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How you take your tea is a very personal choice. Many people have very specific requirements for their cup of tea. From English Breakfast, 2 sugars, and a splash of milk to just plain Sencha Green Tea, everyone has their preferences.
Many people love putting sugar in their teas to help counteract the bitterness found in many of them. It’s a personal choice. I personally don’t add sugar to any of my teas. Green, black, floral or root, or anything in between. I want to taste the tea and nothing but the tea.
My personal favorite for sugar-free tea is a nice genmaicha green tea. I find Art Of Teas Kyoto Tea to be one of the most flavorful. But everything on our list is worth trying in my opinion. I am not going to try and convince you to change the way you drink your tea. But I am going to give you some suggestions to try so that maybe you can find joy in drinking tea with no sugar.
Maybe you will find that no sugar in tea is a way of drinking it that you want to pursue or maybe you will decide that tea with 2 sugars is the only way. It’s a personal choice. And these are just suggestions to try. Read on to discover 6 teas that are incredible with no sugar and why you should give them a chance.
#1 Genmaicha Green Tea
If you are used to drinking all your tea with sugar then the first stop on our introduction to tea with no sugar would be a nice genmaicha green tea. There are plenty of genmaicha tea options out there. One of the most convenient and flavorful is Art Of Teas Kyoto Tea. But just about any high-quality Genmaicha is a real treat.
Take the natural sweetness of green tea and add in some roasted brown rice for one of the most unique flavors you will experience while drinking a cup of tea. The nutty roasted flavor adds a bit of a savory taste to the tea and smooths out the vegetable notes of the green tea. It is a delightful experience.
There is so much going on in a cup of properly brewed genmaicha that you will quickly forget about the added sugar and just let the incredible flavor of this fantastic tea roll past your lips. Breaking the habit of putting sugar in your tea is a tough nut to crack. The best way is to replace that sugar with new and interesting flavors. Genmaicha does this in spades.
You won’t want to add sugar after your first sip because you will want the full flavor of this wonderful green tea to be the only thing you taste. Steeped properly the bitterness that sometimes pops up in green tea will be but an afterthought.
Genmaicha green tea is one of my favorite green teas. And one of my favorite teas of any type. Maybe it will turn you into a believer in no sugar in tea, or maybe it will be an exception to the rule. Either way, give this remarkable green tea and try and see how wonderful a tea without sugar can truly be.
#2 Earl Grey Tea
Normally I wouldn’t suggest that anyone who likes drinking tea with sugar should try black tea without sugar. Earl Grey is one of the most popular teas around. Try Twinings of London Earl Grey Black Tea, available on Amazon, for a great introduction to this fine black tea. You can also find earl grey at almost any grocery store.
Black tea is heavy. it can be overwhelming for people if you’re not used to drinking it. It can be very strong and at times very bitter even when brewing properly. so it is the perfect candidate for a tea that you would add sugar to. And we see it all the time most Iced Teas that you get in a restaurant or at the store are going to be black tea with sugar.
So it might be a little bit odd to find a black tea on the list of teas to try without sugar. Now I always drink my black tea without sugar so this is going to seem natural to me. For someone who adds sugar to all their tea, it’s going to be quite a leap of faith to try and drink a cup of black tea without any sugar in it.
With all that out of the way, you’re probably wondering why Earl Grey tea. I think if you’re going to drink a black tea without sugar and it’s something you’re not used to you’re going to want a nice flavor to replace the need for sugar. That is why Earl Grey is a perfect black tea to drink without sugar. Because of the Bergamot Citrus flavor in Earl Grey tea, it makes the need for sugar that much less, in my opinion.
That’s not to say that people don’t put sugar in Earl Grey. They absolutely do. Two sugars and a splash of milk is the way a lot of people take their earl grey tea. And it’s fine that way. It really is actually quite good. But again I would suggest tasting Earl Grey without anything in it just to get a feel of what it tastes like without sugar or milk or cream or any of that add flavor.
