"Y'all have sweet tea?"

We Southerners love our sweet tea, and in fact tend to get very bristly about it if people behave as if they don't know what it is.

Sweet tea, in case you do not have the distinct pleasure of living below the Mason-Dixon, is prepared tea where an entire batch (usually half a gallon at least) is pre-sweeted using sugar, honey, or simple syrup while it is still warmed. The batch is then quickly chilled with refrigeration or ice and finished off by the preparer before anyone else in the house knows that any was made. The person preparing the beverage always sweetens to his/her taste. Typically, it'll be just sweet enough to be refreshing, however at times it'll be Bojangle's sweet: super-sweet so as to cut through all the salty chicken waste you just consumed.

Restaurants founded in the South, or else who dare to put franchises here, always have a pre-sweetened tea on the menu. My friends, SWEET TEA IS NOT ICED TEA. Iced tea is a "Yankee" thing. In iced tea, the imbiber sweetens to their taste, usually having to constantly stir the sugar on the bottom of the glass (cold tea does not dissolve sugar as well as tea that is warm).

I can remember several occasions of visiting friends and family up North and making restaurant visits where the waitress gave me a blank expression when I and others in the party asked for "sweet tea." "You want what?"

Non-Americans reading this are probably wondering, "Why the hell would you want to drink cold tea?" Well, because it gets hot as hell here. Add in the humidity, and on some days it feels like death by climate. You try sipping hot tea in a mug while you're lounging on your front porch!