Nothing embodies the South like sweet iced tea. Despite the fact that I have spent my whole childhood in Florida, I don’t much enjoy the overly sugary iced tea that is so common in the South. For as long as I can remember, my grandmother has been making the greatest lime tea. Amazing fresh lime juice, not too sweet or bitter, and a perfect balance of all three!
| Prep Time: | 10 mins |
| Cook Time: | 5 mins |
| Additional Time: | 3 hrs 45 mins |
| Total Time: | 4 hrs |
| Servings: | 16 |
| Yield: | 1 gallon |
Ingredients
- 1 gallon boiling water
- 6 black tea bags
- 1 ½ cups white sugar
- 4 limes, juiced
Instructions
- Pour boiling water into a gallon jar over tea bags. Allow to steep for 45 minutes.
- Remove and discard tea bags. Stir in sugar and lime juice until sugar has dissolved. Cool to room temperature; refrigerate until cold before serving.
Reviews
I was hoping for a refreshing lime flavor, but in the end, this just tasted like the Lipton lemon/sweet tea you (which I am NOT a fan of). If you like lemon/sweet tea, you’ll probably like this. For me, I dumped out the batch and won’t be making it again.
It was so good I only make that tea now
I doubled the # of tea bags and it was perfect! Very nice switch up to traditional sweet tea (which I hate, BTW)
Tastes great! I use water from my fish tank for tea, but regular tap water may suffice.
This was so good! Definitely repeating it. I recommend making a half batch, however, because the full batch is absolutely massive!
Quite refreshing. I don’t care for sweet tea so I used less sugar. Thank you for the recipe.
3.23.18 I’ve lived in the South for a long time but never developed a taste for sweet iced tea, however, this may be the best iced tea I’ve ever had. I like just about everything with less sugar these days, so I did cut back even the amount in this recipe a little and used Truvia®, but this tea has the perfect balance of sweet-tart. And OMG, forget the lemon, and give me lime in iced tea FOREVER. You can call this Sweet Lime Iced Tea, I’ll just call it Perfect Iced Tea.
Hubby loves this! We adjusted it to 1 cup of sugar, and I would suggest starting there and adding more sugar as needed.
Love this tea! Make it every summer.
Very good!
I would give this 5 stars, but I made a couple of changes. I used 6 green tea bags, and 1 1/4 cup of sugar. I boiled sugar down in 4 cups of water, so it wouldn’t be grainy in the tea. I also added 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda to get rid of the fogginess of the tea. I tried this with green tea, fresh squeezed lemon juice, and added a bit of homegrown mint, and it wasn’t as good. In fact I’m not even a fan of iced tea, but with this one? Wow! Both my husband and I like this so much that we bought a huge box of green tea bags, and a big bag of limes, and sugar, from Costco, so I can make this over and over. We had given up sweet drinks (soda, and the likes…) but this is an exception. Yes, use fresh squeezed lime juice. It can be done while the sugar is boiling down to get rid of the grains. It’s worth the effort.
I substitute honey powder instead of sugar, thank you for sharing
Try it without the sugar and the juice of 1 lemon to 2 limes. I also used only enough boiling water to steep the teabags (5 minutes or so), then removed the teabags and filled up with cold water and ice so it’s ready immediately. It is refreshing and delicious. Perfect for the heatwave we are having.
Can use fresh lime juice or a couple spoonfuls of frozen limeaid. My family has used frozen lemonade in sweet tea as long as I can remember. Haven’t tried other juices, but imagine they’d be really good, cutting the sugar added if they’re pre-sweetened. I also always add about 1/8 tsp of baking soda to my teas to cut the bitterness. Only way my husband will drink tea!
I made 4 servings instead of the 16 and it still came out delicious! I added a little less sugar because I tend to like my tea a little stronger and less sweet. Very refreshing and perfect for cooling off on a hot summer day!
This is some of the best tea I’ve ever had! The limes balance out the Sugar perfectly
I think this I Fabulous!!! I didn’t grow up on sweet tea (from MI) so I have altered it to suit our tastes. Now we only use 1/3 cp sugar and two limes. ** A great tip is to zest a lime (no pith) and let the sugar soak up the oil for about an hour. Dissolve it all in some of the boiling water and strain into your tea. Adds another dimension of flavor. This is a huge hit at out house!!!
Lime no bake cheescate
Decent, I’m going to start experimenting with some variations.
I made this today and followed the recipe except for adding a little extra sugar because we like it sweet. You could still taste the tartness of the limes which I really enjoyed. I will made this again, thanks for the great recipe CookinginFL.
This is a winner. I do MY iced tea a little different: I cold brew green tea (fill a 2L pitcher with cold water and add 8 green tea bags and let sit for a few hours), then add some simple syrup, a squeeze of lemon/lime juice, and a few fresh mint leaves. Let me tell you, you will never BUY iced tea again! Just recently, I ran out of lemons, but I had some Clementine tangerines – so I squeezed the juice of 1 tangerine and added it in place of lemon, and YUMMY! This is soo refreshing and green tea has so many health benefits.