Southern Sweet Tea

mmmmmmmmmmm...my favorite thing in the world is a good glass of sweet tea.

My dad was the one who taught me how to make tea.  Not too much sugar, he always said.  We also used to make tea in the coffee maker.  We would use Lipton tea and just run it through.  (I want to gag thinking about it lol.  I can't stand coffee.  I didn't know better then.) 

Then when I met Daniel, his mom made the best tea in the world.  She had a Mr. Coffee tea maker, which has since kicked the bucket.  But it lived long enough for me to figure out the right ratio of tea to water.  The sugar ratio that my dad always expected stuck though, so combining the two I found the best way to make my tea at home.

Finally, the last influence to make my home tea making method complete was the tea at Subway of Weaverville.  They have since changed their tea brand, and it is still good but not exactly the same.  They used Luizianne caffeinated tea.  It's absolutely my favorite.  It has such a great flavor!

The only thing about it was that the tea bags tended to break during the steeping process, so we got some of these tea balls to put the tea bags in to prevent the loose tea from going everywhere should the bag break.

Alright, enough talking about it, here's how I make the tea.

Boil 8 cups (2 quarts) of water in a teapot.

In your container where you will store your tea, put 1 cup of sugar and add 3 tea bags in the tea balls.  Get your spoon ready.


Pour the boiling water into the container and stir until the sugar is dissolved.  Allow to steep for 10-15 minutes.

Remove tea balls.  Add 4 cups of water or ice.  (I usually just add water if I'm going to stick it in the fridge instead of serving it immediately.)



Finally, a word of caution - tea will go bad if it is left out.  It gets this weird flavor to it and you can tell something isn't right.  So make sure that you keep it in your refrigerator if you aren't drinking it, and I wouldn't keep any batch of tea any longer than a week.


There are a lot of ways to improvise with tea!  I have added loose leaf peach tea that I made and steeped separately for a fruity flavor.  One of my mom's friends Kim used to put all sorts of different tea kinds and flavors all together (along with a TON of sugar) and it was delicious!  You can add more sugar if it's not to your liking, or less, or you can use alternative sweeteners if you can't use regular sugar.  Another improvisation that my dad used to make was adding lemonade to the tea to make it into "Pigeon River Punch," as he called it, because it made it look muddy.  (Follow the link for the story on the Pigeon River.  Apparently the drink's appearance reminded him of the waters of that river.  Ha ha ha.)

Enjoy!