How To Make Sweet Tea

How To Make Sweet Tea

Sweet tea is one of the most popular tea drinks, especially in the South, but many people don't know how to make sweet tea. However, it's also one of the most difficult to make. First off, sweet tea is different from the regular steeped and brewed tea you get from your own tea bags. Tea in general is very bitter, and it has a more natural taste. Sweet tea requires the addition of sugar after the initial tea is brewed. You'll see that it really is a different sort of tea to make.

First off, let's take a look at regular tea. I've already noted that tea is different in taste from the modified sweet tea. Tea isn't actually 'bitter', per se, but it has a more natural flavor. I remember once that I went out to a tea place with my family, and it had this super bitter tea that nobody could ever handle. There's just so many things that are difficult to handle for first time tea drinkers, mainly because tea is just so natural. After all, the first tea was discovered after a man was boiling some water and a tea leaf fell in. He drank the new concoction and then the tea trade began. Tea, somehow, through centuries of travel and trade has now become one of the most popular drinks in the world. But please notice that the first tea was probably very light. Something happened to the idea of making tea that changed it from a single, organic loose tea leaf to a bag of tea leaves. People were probably interested in making the tea stronger. This is just the same as the other industries, where tastes in general are becoming more and more potent. As teas were made in newer and more interesting flavors, the tea leaves weren't quite changed, but just picked at new times. Also, people began adding their own flavoring to make new tastes of tea.

One of these is sweet tea. To make absolutely basic sweet tea, one would probably think that it just takes a few grains of salt and you're done. In fact, it's much more difficult to make sweet tea, which is why you're here. Normally, if you make green tea, you just use some tea leaves made especially for that purpose. It's just the same if you want to make black tea. You use tea leaves picked at the right time to give the correct taste we all identify as black tea. If you want to make white tea, it's once again the same thing. Tea leaves, although picked early to call it white tea leaves, defined as white tea leaves. Sweet tea can use any type of tea leaf that exists. The main difference is altering the taste of the tea, NOT altering the tea leaves. It's just the process that changes when you make the tea itself.

One of them is that you steep the tea leaves longer. When anyone shows you how to make sweet tea, you'll notice that it won't be done for a very long time. What happens when you steep your tea leaves for an extremely long time includes a variety of things. The first is the color. Notice how it gets deeper and deeper? Well that just happens with any drink with a potent taste. The second is the tea leaves efficiency after you're done with making sweet tea. Make a cup of tea for yourself and you'll see that you can reuse the tea leaves over and over, making more and more cups, if you have steeped for the regular time of a few minutes to 5 minutes. You can just pour in more water and wait the same period of time. The taste very rarely will disappear drastically. However, when you make sweet tea, you're going to hit a few snags if you like to be efficient with your tea leaves. The South loves to have everything done to the extreme in food and drink, and tea is no exception. Sweet tea, which again is a Southern favorite, is considered extreme because it completely drains the tea leaves of all taste. You're definitely not going to be able to use those tea leaves again. Let me explain.

When I was straight in the middle of school, my family took a trip down to Georgia where the South is the South. There's no doubt about it; we could see it everywhere. We could also see it in the sweet tea that they were making. We asked around the kitchens and they showed us how to make sweet tea the Southern way. In their words, it was not only how to make sweet tea, but also how to make a cup of tea. Just a simple cup of tea. It tasted very strong and very good, I'll admit, but then I asked to see the tea leaves again. I tried making another run of normal tea, which took a few minutes. The result was the colored water effect that I always explain. What used to take me three days to do was done in a matter of minutes. If you want to make a cup of tea but still have the tea leaves available for a few more times of drinking before you have to switch them, I wouldn't quite learn how to make sweet tea 'cause the process sort of sticks with you in every single cup of tea you make. To this day, years later from Georgia, I keep making my teas strong. Not normally like that, but I'm also wasting so many tea leaves because of it.

Make Ice Tea to Make Sweet Tea

There's something I have to admit, however. You have to learn how to make ice tea in order to learn how to make sweet tea. The two processes are very similar. But, if you read a guide to learn how to make iced tea, you'll notice that the end product is different. Not just the name, of course. Iced tea is still weaker than sweet tea in taste. Honestly, when you boil it down (pun intended), iced tea is just weaker sweet tea but iced down. It's cold, weak sweet tea. So, well, it's either you gotta learn how to make sweet tea or you gotta learn the other one.

