Columnist John Moore knows how to make Southern Sweet Tea, and he’s offering the recipe. Courtesy John Moore

The thing you discover about beverages when you travel beyond the Mason Dixon is that most folks outside of Southern civilization do not know how to properly make and consume beverages.

Tea, coffee, soda pops, and beer, have all been violated. What follows is a primer to help correct these issues.

Let’s begin with tea.

Many think that the national beverage of Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana, is ranch dressing. And at some fraternity parties, it is. But, the real drink is tea. Iced tea. Not hot tea, tea with no sugar, or foo foo teas with names like Sleepy Time, Kings Dragon Cream, or Mossy Frog Black.

Respectable Southerners drink Imperial Pure Cane or Domino’s Sugar with their Lipton or Luzianne. The sugar comes first, then the tea.

To properly construct a glass of sweet tea, you either need Uncle Si from Duck Dynasty overseeing the process or anyone’s grandmother or great grandmother. They’ll tell you that you heat a pot of water on the stove, add the majority of the bag of sugar, boil, and then throw in six tea bags.

Whether your family grew up on Lipton or Luzianne has everything to do with what your local Piggly Wiggly sold. Either brand will work just fine, as long as you leave them in the sugar water to the point that when you pour up a glass of tea and take a sip, your teeth hurt.

For a short time in the 1970s, some Southern mom’s attempted to pass off sun tea. Since Martha Stewart wasn’t yet a star, I really don’t know the genesis of sun tea. All I can tell you is that placing a pitcher of water and teabags outside on the patio until it turned tea colored just started happening one day.

This effort continues in many households, but unless you’re diabetic, it’s unacceptable.

Coffee, unlike tea, can be consumed just about any way you like, as long as it’s hot. If you want to add cream or sugar to your Folgers, that’s perfectly acceptable. Iced coffee is not.

My good friend Steve moved to Arkansas from Missouri. When we were at a truck stop one day, he asked for iced coffee. You know those scenes in a movie where two guys who don’t fit go into a biker bar and suddenly, the jukebox stops and all of the bikers lay their pool cues on the tables and turn to look at them? Same thing happened with the truckers and us.

The change in how soda pop is consumed may also have a lot to do with diabetes (or as my grandmother referred to it, “The Sugar Die Betus,” with the emphasis on “die”).

Tab was the only diet soda pop around when I was a kid in Ashdown, Arkansas. They sold it at the Piggly Wiggly and in the 7UP machine at the Laundromat. Today, just about every soda pop on the market has a diet version. And in other parts of the country I’ve been presented with the opportunity to add a spritz (whatever that is) of lime, lemon, or a mint sprig.

The only acceptable soda in the South is one with sugar in it. Preferably, Imperial Pure Cane Sugar. Cokes and Dr. Peppers are only pure with sugar. On rare occasions at Christmas, it’s acceptable to use the teapot to heat up Dr. Pepper and drink it hot. You might get away with throwing a lemon slice in it, but that’s it.

Also, in the South, all soda pops are called a Coke. If someone asks what kind of Coke you want, you tell them if you’d prefer a Sprite, Dr. Pepper, or RC Cola. Same applies for someone inquiring if you want a Kleenex. Regardless of who makes a tissue, they’re all Kleenex. But, I digress.

I’m not much on beer, but I’ve had enough beer to know that unlike Christmas Dr. Pepper, it is not meant to be consumed warm.

I dated a girl who was full-blood German. The fellas in her family had no problem drinking warm beer. They may not have had a problem with it, but I did. Still do.

Beer, like sweet tea and soda pop, should be cold. Cold in the summer, cold in the winter. Cold. There is no time ever that beer should be anything less than frosty.

I’m fairly certain that the word refreshing came to be after a couple of rednecks had finished repairing a hemi engine in a Dodge Charger in the middle of the month of July. After getting everything back together and cranking it up, they quaffed a cold one and the word “refreshing” just came out. I can’t ever envision guys completing an engine rebuild and turning to each other and saying, “Boy, a room-temperature beer sure does sound great right about now!”

Whether tea, coffee, soda pop, or beer. Enjoy it the right way if you’re leaving home. Carry your own with you.

By John Moore, author, Puns for Groan People and Write of Passage: A Southerner’s View of Then and Now Vol. 1 and 2, are available on his website TheCountryWriter.com, where you can also send him a message.

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