Southern sweet tea
Strong black tea sweetened heavily while still hot, then chilled and served over ice. A staple of the American South, where the sugar is dissolved into hot tea rather than stirred into cold — which is the technical difference between it and iced tea with sugar added.
Also called sweet tea, iced sweet tea.
What it tastes like
Very sweet and brisk, with the astringency of a strong black tea cutting the sugar. Dissolving while hot gives a cleaner sweetness than syrup stirred into a cold glass.
What it is built on
Teas
- CTC black tea — Strong, quick and blunt. What CTC gives up in nuance it returns in reliability: it is very hard to under-brew and it holds colour and strength through milk and sugar in a way whole leaf rarely does.
- Orthodox black tea — Slower to open and more variable than CTC, and that variability is the point: orthodox manufacture is what makes single-origin black tea worth buying as a single origin rather than as a blend component.
Brewing method: Western brewing (teapot or mug) — A small amount of leaf in a large volume of water, steeped once for a few minutes and then strained off. The approach most English-speaking drinkers already know, and the one most teas sold in the West are made for.
Ingredients
- 15 g Black tea
- 1 litre Water
- 150 g Sugar
- Ice, lemon to serve
Preparation
- Step 1. Brew the tea strong and strain it.
- Step 2. Dissolve the sugar into the hot tea completely.
- Step 3. Cool, then serve over plenty of ice with lemon.
Serves 4. About 15 minutes from start to finish, including anything that has to simmer or cool.
Equipment
- Tea strainer — A gaiwan lid or a pot’s own integral filter usually suffices; a strainer catches what they miss, particularly with broken leaf.
There is no single correct version
Regional to the American South, where 'tea' unqualified generally means this. Sweetness levels vary considerably and the question 'sweet or unsweet' is a standard one when ordering.
The steps above are one workable account of how this is made, not the authoritative recipe. Households and regions differ on proportions, on order and sometimes on what counts as the drink at all.
Common mistakes
- Over-steeping, which makes it cloudy and harsh under the sugar
- Adding sugar to cold tea, which never fully dissolves
If it goes wrong
- My iced tea has gone cloudy — Tea that was clear when hot turns hazy or milky once chilled.
Sources
This page is TeaHQ synthesis. The proportions and the sequence are written from common practice as TeaHQ understands it, with no external source behind them, which is one more reason to read the note on regional variation as the more reliable part of the page.
This page describes how the drink is made and where it is made that way. It says nothing about what drinking it does to a person, and the quantities of milk, sugar or spice are recorded because they are part of the recipe rather than as any kind of recommendation.