coconut.

Also, some jerk named “Dreamer” on their website claimed in her review that drinking this tea would make me feel “so special”, and I did not feel special afterwards at all!

8/12 Burgers

I have not ended my quest to find the perfect means to enjoy THAI ICED TEA AT HOME!, but I feel like I have gotten closer to finding it.

The winner:
Teavana Thai Loose Leaf Black Tea-
21/30 Burgers– It would have been more if I felt “so special”.

The loser:
De De Instant Thai Iced Tea Powder

15/30 Burgers– which I think is really way too generous.