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Recently someone from a canning group I’m in shared their “Instant” Iced Tea method. It’s basically making a concentrate that is canned in pint portions so that it keeps in your pantry like a jar of the instant granules do. Then, when you need to make a pitcher of tea in a hurry, you just add water. For me, there are plenty of times a pitcher of tea winds up being a picnic afterthought for one reason or another and this is a fantastic way to make it easy to grab a jar of concentrate, add water, and instantly have good, homemade sweet tea. The recipe below will produce enough concentrate to make 4 gallons of tea, but this is easily doubled if you want more in storage as it will keep for at least a year. There’s a bit of science that goes into what makes a product shelf-stable and although to my knowledge this is not an “FDA approved” recipe, (insert eye-roll here) both the sugar and the lemon contained in this recipe combined with the method and length of processing time should put a check mark in all the necessary safety boxes. The sugar is enough that you can even leave the lemon out if it’s not to your taste and pressure can it instead. If you’re at all squeamish about the safety of it, then the pressure canner is the way to go. Pressure canning takes the jar contents to a higher heat level during processing and is used for less stable items like meats and non-acidic vegetables. It wouldn’t hurt a thing to do the tea that way if that’s more in your comfort zone or if you’ve chosen to omit the lemon, aka acidity.
“Instant” Homemade Iced Tea – makes 4 pints (or 4 gallons once prepared to drink)
6 Cups Boiling Water
10 Family Size Tea Bags (we prefer Luzianne, but of course any brand works – even HERBAL!)
4 to 5 Cups of Sugar (adjust to your taste)
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice (optional)
4 Pint Size Canning Jars – Ball Pint Jar – Regular Mouth
Add the tea bags to the boiling water and steep for 5 – 8 minutes. Remove tea bags and bring liquid back to a boil. Add lemon, if using it, and add sugar to your taste. Boil for 1 minute. Fill sterilized pint size canning jars, leaving about 1/2 inch head space, and process for 15 minutes using the water bath method. When ready to serve tea, empty pint jar contents into a large pitcher, add 1 gallon of cold water and stir. Simple as that! “Instant” homemade sweet tea that’s not instant. 🙂
Sidenote: For all the times I’ve extolled the virtues of everything “old way”, I’ll admit, sometimes there are truly improvements to the way things used to be. Just this canning season I came across a canning funnel made by Farberware that I may love even more than my old funnel that used to be my Grandmother’s. It fits both regular and wide mouth jars and has… headspace markings!!! I would guess most people, myself included, eyeball it, but the markings make it so nice!
Walmart carries them and you can also find them through Amazon here if you’re interested: Canning Funnel with Headspace Markings
Terry Cady says
May 14, 2019 at 6:25 pmThanks for sharing this!
Ann says
August 11, 2018 at 7:39 pmYou are probably so much better off for it though. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I didn’t like sweet tea as much as I do, hahaha! 🙂
Of Goats and Greens says
August 9, 2018 at 8:17 amI’d have to do this unsweetened, too. Cannot abide any sugar or sweetener in my tea. Lemon is fine, though. (You wouldn’t guess from this that I was born in the South…) But sounds like a great idea!
Ann says
September 29, 2017 at 8:05 pmThe sugar is not absolutely necessary. You can definitely use Citric Acid in place of lemon juice to increase acidity level in foods to be canned that should be “acidic”. I don’t remember all the specifics, but for recipes like this you can also test the pH level to see if it is acidic enough for water bath. I think it was a cooking store where I’ve seen pH meters or test strips maybe? Google might be a good start for that too.
Christi says
September 29, 2017 at 1:04 pmCan I do this without sugar and lemon if I use citric acid? I can do lemon if I need to, but I absolutely cannot stand any type of sweetness in my tea.
Thank you,
Ann says
August 20, 2017 at 6:46 pmThank you! 🙂
Lee Hoy says
August 16, 2017 at 10:14 amSo glad I found you! You are living the life I hoped to find when I married my hubs 44 years ago. I didn’t think technology had come far enuf for an underground home yet! I imagined ours to have an atrium right in the middle so that we could have natural light in all the rooms…Very good luck to you and yours new friend…I look forward to your newsletters and info coming my way!
Admin says
July 20, 2017 at 9:34 pmThanks, Judy! Gotcha added! 🙂
Judy Robertson says
July 20, 2017 at 3:28 pmI want your news letter please and thank you
Admin says
July 19, 2017 at 2:29 pmHey Diana! I just went in and added you. 🙂
Diana says
July 19, 2017 at 6:41 amI want your need letter
Admin says
July 18, 2017 at 8:36 pmHey Patricia! I’m afraid I don’t have a real good answer for you, but I’ll give you what I do have. 🙂 The recipe as I received it was for water bath only because of the lemon content so when I pressure canned mine without the lemon, I backed into it by finding the recommendations for a liquid product that had no acidity. Personally, I’m comfortable using the times and pressures that the Ball Blue Book gives for canning broth or stock which is 30 minutes for pints at 10 pounds of pressure, but you may want to thumb through one of the canning books and see what you are comfortable doing. In using the directions for broth or stock, the product is very different and so may be processing the tea too long, but I’d rather err on the side of caution. You might could find a better one to compare to if you have books other than Ball. I hope that helps! 🙂
ronell allred says
July 18, 2017 at 6:29 pmI love this recipe, I am water bathing two batches right now, thank you for sharing this
Patricia Hazlewood says
July 18, 2017 at 4:27 pmWhat is the canning time for presure canning?
Patricia Hazlewood says
July 18, 2017 at 12:13 pmWhat is the time on pressure canning the tea?
Admin says
July 18, 2017 at 10:50 amHey Bernice! If I’m not mistaken, I think 4 of the small tea bags equal one family size. Yes, any type of tea will work. If you’re making herbal tea for medicinal purposes though, the high heat from processing may degrade some of the medicinal value though. 🙂
Admin says
July 18, 2017 at 10:46 amHi Lori! Thank you, I’m glad you’re here! I don’t like lemon in mine either, so I only do it with sugar. You can definitely process this in a pressure canner if you’re leaving out the lemon and it’s safer that way. If you are asking, I probably need to go back and re-read the post to make sure it makes sense, I have to do that sometimes, lol. What seems clear to me when writing doesn’t always seem clear to others! 🙂
Lori Borges says
July 18, 2017 at 1:54 amHi,
First, I LOVE this site. Just found it today!
Second, on canning the tea, I don’t like lemon so, from what you are saying above, it’s alright to just use sugar then water bath or would using the pressure cooker be a little safer?
Thanks in advance and keep up the great work.
Lori
Georgie Crawford says
July 17, 2017 at 8:54 pmWillhave to try this
Bernice says
July 17, 2017 at 7:46 pmQuestion, how many small tea bags equal the family size ones? Also can this be done with any type of tea? thank you.
Admin says
July 7, 2017 at 10:46 amHey Caroll! To be shelf stable it would need either the acidity from the lemon or to pressure can it, preferably both. You could look into using citric acid as a preservative maybe? I’m not well versed on that though.
Caroll says
June 27, 2017 at 7:39 pmWould this be safe unsweetened and sans lemon?