How to Make Southern Sweet Tea


As I've written about before, I've got a bit of American Southern heritage in my upbringing, and one of the main components of Southern culture is tea.

Not hot tea.
Not herbal tea.
SWEET TEA.
Sweet ICED tea.

A few posts ago, someone asked about how to make Southern sweet tea, and I told her I'd be glad to oblige with a recipe!  You know what's even better?  You may notice that the photos below are when I had long hair... and it's sunny outside...

I've been anticipating this post for a long time!

The first thing you gotta know about Southern sweet tea is that it's basically diabetes in a glass, and also that it's delicious.  It may take a while to learn how to hold your tea like a Southerner, so don't feel bad if you go into a sugar coma the first time you try it.  That's how it's supposed to be.

That being said, you can adjust the sugar content as you like.  In America, the sugar levels in ice tea increase the further south you go in the country, so this beverage can still be authentically American no matter how much sugar you've got in it.  But if you want it to be Southern.... add the sugar.


So enough of the back story, here's how you make Southern sweet tea, via my husband's technique.  This recipe will make about a gallon.

Ingredients:
- 2 family sized tea bags, or 4 individual ones
Orange pekoe tea tastes the best, but black tea works, too. Try to find a brand of tea that is "smooth" when brewed. Cain's and Tetley are good brands to use if you can find them!
- 3/4 cup of sugar
- medium pot

Directions:
1. Fill the pot full of water and put it on the stove to heat.
2. Add in the tea bags and sugar and let it steep.
3. It's okay if the water boils; just make sure the sugar is dissolved and the water is pretty dark from the steeped tea.  This is your sweet tea concentrate.
4. Pour this mixture into a pitcher, and fill the rest of the container up with cold water, and add some ice cubes if you want to drink it immediately.

There you go!  Now you've got Southern sweet tea!  Grab a wine glass or giant mason jar and get to sipping!

13 comments

  1. Oh my gosh, I tried this once using a recipe I found on the internet and it was aaaaawful. Hot tea with milk and no sugar is just fine to me. Since I'm very English I have a feeling we'll never see eye to eye on this one, which is a shame because I really could see myself drinking sweet tea over the summer otherwise.

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    1. Haha, I love hot tea, too, also with milk and no sugar. That's the beauty of it... we don't have to decide! We can have BOTH kinda if we want!

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  2. Great, thank you very much. I'll give it at try and who knows I might end up talkning Danish with a southern drawl ;-)

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    1. Ha! I hope you enjoy it, and I have no idea what Danish would sound like with a Southern drawl... but I'd it's an unexpected tea side effect you'll have to let us know!

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  3. Sweet iced tea is a staple in our Canadian home in the summer and to make it even more Canadian I sweeten it with maple syrup. It doesn't take much syrup and we find it to be a much more milder sweet then sugar.

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    1. Now I've never tried maple sugar in it! How very Canadian, indeed. I'm going to try it!

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  4. Diabetes in a glass is right. I grew up on sweet tea and real lemonade (not countrytime). lol . They're still refreshing beverages for me. When I go to Cracker Barrel I must drink a gallon of sweet tea. So good.

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  5. Yum!!! Though an American classic for sure, we grew up with ice/iced tea here in Canada, too, and I've always been a huge fan. It's the perfect summertime thirst quencher in my books (and here, for an especially Okanagan-y twist, I like to include fresh peaches sometimes - not traditional, I know, but scrumptious all the same! :)).

    ♥ Jessica

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    1. I LOVE me some peaches in iced tea!!! Especially ones fresh from the orchard... SO good. You are so right!

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  6. You are so right about the further South you go, the more sugar that is added! I live in the Deep South (30 minutes from the Gulf of Mexico) and I only use one cup of sugar for a gallon and most of my family and friends think I drink unsweet tea! Most everyone around here uses 2 cups of sugar per gallon. Oh, and it has to sit overnight (or so they think, HA!) so that you are basically drinking syrup!

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    1. Ha, yeah, it pretty much is syrup! I live in Missouri, so just like the location of the state, the sugar level of tea is about in the middle, too! I did a nutritional experiment and cut out sugar completely for one month, so now I see how those Southern sugar addictions get started! I eat some, then I keep needing more and more to really "taste" it. I think two cups of sugar per gallon would put me in a sugar coma, though! I like your one cup ratio.

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  7. You look so glamorous sipping your tea! I think it maybe too sweet for me, I drink lots of hot tea like a typical English person but haven't had sugar in it since I was quite young. I think it is really interesting that the further South you go the sweeter the tea is, I wonder why that is?

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    1. I... have no idea. Of course that's not totally across the board, just a general trend. I recently cut out sugar for a month, and since then I haven't been able to "hold my sugar" like I used to! I also like to make iced tea like this but substitute fruit juice like peach or mango instead of sugar. Really delicious!

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