Water
Fresh tap water should be sufficient unless your water is tainted. Even if you use bottled water, the ice is still probably made from tap water.

Tea
Since the tea is boiled, the wet bags are subjected to higher than normal forces. If a tea bag breaks you must either throw out the batch or waste your time straining it (and possibly burn yourself). Therefore, DW only recommends large tea bags that are sealed, not stapled. Small tea bags increase the probability of breakage. Stapled bags have a tendency to release their tea leaves.

DW currently recommends Lipton gallon sized iced tea bags. Lipton tea is packaged 48 bags to a box. You may use other teas as long as the bags are large and sealed, but the dilution and sugar levels may have to be varied to get similar results.

Sugar
Sugar is a commodity product derived from a variety of sources. Regardless of origin, it should not vary between manufacturers. Sugar substitutes will ruin the tea and must be avoided!

Ice
A glass of sweet tea is usually 33 to 50 percent ice.

Lemons
Some people like their sweet tea without lemon. They are wrong even though lemons more than double the cost of sweet tea. The secret of sweet tea is that it is really a lemonade variant. Unlike water, tea, and sugar, lemons differ based on origin, season, and purchase location. The hardest part of sweet tea is finding a consistent supply of reasonably priced fresh lemons.

Preparation (next page)
Table of Contents