Marburger Farm Dairy - 5 Reviews

In my world this is a classic standard in Western Pennsylvania. Whenever I'm heading down to Pittsburgh, like I am now, I always pick up a few bottles. In my younger years I definitely liked it a lot more than I do now. I will always have a soft spot for it in my heart, but to be honest it's really nothing special. It's made with instant tea powder instead of brewed tea, and it's sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. That on it's own makes it fairly standard fare for cheap local gas station "tea." What gives Marburgers a little bit of an edge is that they flavor it with raspberry juice solids. I don't know why they would cheap out on the tea in order to use real juice, but it does improve the flavor. It tastes like "ghetto" tea with a highly potent (nearly harsh) natural raspberry flavor. It's a strange combination, but that's probably what keeps me coming back for more.

Tea is wonderful. Tried and true, it has been perfected by some to a T. Those people did not make this tea. When I saw this tea in Derek's closet of drinks, I wanted it. I didn't tell him, but I wanted it. A nice sweet tea with cherry? I'll take it. When Derek was shedding weight for an easier move, I got this. Stoked. Today, to quench my thirst I could wait no longer.

I should have known that it wasn't going to be wonderful from the start. The first ingredients are sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, and instant tea powder. That's a slew of garbage if I've ever heard it. I enjoy sweet tea. As a matter of fact, I love it. This, friends, is not sweet tea. This is cherry juice with tea powder in it. Maybe tea powder with cherry powder in it. This is a drink. It's not classifiable, to me at least, as a tea or juice. It's just a drink. It tastes like bad instant tea mixed with bad cherry flavoring. It tastes like something you would make at home as an experiment, not like, and promptly throw out because it just didn't work like you expected it to in your head.

I understand you have a creative mind, Marburger Farm Dairy. I appreciate it. I really do. I have drunk hundreds of drinks and I have never had a cherry iced tea. After drinking this drink, I can unfortunately still say that.

As Jay mentioned, Marburger was previously known as "Fike's" and drinking this brings me back to simpler times. When I had my first helping of this, it was probably around two in the morning and I was waiting in line to get pizza after my break from "metal night" only to finish said pizza and then go back to "metal night" until four in the morning and then have to drive forty minutes home.

This was always impressive to me. I know, I know, it's got corn syrup in it, but when you drink it then and there, right out of the cooler, it's not that bad and it doesn't have that cheap, corn syrup sting. There isn't a bad, gas station iced tea. It's actually not too bad at all, and for the price, you can't really beat it. Taste is not anything like an instant tea and I don't know why they even advertise it as such. Yeah, I know it's technically an ingredient, but it seems like something they would at least want to skim over. I could go to the store, buy iced tea mix, and make it myself. It just seems strange that there are still these other ingredients aside from "iced tea mix" but I guess even the mix is made of something.

Marburger, you're alright with me.

Fikes used to be THE ghetto iced tea of choice among my friends for a long time. They were 69 cents for a little jug of it and was only available at a gas station on the corner of Main and Winspear in Buffalo. They changed their label at one point and for the longest time I hung onto an empty jug of it. I wish I still had it.

Anyways, as Jason mentioned in the Mountainberry review, Fikes is now Marburger Farm Dairy. Sure it doesn't have the same classic label, but it's still delicious. I bought this at the same gas station as Jason and I could have sworn I saw Franklin Mercer coming out of the store as I was entering. It sent chills down my spine. Anyways, this flavor is great. It tastes like iced tea mixed with a melted freezie pop. Even for a tea made with high fructose corn syrup, this is great! I just wish I had stocked up on more while I was in Zelienople.

About a decade ago Mike, a couple of other friends and myself would go to this crappy bar for "Metal Night." We weren't/aren't super into metal but our friends DJed it and it was something to do. Every week we went and every week about an hour or so in we would get bored and go get pizza and iced tea. Not any iced tea mind you but Fikes tea. It was a really cheap jug of tea that was actually really tasty. We would just kind of disappear from the bar every week and not tell anyone. When people would ask we would jokingly reply that we had a meeting of "Team Cool." That's really a pretty boring story, but it was fun times. The reason I tell you is that I believe Marburger Farms and Fikes to be the same company. The only places I ever found Fikes was in one gas station in Buffalo and one in Zelienople, PA (A terrifying town that is home to the Mercer Family). I'm sure you'll hear all about them at some point. The reason I think they are the same is that I would always stop at that gas station on my way to Pittsburgh to pick some up. When I went a couple of days ago Fikes was nowhere to be found but Marburger Farms was there in the same style bottles, with the same flavors. I don't know if there was a hostile takeover and to be honest I don't care. What I do care about is that this iced tea still exists.

There are a lot of "ghetto" iced teas out there. Most of them aren't fit to feed to swine. This tea is cheap and should be terrible, but it somehow turned out great. It's definitely more sugar water than tea, but it still has a somewhat tea flavor. They use instant tea powder instead of brewing it, which is normally a big no-no in my book, but again they somehow make it work. I think it helps that they actually use fruit juice in their flavoring instead of some weird chemicals. In case you were wondering "mountainberry" is Pennsylvanian for blackberry.