"Soda"vs."Pop"vs....?

[Rebel]

I call it soft drink or fizzy drink.

When I moved to B.C I had to change that to pop and I had to watch what I said. I would ask for a lemonade and end up with some lemon flavoured iced tea instead of the 7up or Sprite I was after.
That then got into the discussion of what was lemonade, what was traditional lemonade, and what was iced tea. Everywhere is different.

[muses_nightmare]

I would ask for a lemonade and end up with some lemon flavoured iced tea instead of the 7up or Sprite I was after.

Interesting, I've never heard of 7up or Sprite being referred to as lemonade. To me, lemonade, is a drink made from lemon juice water and sugar, nothing else.

I know I always have to remember that down in the States Iced tea is just that, cold tea. Here in BC it's basically the same thing as pop, so it's always sweetened. You don't ask for sweet tea here, just iced tea. (unless otherwise specified, I'm sure there are specialty shops and such)

[Fryk]

Fizzy Drinks would work, unless you're getting your beverage from Willy Wonka.

And if someone asks for soda, maybe I should just give them Arm and Hammer. They said nothing about water, after all...

[Greenday]

Interesting, I've never heard of 7up or Sprite being referred to as lemonade. To me, lemonade, is a drink made from lemon juice water and sugar, nothing else.

I know I always have to remember that down in the States Iced tea is just that, cold tea. Here in BC it's basically the same thing as pop, so it's always sweetened. You don't ask for sweet tea here, just iced tea. (unless otherwise specified, I'm sure there are specialty shops and such)

I've never heard of 7up or Sprite being referred to as lemonade either. I'm curious as to where that is from.

As for iced tea, it depends on where you are. In the North, you can get tea sweetened or unsweetened. In the South, if you ask for sweet tea, you are getting what I consider to be be sugar water.

[AdminAssistant]

As for iced tea, it depends on where you are. In the North, you can get tea sweetened or unsweetened. In the South, if you ask for sweet tea, you are getting what I consider to be be sugar water.

I have never, ever been able to get sweet tea in a restaurant anywhere up North. One of my friends from Pittsburgh had never even heard of sweet tea until she came over to my house for a dinner party. For the record, I don't make my tea all that sweet. Just enough to edge out the bitterness, maybe 1 or 1 1/2 cups for a pitcher.

[Rebel]

I've never heard of 7up or Sprite being referred to as lemonade either. I'm curious as to where that is from.

It's an Australian thing. I guess we just like to be different.
7up and Sprite and any similar product is lemonade.
Lemon flavoured fizzy drink is either the brands Solo or Lift, or can be referred to as traditional lemonade.
The other type, lemon juice with sugar and whatever, is really only found at fairs and royal shows. It's more of a gimmick thing.

[Stormraven]

McD's is doing Sweet Tea out here in CA. It's not proper sweet tea - it's about the same as yours, AA - about 1 cup of sugar for a gallon, from what I've been able to tell.

I grew up on the same - roughly 1 cup of sugar for a gallon of tea. I've been finding, as I grow older, that ½ a cup works well for me now.

[muses_nightmare]

Yeah, iced tea in Canada (BC anyway) doesn't really taste like American Iced tea. As far as I know, when it's in a fountain with other pop it's made with the syrup stuff that other pops are made with, but no carbonated water. I notice in Washington it's always in a big like....carafe thing (for lack of a better word), it's pretty much never made with fresh brewed tea here.

[AdminAssistant]

McD's is doing Sweet Tea out here in CA. It's not proper sweet tea - it's about the same as yours, AA - about 1 cup of sugar for a gallon, from what I've been able to tell.

Blech. McD's uses syrup, which is why it tastes like sugar water. Mine isn't that sweet.

[Stormraven]

Huh - it tastes about the same as the tea we made when I was young, and we used, as I said, 1 cup of sugar.

Alton Brown suggests syrup for sweet tea, since it dissolves better than sugar in iced tea - but I've always found it works well to add the sugar to the tea while it's hot, then cool it.

[AdminAssistant]

Alton Brown suggests syrup for sweet tea, since it dissolves better than sugar in iced tea - but I've always found it works well to add the sugar to the tea while it's hot, then cool it.

Brown makes his own syrup; I can almost guarantee that McD's uses HFCS gloop. I mix the sugar in some water, and then add the tea, dilute with water until the pitcher is full. Of course, I don't measure. I'm just guessing at how much I use. Could be completely off.

[Pagan]

In Illinois, we say pop,

What's funny is that my mom's family moved out here when she was 16, I've never heard her refer to it as anything but "soda".

being a true Southerner and country girl, 'Coke'.

