Iced tea became my #1 beverage of choice after I recently gave up carbonated soft drinks and soda. Or, as I commonly refer to it, “liquid candy.”

In the mornings, after I also gave up coffee, hot tea moved to the top of the list.

Each of those, iced tea and hot tea, both had something else in common, though. And that was my old nemesis granulated sugar.

When sugar got kicked to the curb, that was a major game changer.

Sure, it’s easy to give up soda when you’re poppin’ two tablespoons of sugar into your iced tea. And a basic cup of hot tea in the mornings made from a generic tea bag isn’t super-critical when you’ve had a lifelong love affair with sugar and rely on it to fight any bitterness in your brewing technique.

Now I almost never drink iced tea, although occasionally with a bit of lemon it can be quite good if I get lucky in a restaurant.

Mornings are rougher. My hot tea without sugar is so bitter that it is often borderline undrinkable. And in the mornings I really crave a hot drink.

That’s when I learned I was doing it all wrong. So says the following video I found on my Roku and the free CHOW channel.