“If you’re from the South, you already know that sweet tea is more than just a drink—it’s a tradition!” Ree Drummond says. Particularly on a hot summer day, you’ll probably find a pitcher nearby, ready to cool you down with just a few sips. And making her sweet tea recipe isn’t hard at all; you just need a few hours for it to steep and cool.
But what if you don’t have those few hours? Maybe you have sudden company coming over, or way too many people and not enough containers to make several batches. You can pick up store-bought sweet tea at your local supermarket, but can you make bottled sweet tea taste homemade?
Some bottled sweet teas can taste flat or too sweet compared to the real stuff. And you don’t want to serve it and get that “bless your heart” face from any self-respecting Southerner, that’s for sure! But if you follow a few tricks to balance the flavor profile, you can make store-bought sweet tea taste more like homemade. Then fill up a pitcher, fill some glasses with ice, and go sit out on the porch!
How to Make Store-Bought Sweet Tea Taste Homemade
Before you add anything to your bottled sweet tea, take a sip to know what you’re dealing with. If it tastes too sweet, dilute it with some spring or filtered water. Taste it again. If the sweetness level is fine but the tea flavor is a little too diluted now, you can add some tea flavor back in. Simply steep one black tea bag in a little hot water, let it cool, and mix it in to deepen the flavor.
If it tastes flat, you can use the same tea trick to amp up the flavor. You can also add a squeeze of lemon juice or let lemon slices sit in the tea for a little while to brighten the flavor. Bonus: The lemon slices make it look more homemade and give it a nice presentation.
What to Add to Sweet Tea to Make it Taste Better
If you’re still on the fence about whether it tastes authentic enough, add some more flavor! Try watermelon sweet tea, for example. The fruit adds freshness, plus real sweetness and a little extra water content to dilute the artificial taste of bottled tea. The same goes for blackberry smash sweet tea. It has fresh ginger, berries, and lemon juice to amp up the bright, fresh flavor.
You can also go the creamy route with vanilla sweet tea. Vanilla bean paste will perfume each sip, and either milk or half-and-half will help balance the sweetness. Or you can also add lemonade to make Arnold Palmers. You can make lemonade from scratch, of course, or you can doctor it up with store-bought lemonade. So even if the bottled sweet tea doesn’t taste quite homemade, you’re adding some homey touches to make it a refreshing, tasty sip either way.
