Celestial Seasoning's Sweet Lemon Iced Tea (K-Cup)

My coffee is brewed by the Keurig system. I'm not ashamed to say it and neither should you. The Keurig system really is an excellent system for coffee and makes a nice cup. From the sounds it makes when it heats and brews, it is more than likely a vacuum system that allows the water to boil efficiently and quickly. The cups themselves are decent coffee types (Green Mountain being the pinnacle) of a variety of roasts, all sealed in self-contained filtration units in a non-oxygenated environment (I'm guessing a CO2 or maybe even an inert gas to protect the coffee). Suffice to say, I'm perfectly happy of having my daily cup from a Keurig machine as opposed to the Black and Decker Shithouse Supreme 6000 my dad uses. The key here is really the operating temperature. For the Keurig, it's about 192 while the Black and Decker's temperature is about absolute Kelvin. Since the temp. for coffee is 200...the coffee from that Black and Decker tastes like...well...antifreeze run through a hobo's underwear.

That's an assumption folks. Don't read into it.

The Keurig offers a lot of other choices for the K-Cups as well. Not suffice to stop at coffee, they have chai, hot cocoa and, strangely enough, tea K-Cups. I like tea. The main company that produces the T-Cups is Celestial Seasonings and, frankly, their tea ain't bad. They even offered an "iced tea" cup: a prepacked black tea, EVAPORATED CANE JUICE, and lemon K-Cup that you brew over ice. A pre-packaged iced tea mix that doesn't use high-fructose corn sugar? Nom. Here's a picture of the little bastard:

You can see the finished product on the right.

 Unfortunately, it is far more satisfying in thought than in application. To be honest...it was pretty goddamn gross. For being "sweet lemon" it wasn't sweet but rather super bitter and tannic. The flavor of the tea was flat and actually rather gross. The hibiscus they added didn't help things either. Curiosity got the best of me and I opened up the container.

Om.

Nom nom!

Yech. Obviously the finest quality floor sweepings from the CTC machines in India are used in this cup. The flavor is definitely an Indian tea, probably a cheap Darjeeling although it was difficult to tell over how absolutely cripplingly bitter it tasted. And it wasn't like I screwed up the directions either. The Keurig I have has two settings that produce two different volumes of liquid: 6 oz. and 9 oz. I used the 9 oz. and it was almost as bitter as Bill Hicks (but Hicks is significantly more tolerable). They suggest using the 6 oz. setting but that's approaching Hillary Clinton levels of bitter and look at how that turned out. Gonna have to give these cups a significant pass.