It’s important to know what Earl Grey tea tastes like by itself. After that, you have to make a decision on whether or not to add sugar to it. But I think many of you will find it the Bergamot flavor along with the rich black tea flavor is going to be just fine without sugar and it’s going to be something that you’re really going to enjoy.
#3 Ginger Root Tea
Ginger root tea is an exceptional herbal infusion that needs absolutely no sugar to be one of the most drinkable teas anywhere. There’s a unique flavor to Ginger that really comes through when you steep it. it’s a vibrant peppery, slightly spicy flavor with a little bit of heat to it.
I find making fresh ginger tea to be the best way to make it but you can also use packaged ginger teas as well. I prefer this wonderful ginger peach tea from Culinary Teas (*affiliate link). And there is absolutely no reason to add sugar to something that has this much natural flavor.
There’s not a lot of Sweetness in ginger tea, to be sure. But I think that’s one of the great things about it you don’t always need something to be really sweet when you’re drinking it. Ginger tea is crisp and refreshing I can really perk you up in the morning without even a hint of caffeine in it.
The ginger tea flavor is so incredible that I often use it as a blend for some other teas. Not to improve flavor or add flavor but to create a new experience with my tea. It makes a great ingredient to blend with some green teas or herbal flower teas or black tea or just about any other tea that you can think of.
As long as the tea that your blending has enough flavor on its own to stand up to the incredible taste of the ginger then you should have no problem blending it with just about any tea. In fact, ginger tea can be used as a replacement for sugar in many of these teas.
It won’t give you the same sweetness that sugar will but it will give you this incredible flavor profile that really makes the tea blend that much smoother and that much more enjoyable to drink. Plus the added benefit of ginger tea with no sugar is you not going to get any out of calories and so if you blend it you not adding calories to your tea you’re just adding flavor.
Of course, all this is personal taste and that’s all I can offer you. I love the flavor of ginger tea and I love it without any sugar in it. Is it an acquired taste that I’ve built over the years? I don’t know I’ve just always had ginger tea without any sugar as far as I can remember.
Whether the flavor of ginger tea will be enough to break the hold sugar has on your tea is going to be up to you to decide. Not that it needs to, adding sugar is perfectly fine for your tea, but I view trying tea with no sugar as a new experience if you are not used to it. But I urge you to give ginger tea at the chance with nothing added to it no sugar no sweeteners of any kind and just see how you like it.
#4 Peppermint Tea
Another herbal infusion that I would add to the list of teas to try without sugar is peppermint tea. The emphasis for this tea should be on pepper. When we typically think of the peppermint flavor, we think of the sweet gum or candies or mints that are so popular.
I think that Taylors of Harrogate Organic Peppermint Herbal Tea, available on Amazon, is a great way to introduce yourself to this minty delight. Peppermint has some bite to it. There’s a spiciness in a peppery flavor to peppermint tea that really makes it a joy to drink.
It’s crisp and eye-opening much the same way that ginger tea is. In fact, blending peppermint tea and ginger tea is one incredible flavor experience. But all that flavor doesn’t really need anything added to it. The spiciness and peppery flavor would be done a disservice by adding sugar to it from my point of view.
Whether that’s true for you is for you to decide but I think giving peppermint tea a try without sugar it’s certainly something that everyone should do at least once just to see if that type of flavor profile is something they would be interested in drinking again.
It’s all about creating a new flavor experience for yourself and subverting the expectations of what a Tisha taste like with or without sugar. I’m not saying that you should never drink peppermint tea with sugar. I’m just saying give it a chance without sugar and see if it’s something that you like.
#5 White Tea
I would hesitate to add sugar to any of the White teas. White teas tend to have less oxidation than their green tea and black tea counterparts and in turn, have a more delicate flavor profile that can easily be overwhelmed by adding sugar.
