Just like mom used to make, this Southern Sweet Tea Recipe is simple and easy. A staple in my house growing up, this one is as perfect as it gets. Not too sweet and totally refreshing!
There are things in life that can totally take you back to a memory in about half a second….a certain smell…..the sound of the ocean….the taste of your favorite childhood treat. Know what I mean?
Like the report cards they handed out in school when I was teeny, tiny had a certain smell, and whether you did well or not in school would determine if this was a good smell or bad. (For me, it depended on the year.) 🙂
Every time I drive to the beach, I put the windows down as soon as I cross the bay bridge because the smell of the ocean immediately transports me back to my childhood summers when our one week trip to the beach each year was the highlight of my life. The smell of the salt air always puts me right in a happy mood and should be bottled up for the long winters when I start to feel much less beachy.
Southern Sweet Tea
This Southern Style Sweet Tea recipe has the same effect. My mom used to make this almost every day, it seemed. There was never a time, that I remember, our refrigerator being without a gallon of sweet tea.
It was the first recipe I ever remember making from scratch and, to be honest, we didn’t even call it sweet tea. We just called it Iced Tea….being that we’re not southern in any stretch of the imagination. So, when I started hearing all about Southern Style Sweet Tea I was dying to try it….and on a business trip to Birmingham one swampy summer I finally got to try the real deal Sweet Tea!
One sip and I was instantly reminded of the tea my mom used to make by the bucket full. SHE was making SWEET TEA….ALL MY LIFE!
So, no wonder I have an instant connection with all southern food like Chicken Fried Steak…..or Shrimp and Grits. Well, maybe not the reason but I truly think that I’m supposed to be a southern gal. It’s in my blood….I don’t know how it got there but the whole southern lifestyle is more my speed.
What is Southern Sweet Tea?
Sweet tea is much more than iced tea with a spoonful of sugar stirred in. Southern style sweet tea is, generally, made in big batches by boiling water and stirring in sugar until it’s dissolved….sort of like a less sweet form of simple syrup.
Then, the tea is steeped in the sugar water for a bit until the water has cooled a bit. The tea bags are removed and you, now, have a sweet tea concentrate…in a nutshell. Pour the tea into a pitcher and top off with water.
Southerners keep pitchers of sweet tea in their fridge for last minute guests and to cool off in the sweaty summertime. We love it for the same reasons here in the northeast!
Ingredients You Will Need
This easy Sweet Tea recipe is made with just a few simple ingredients:
Water
Sugar
Black Tea Bags
That’s it, the simpler the better in my opinion.
Can you make Sweet Tea with Green Tea?
YES! You can totally substitute the black tea with green tea for a lighter flavored iced tea recipe. In fact, sweet tea was originally made with green tea until WWII when green tea importation was cut off due to the war.
Americans switched to black tea, at that time, because it was easier to find….and that’s how Southern Sweet Tea came to be. History lesson OVER. 🙂 It is summer, after all.
Now, I’m making my own Southern Style Sweet Tea this summer and it’s just as good as I remember my mom’s to be.
I like to serve it up at parties on a big tray along with a bucket of ice (because some people are not as big of an ice fan as I am), some simple syrup (because who wants sugar granules floating around in their tea!), sliced lemons (for those that like a little pucker with their sweet). Kind of a “Build your Own Sweet Tea” bar, if you will.
To make your Southern Style Sweet Tea even sweeter, mix in a little bit of Homemade Lemonade for a DIY Arnold Palmer Drink or serve with a splash of your favorite sparkling wine and a handful of fruit for a tea-rific twist on Sangria!
Still, there's a balance to the flavor—the tea is brewed long and strong, so it gets an astringency that can only be countered by lots of the sweet stuff. Southerners, of course, have a taste for sugar that is demonstrably stronger than what you find up North.
Adding a little baking soda to your tea will clear away any cloudiness left from the mixing process, and it's also thought to cut down on any lingering bitter tastes from the steeping tea bags, leaving your tea clarified and smooth and providing your get-together with one fantastic pitcher of tea.
Add 1 cup granulated sugar and stir until completely dissolved. Pour the tea base into a 1-gallon pitcher. If using multiple pitchers, divide the tea evenly between them. Add 3 more quarts of water to the tea base to make a gallon of sweet tea and stir to combine.
Sweet tea, a southern classic, is black tea combined with a simple syrup or just plain sugar. While the recipe sounds simple enough, many restaurants make their sweet teas in different ways. Some may add sugar while the water boils, others may take it through a rigorous cool-down process before adding the ingredients.
White sugar is the most common sweetener used in tea or coffee. You can get white sugar in regular granulated form, or finer ground as icing sugar or confectioner's sugar. Powdered sugar isn't typically used for simple beverage sweetening.
There's the pure, clean flavor of refined white sugar, but there are also brown sugars like Demerara and Turbinado that offer varying degrees of rich molasses flavor. Brown sugars might be too overpowering for delicate green iced tea, but they're great with strong, spicy black tea recipes.
Batching up the iced tea recipe is easy—simply double, triple or quadruple the ingredients using the same proportions. Half a gallon of our classic iced tea calls for 4 tea bags, so if you make a gallon, you'll need 8 tea bags.
Lipton has a lighter brew than Luzianne and doesn't give a strong tea taste like Luzianne. Lipton taste more like juice than tea. Lipton's color isn't even as dark as Luzianne when brewed. If you pour steaming hot and freshly brewed Lipton tea over ice, you'll end up with water.
Though moderate intake is healthy for most people, drinking too much could lead to negative side effects, such as anxiety, headaches, digestive issues, and disrupted sleep patterns. Most people can drink 3–4 cups (710–950 ml) of tea daily without adverse effects, but some may experience side effects at lower doses.
What Is Sweet Tea? Sweet tea is a black tea that you brew hot, sweeten with sugar, and then refrigerate until it's ice-cold. It's a common drink in the southern United States, like in Georgia, North Carolina, and the surrounding areas.
Theories abound: Southerners prefer sweet tea because back in the day we used sugar as a preservative and our palates grew to crave the taste. Southerners like sweet tea because it is served ice cold and it is hot as biscuits down here.
McDonald's Southern Style Sweet Tea is made from a briskly refreshing blend of orange pekoe and pekoe cut black tea, sweetened to perfection. Southern Style Sweet Tea from McDonald's is part of the Beverages Menu. There are 210 calories in a large Southern Style Sweet Tea at McDonald's.
During American Prohibition in 1920, iced tea gained even more traction as people throughout the country turned to this refreshment as a suitable swap for alcohol. It wasn't until 1928 that sweet tea became the southern thirst-quencher of choice it is today.
All in all, it's no surprise why Southerners love their sweet tea. It's a great way to show hospitality, regional pride, and it's also a great way to cool off on a hot day. So, the next time you're in the South, make sure to grab a glass of sweet tea and enjoy the Southern hospitality.
Tea is a part of southern culture in the United States and they take their sweet tea very seriously! You see, there are two kinds of sweet tea. Traditionally, sweet tea is made by pre-sweetening the tea leaves (an orange pekoe blend is preferred) and water mixture while it is still hot.
Hobby: Reading, Ice skating, Foraging, BASE jumping, Hiking, Skateboarding, Kayaking
Introduction: My name is Cheryll Lueilwitz, I am a sparkling, clean, super, lucky, joyous, outstanding, lucky person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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