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[ChairmanPoo]

I've decided to try and make my own. Anyone has advice?

[RedKing]

This is how I do it (for Southern-style sweet tea)

1.Brew a kettle of hot black tea, using twice as much tea as you normally would.
2. Fill a large pitcher full of ice.
3. Add sugar to the ice. I use a 3-quart pitcher, and usually add about 1 cup of sugar to the pitcher. This is something that you have to fine tune to your taste through trial and error.
4. Once the kettle boils, pour the fresh tea into the pitcher and stir rapidly until all the sugar is dissolved (and most of the ice melted).

Voila! Your tea is now sweet, flavorful and cold enough to drink without having to be refrigerated first. Whole process takes about 5-10 minutes, depending on how long your kettle takes to boil.

Essentially what you're doing is making a tea concentrate, and then diluting (and chilling) it with all the ice. You have to use hot tea, otherwise the sugar doesn't dissolve well at all. This is why when you go to a restaurant and ask for sweet tea, and they say "We only have unsweet, but there's sugar on the table," you must glower at them in their ignorance. GLOWER, I SAY!

[freeformschooler]

I do it like RedKing does it, except I make sure to get the teabags that don't contain caffeine.

Additionally: Pour it in a glass and push a lemon onto the glass' side. A hint of lemon is great in highly sweet tea.

[ChairmanPoo]

Ok, I followed the basics of what you said, but I am trying a variant because I don't have much access to ice (well, I do, but I dont want to wait for the icicles to form), and I want to store it cold for later consumption. I have poured some herbs (I've done this first with mate, and then with tea) into a jar, poured hot water on them, and then dilluted. I put the contents in bottles, and shoved them in the fridge. The first one is beggining to get fresh enough for comsumption and is kind of nice (mate). The biggest drawback is that it has the grainy texture from mate dust, but still, kind of nice.

[RedKing]

I do it like RedKing does it, except I make sure to get the teabags that don't contain caffeine.

Additionally: Pour it in a glass and push a lemon onto the glass' side. A hint of lemon is great in highly sweet tea.

Oh, I actually use decaf as well. Because I drink so much of it that I was having trouble going to bed before 2am. Plus, this way the kids can have a little as well.

[Levi]

I use ice tea powder mix, but I think that might be a Canadian thing.   

[RedKing]

Nah, I grew up with us making instant tea from powdered Lipton. Looking back, I don't know how--that shit is nasty.

And I've got some instant "flavor stick" tea from Trader Joe's that I've started using at work, because you just stir it into a cup of cold water. It's actually pretty decent. But for the kind of industrial quantities that I drink at home, I have to make it myself. I really want one of those big restaurant-style tea dispensers. The state farmer's market has a restaurant with the biggest dispenser I've ever seen. It's like a 55-gallon industrial drum with a spigot attached. WANT. 

[ChairmanPoo]

Tried the mate: tastes well enough now that it has cooled down.

[sluissa]

I've been drinking it similarly to Redking's directions since I was a kid. Only difference is we switched the ice with water and added a bit of lemon juice concentrate to the sugar before we poured the tea in.. I'd love the warm tea, sometimes I"d drink it hot, right after it was done. If people wanted it cold they could add ice in their cup. That night, whatever was left over, if there was any, would just get put in the fridge.

I still do that sometimes, but I've been trying different powders and liquid concentrates. Nothing really compares, but laziness usually wins out.

Sun tea is also a fun project. Clear pitcher of tap water + tea bags + a few hours in the sun and you end up with delicious tea. Also used to do this during my summer classes. Bottle of water, take a sip out of it, stuff a teabag in, leave it on car dashboard for my 3 hour class, come out, have nice warm tea and all I have to do is pour a couple of sugar packets in. I would actually say it has a slightly different taste than boiled tea. Milder, I think. Less bitter. Might be due to not actually bringing the tea to a boil.

[Strife26]

I use ice tea powder mix, but I think that might be a Canadian thing.   

I dunno, I'm a North Dakotan, and I do the same. However, I take considerable pains with my hot tea.