Lipton Tea

I have lived in the South my entire life and as far as I knew, in the 70s and 80s the official drink of the South was sweet tea. There has always been a varying degree of sweetness, depending on who made it, an aunt may make it sweeter than a grandmother and a friend’s mother probably made it sickeningly sweet. We made sun tea by using a glass jug and the sunshine, but nowadays they say that is unhealthy and can cause Salmonella because it doesn’t get hot enough. Odd, multiple families made sun tea and none of them got sick. It was only about a decade ago that I was made aware that sweet tea is NOT available everywhere. You take it for granted when you walk into any establishment that serves food in the South that when you order tea, it will be sweet. Over the last few years I’ve noticed that waitresses that don’t know you will ask «sweet» or «unsweet» and it really doesn’t throw anyone for a loop anymore when you ask for half and half (a mixture of the two).
I guess I have become a tea snob in my older age as I have all but stopped ordering tea with a meal. It’s inconsistent from location to location, you get some way too sweet and others are bitter. I always drink the tea at
not just because it comes with the plate lunch, but because it is good and the brand is Lipton. It probably aggravates some that go home and try to replicate the tea from their favorite place because it always seems to be a little off. There is a little trick that some places use that will remove some of the bitter taste and that is to put baking soda in as it is brewing. Considering they make tea in 5 gallon batches and only use ½−1 tsp soda you’d probably have to use a smidgen, pinch, or a skosh for your gallon.
I use three brands of tea and I do it to keep myself from getting burnt out on one particular brand. Lipton is hands down my favorite followed by Tetley. Tetley is wonderful, but its downfall as far as rating would go is that it leaves a fine residue in the bottom of the tea jug, absolutely does nothing to hurt the flavor because I don’t slosh it around before pouring it up, but that is where Lipton is superior, no residue. My grandmother used Lipton and I don’t know why she preferred it but I like to think it is for the same reasons I prefer it.
The photos of my tea will look much different than your tea because I don’t use as much tea. Your tea will most likely be darker. I fell on hard times years ago and made tea with one bag and cut my sugar down to the bare minimum it takes for me to drink tea and as a result I got use to the flavor and prefer it over stronger tea. I guess that is the origin of my tea snobbyness now.
In 1871 Thomas Lipton used his small savings to open his own shop, in Scotland within a decade the business had grown to more than 200 shops and sales for tea had doubled in that time from $ 40 million to $ 80 million, that in today’s money is probably $ 120 million to $ 240 million. However, he believed the price was far too high, so in 1890, he purchased his own tea gardens in Sri Lanka, and packaged and sold the first Lipton tea. Lipton Yellow Label has been sold since 1890, when Sir (knighted by Queen Victoria in 1898 at the age of forty-​eight) Thomas Lipton created the first version of the Yellow pack with a red Lipton shield with the advertising slogan: «Direct from the tea gardens to the teapot». It is sold in 150 countries worldwide and is a blend of several, upwards of 20, types of tea. Unilever now owns Lipton but it is still as popular as ever in my part of the world at least.
Hugh Jackman has been used in Lipton commercials probably never to be seen in the US as they were filmed in Budapest. Don Meredith done ads and commercials here in the US in the 70s.