Order Your Starbucks Iced Tea Like This For The Ultimate Flavor Boost

While Starbucks is best known for its globally sourced arabica coffee, the chain's selection of warm and cold teas is nothing to sniff at either. These options are solid but can be made much better — especially the chain's iced tea — thanks to a very specific upgrade. By asking for your iced tea to come without water, you will get a more intense, less-diluted drink that could see it become your new favorite Starbucks beverage.

The reason this trick works comes as a result of the way that the world's second-largest restaurant chain makes its iced tea; instead of using tea bags or a loose-leaf tea mix, Starbucks makes its iced tea using a concentrate, adding water to the mix to correct its strength before serving it. However, this additional water isn't integral to making the tea drinkable, and by asking for the drink to be made without water you can prevent the beverage from tasting watered down, a common complaint of customers who order the chain's iced tea. What's more, the drink will still be the same volume; Starbucks' employees will just fill the cup with concentrate. 

Now, while asking for no water can really change the game if you want a stronger-tasting iced tea, the request doesn't work with every Starbucks drink. This is because some of the chain's teas don't get diluted with water. For example, the chain's iced chai latte is only made with tea concentrate, milk, and ice. In cases like this, asking for light or no ice can prevent some dilution, but there isn't any need to ask for no water as the drink does not contain any. 

Elsewhere on the menu, Starbucks' Refreshers are diluted with either water or lemonade, depending on the flavor. (For example, Starbucks' limited-time Blackberry Sage Refreshers contain lemonade rather than water.) Since May 2023, however, any order for a Refresher with no lemonade or water has incurred an extra cost or been outright denied. This restriction came about due to consumers abusing the request; by ordering water and the Refresher base separately, customers were able to get multiple drinks for the price of one.