Step Aside, Lemonade. Save Your Dill Pickles For Iced Tea Instead

Love it or hate it, the dill pickle-flavored beverage craze is far from over. Not only are major fast food brands like Sonic still hawking drinks like the Grillo's pickle-flavored Picklerita Slush (which is a pickle-flavored slushie with pickle juice-flavored popping bubbles), but even hotbeds for experimental food like the Minnesota State Fair are still coming out with new drinkable versions of pickles. According to the Minnesota State Fair website, vendor Loon Lake Iced Tea debuted a new iced tea at this year's fair that was "brewed black tea infused with dill pickle flavor and served with a dill pickle spear." The drink was garnished with "a rim of chamoy, Tajín, salt and dill." 

I guess we've moved from pickling our cold Dr. Pepper to puckering up our iced tea now. Since the chances were slim that I'd be heading up north for the Minnesota State Fair, I thought I'd recreate this drink at home and see if it'd scratch an itch I didn't even know I had. I am, in fact, a big pickle juice person; I like sipping on an ounce when I'm particularly dehydrated, and iced tea is always a happy summer refresher for me. Has the legendary non-alcoholic patio drink, the Arnold Palmer, finally met its match?

I was essentially trying to make this tea drink based off a vague written description, so I decided to pick up some pre-brewed, pre-sweetened ice tea, along with the aforementioned chamoy. When I got home, I stirred the tea together with a healthy splash of Grillo's pickle brine that I had on hand. I took a separate glass and added the chamoy to the rim, which is a complex Mexican condiment made of chiles and fruit that you can get at many supermarkets these days, and then rolled it in Tajín, which is a dry seasoning of chili, lime and sea salt.

I then poured the pickled tea into the rimmed glass over ice, plopped in a pickle spear, and called it a day. One last questionable detail still dangled over my head: I'd tried contacting the Minnesota State Fair vendor over social media to find out whether the tea was in fact sweetened, but I hadn't heard back at the time of writing this, so I just went under the assumption that it was sweetened. It seemed more likely that there was some sugar in it, because you know state fair food isn't exactly shy about sugar, oil, or salt.

Now, of course, I'd have to try it. Fortunately, it was a sweltering day in Chicago, which set the stage positively for any kind of iced tea. After my first sip, I have to grudgingly admit that this is actually pretty good, provided that the end tea itself isn't very sweet, which is how I'd ultimately mixed it. The taste of the pickle juice wasn't obnoxiously strong although Grillo's does have an aggressive dill and garlic flavor. 

Surprisingly, the best part actually involves getting a bit of the Tajín and chamoy rim. I initially thought the rim was for decoration and to jump on a trend (since Tajín is awfully popular lately), but the acidity of both works well to cut through the tannins in the tea.

That's a lot of words to say dill pickle iced tea is good. And the closer I got to the bottom of the beverage, the more the pickle brine infused the remainder of the tea, making it more pickle-y in a good way. Who knew I'd like drinking garlicky, mildly vinegary iced tea? Move over, lemonade.