I've heard that before. I wonder where it came from?

I'm the odd man out, I think ...

I call it "soda pop"!

Well, my grandfather used to call it "sodypop". We still don't know where that one came from. Just became a Gilbertism.

So, even when you ask for a band-aid or a q-tip, you are being exact in what you want. If you ask for coke but you want orange soda, that makes no sense.

It's a colloquialism is all.

soda, of course


but yea then you think of

band-aid
q-tips
kleenex (almost never hear tissue)

Those are genericized trademarks. Another is Jell-o. How many people really call any other brand "gelatin"?

And here's a fun little map

That map's not completely right. It shows that both the county I was born and raised in and the one I live in now, we mostly call it "Coke". I've only ever heard that from one, maybe two, people in my entire life! In fact, other than new transplants, I've never heard it called anything other than "soda".

I would ask for a lemonade and end up with some lemon flavoured iced tea instead of the 7up or Sprite I was after.

Interesting, I've never heard of 7up or Sprite being referred to as lemonade. To me, lemonade, is a drink made from lemon juice water and sugar, nothing else.

What she said. Sprite and 7-Up are lemon-lime flavored.

As for iced tea, it depends on where you are. In the North, you can get tea sweetened or unsweetened.

As a side note, I get weird looks when I ask for hot tea sometimes. Like the only hot beverage there is is coffee.

Lemon flavoured fizzy drink is either the brands Solo or Lift, or can be referred to as traditional lemonade.

That might be the difference. That I can think of, we don't have any lemon-flavored carbonated beverages in the US.

The other type, lemon juice with sugar and whatever, is really only found at fairs and royal shows. It's more of a gimmick thing.

Now there's a culture thing. It's one of the most popular drinks in the summer in US. There's even a brand devoted to it! http://brands.kraftfoods.com/countrytime/

[MaggieTheCat]

Born and raised in Wisconsin, and we always called it Soda. I heard Pop once in a very great while, but it was pretty rare. I'd never heard it called "Coke" until I met my husband, when we were like 14 years old...that conversation was pretty hilarious, honestly. We both thought the other one was crazy (he was born and raised in Texas.) Somehow since then and now, though, he's started calling it "soda" too. He says we'll get funny looks if we call it "soda" in a restaurant or a store, though. Actually, that could be why I ended up with a 7-Up instead of a Coke or Pepsi like I asked for once. We had ordered delivery, and the guy taking the order asked if we wanted anything to drink, and I said, "Coke or Pepsi, whichever you've got" ... meaning either Coca-cola (the brand name) or Pepsi. I got 7-Up instead. Now I know better.

In most places in Wisconsin, the only iced tea you could get at a restaurant would be sweetened, but it would always be something like Lipton or some other packaged stuff...not actual homemade sweet tea. It was always sickeningly sweet, so I avoided getting iced tea when I went out. Here in Texas, when we ask for iced tea at a restaurant, we're ALWAYS asked, "Sweet or unsweet?" which is nice. I vastly prefer unsweet tea to sweet, even if it's generic packaged stuff.

[HYHYBT]

Brown makes his own syrup; I can almost guarantee that McD's uses HFCS gloop. I mix the sugar in some water, and then add the tea, dilute with water until the pitcher is full. Of course, I don't measure. I'm just guessing at how much I use. Could be completely off.

Unless they've changed since June of last year, "Mickey D's Sweet Tea," as the window posters call it, contains one pound of sugar per gallon, including the volume of ice added to the warm tea in the urn. Specifically, in this area at least, we were sent Dixie Crystals up until about a year after they installed the automatic tea machines (before that we made it in the coffee makers, and had no official amount of sugar to use) and then were switched to Peninsular, made by Michigan Sugar, probably because it came in four-pound bags instead of five which made things much simpler as we were using four pounds at a time. Because a customer asked and I looked it up for her, I know that that company gets its sugar from beets.

No corn syrup. Though we did have "tea" sweetened with corn syrup for a couple of years when they tried switching us to Nestea Nastea. Not bad stuff, really, except that calling it "tea" leads people to expect it to taste like tea, at which it fails miserably.

[muses_nightmare]

when they tried switching us to Nestea Nastea. Not bad stuff, really, except that calling it "tea" leads people to expect it to taste like tea, at which it fails miserably.

If I'm understanding it right I'm fairly certain this is what we have up in BC, it's not common practice to have unsweetened fresh brewed iced tea. Though I'm fairly certain ours is made with sugar, rather than HFCS, but I couldn't say for sure since I don't have a bottle or can with me. I'm so used to this kind of iced tea that the other kind is kind of strange to me. I can't drink it anyway, because of the caffeine .