On a summer day, I'm sure you're going to grab the pitcher and try some iced tea. Most people don't go for sweet tea when it's hot because sweet tea is still a hot tea. Of course you can make it cold, but then it'd be strong iced tea. When you grab iced tea, you either know how to make it or not. You either grab some tea leaves or tea bags, make normal tea, and wait for it to cool or you make it the real way. When you make iced tea, you're supposed to use tea bags, first off. Sorry, loose tea leaf lovers. It's probably not going to work out well. Loose leaves are more for white, green, and black teas. They don't really work for that stereotypical iced tea. You take tea bags and you make the typical tea except with cold water and ice. You don't boil the water at all. Be sure to use spring tea for this, because you don't have to go through bad water then overpurified or diluted water. You can even watch as the tea bags spill their stuff into cold water. After that, you can add whatever sugar you want as well as a nice slice of lemon. That's the right way to make iced tea. If you don't know that already, shame on you. But now that you know how to make ice tea, you should know how to make sweet tea now.

Sweet tea is a simple process. Even though it's been a long time since I've made it myself, it's still quite easy. You need to steep some tea bags or tea leaves for a whole hour before you can pour it out and drink. Add two tablespoons of sugar to a pitcher of sweet tea. And there ya go, that's how to make sweet tea. You'll notice that sweet tea is definitely much stronger than any tea you have ever drank.

Now it's the debate between the classic green tea, white tea, and black tea and the alternative sweet tea and iced tea. You'll know that the latter are definitely sweet. You add sugar to sweet tea and iced tea, right? When you make green tea you definitely don't interfere with the natural taste. All you gotta do is steep, wait, and drink. When you make sweet tea, you have to make sure that it's not too sweet or not too bitter. Also, the wait times are longer or shorter for sweet and iced tea. For iced tea, you can see the flavor coming out so the wait time is shorter. For sweet tea, you have to wait twelve times as long for the same amount of tea.

In the end, the cost efficient goes to green tea and the others because they can be remade over and over and over and over. The flavorful goes to making iced tea and sweet tea because the teas are changed up and there's a sugar spike to enhance the flavor. I personally enjoy, green tea the most because I can just have so many cups of green tea again and again. I also saved an average of 30 tea bags over a period of 7 days when I'm making white tea instead of making iced tea. Of course, drinking a lot of iced tea or sweet tea, sweet tea especially, can contribute to some health issues. Green tea and white tea have been proven as having less caffeine as black tea and other flavors of tea. As a result, when you drink sweet tea daily, like 5 times a day, you might develop a blood sugar level-related problem, like diabetes. When you drink even black tea, you're probably going to hit something like overactivity, which is similar to coffee.

One last note here. If you do end up using loose tea leaves for iced tea, you're going to have some trouble keeping them in the pitcher and out of the cup. For that, I'd just buy one of those plastic pitchers that have some sort of filter-ish type of things. It makes things a whole lot easier. And speaking of pitchers, tea pots are actually important here. I mentioned before that I have a cheap plastic teapot that I bought for $10 or less and it has served me well. I also have to mention that it is absolutely useless when it comes to making iced tea. In fact, any tiny teapot will be useless if you make ice tea. Get a large pitcher, fill it up with water, and throw in the tea bags or tea leaves. Ceramic teapots, although expensive, are usually best for show. They are also quite effective in maintaining the temperature of the tea, so you don't overboil, underboil, or just plain screw up when you are steeping your tea leaves.

If you simply cannot afford the ceramic teapots when you make green tea, just shoot for the cheaper plastic teapot sorts that I have and make tea like I do, stretching each tea leaf as far as it can go. You can probably get 3 sets of plastic teapot and plastic pitcher for both the green, white, and black teas and the sweet tea and iced tea for the price of one set of ceramic teapots, just to get some perspective on this.

So now that you know how to make sweet tea, I suggest that you learn how to make iced tea as well (the South apparently loves iced tea, too!) and head on over to some place where sweet tea is as normal as air.