Sweet
June 8, 2005
I have reached a major milestone in my relocation to Baltimore: I made my first good pitcher of sweet tea today.
For those not from the south, making sweet tea isn’t like tossing together a pot of coffee. The right mix of tea, sugar, water, temperature and time is absolutely essential. Too little sugar and it’s bitter. Too much, and you can’t taste the tea. Too much tea, and it’s just overpowering. Leave it steeping for too long, and it just tastes burnt. That last sin is what makes all sweet tea brewed at fast food and chain restaurants taste like crap.
Getting your sweet tea just right is a mark of accomplishment in the south. Everyone does it a little differently, but everyone has a way they’ve always done it. When I moved up to Baltimore, I switched from using a coffee pot to an iced tea maker. I had some real trouble getting it right at first, but I’d been living with my parents for several months, and they used one, so I knew that it could be done. I just had to get my mix right.
I got it tonight. It’s still not quite there—I let the water get too tepid before stirring in the sugar—but it’s miles beyond the crap I was making when I first got up here. Making a good pitcher of sweet tea is a big step in a southerner’s attempt to make a nest far away from home, and today I’m happy to be just that much closer to being there.
Amen. I grew up in Nuff Cackalacka, and I drink iced tea like nobody’s business. My dad took a trip overseas last year, and as a goof, he brought back a suitcase full of a tea called “PG Tips” (apparently it is quite big with the effete fops over in Engalund)—it was quite easily the best bag i’d ever used. I use about 9 bags of lipton per pitcher, which makes it quite strong, and just a hair less than a cup of sugar , but that is how they do it in NC, and that is how my personal recipe shook out. As far as I know, every single person that lives south of washington DC has his/her own recipe, right?
Hey, maybe you can share your recipe?
I’d heard about sweet tea, and tried to make it, but it tasted like crap. Then came the month that I had to go down to Missouri (from Minnesota) for some due diligence on a company we were buying. It was my first time in the south, and my first time having real sweet tea. I got hooked while I was there!
When I came back, I tried to replicate it but could never get it even close to right. I still try every so often, but it just never works—even when I get what are supposed to be real recipes from the ‘Net.
Do you have any pointers to help a guy out?
nathan honey, bless your heart. you can’t make sweet tea unless you are from the south.
matt darlin, i am proud of you. congrats on your achievement.
I emailed Nathan with a few pointers—can’t give away the farm on my web site, now—but there’s one point I can share with my adoring fans. Luzianne iced tea bags. Not Lipton. Not Lipton! Luzianne. It’s the best-tasting tea and you just about can’t make a bad batch with it. You can even get it up here in Baltimore, at Giant or Safeway.
is missouri even in the south?
Well, I didn’t think so either—I thought it was in the midwest—but I also didn’t think Baltimore or Washington were in the south, and was promptly corrected by actual yankees when I moved up here. I guess everybody wants to claim a piece of Dixie.
Missouri is considered a border state between the north and the south. There is a “Little Dixie” area in Northern Missouri which is quite southern and the bootheel and south east, south central and south west Missouri has a great deal of southern culture in them as well.
Not to mention that the Ozark mountains has a mixture of southern and Midwest culture in it.