I think white teas work best if you’re adding some kind of fruit instead of straight-up raw sugar. Some of the more popular blends of white tea include pineapple and other fruits that add a natural sweetness to the team. But even then I don’t think it’s really necessary for a white tea to have the added sugar or sweetness from fruit to make it a very good tea to drink.
There’s not a whole lot of bitterness in white tea if you steep it properly. But it’s very easy to get wrong if you don’t know the proper temperature or the proper time to steep your white tea. That’s going to depend on the type of white you have where it’s from and a host of other factors that you’re going to need to determine before you go in to steep the tea.
Another great way to ruin your tea is to use the wrong water with it, this is especially true of white tea. Using mineral water is going to add a lot of metallic flavor to the tea which is going to make you want to add sugar to it because of the taste of those minerals and metals in the water.
So I always suggest using good spring water or filtered tap water when steeping net but especially something as delicate as white tea. That way you might not need to add sugar to compensate for the flavors that are added into the tea from the water that you’re using.
Likewise, if you steep it properly the bitterness is not going to come through as much and you might not need to add sugar to it either. The point here is that a white tee is designed to be drunk without sugar. Can you add sugar to it? absolutely. It’s your cup of tea you can do whatever you want with it there’s no proper way to drink it.
But I think if you want to get the full flavor of the white tea as it was intended then you need to drink it without sugar. Of course, this is just my opinion on the matter. But like I mentioned a few times on this website always drink a cup of tea that you’re trying without anything added to it the first time you taste it.
You want to get a baseline taste of what the white tea flavor is. and then you can decide whether it needs sugar for you to continue drinking it. But I suspect that once you taste the true natural flavor of white tea then you might view it in a different light when it comes to adding sugar to it.
#6 Lavender Tea
This one might be a little controversial for people who aren’t used to drinking their tea without sugar. A lot of these herbal flower teas, like lavender tea, have a little bit of an earthy base to their flavor. When you combine the earthy base with the typical Floral notes of these herbal teas it can become quite overwhelming depending on the type of tea.
I find that Art Of Teas 6 pm Tea is one of the best blends of this lovely herbal tea. The reason I chose Lavender is that the floral notes and the earthy bass are a little bit more subdued than something like rose tea. Which is incredibly potent with its overwhelming floral flavor.
Lavender is a part of the mint family which is where it gets a slight mintiness that counteracts some of the floral flavors and makes it I think and much more drinkable herbal flower tea than some of the other ones. The mintiness gives it enough smooth flavor that adding sugar might not be necessary for some people even if you’re used to drinking your tea with sugar in it.
It’s a tightrope to walk really. Some people are going to taste lavender tea and go this has got to have sugar. and there’s not a whole lot of wiggle room there. I think though as a representative of herbal flower teas, Lavender is going to be one of the most approachable for drinking this tea with no sugar.
The point of this article is not to get you to stop drinking tea with sugar. The point of it I think is to get you to try new teas without sugar and then make a decision about them. So the most important thing when deciding on lavender tea is having a cup with absolutely nothing in it and deciding whether or not you like lavender tea. Just be sure to steep your lavender tea properly to get the real flavor.
Because if you like it with nothing added to it then adding sugar to it is not going to make you enjoy it anymore other than having it be incredibly sweet. On the flip side if you drink it and do love it without sugar then maybe you can continue drinking it without sugar or maybe you want to add some sugar to it to see if it improves the taste.
I often find that adding sugar to lavender tea or any other tea does not improve the taste for me but that may be different from your perspective so do a little experimenting and find out where you fall on that score.
Crafting Your Own Tea Blends Without Sugar
I touched on this a little bit in the ginger tea section of this article. What a great way to improve the flavor or change the flavor of any tea is to blend it with another T or another flavor. There are plenty of flavors that you can blend with green tea for example that will give you some incredible combinations without adding any sugar to it at all.
The same is true of black tea or oolong tea. This is true of most teas across the board. I mentioned that white tea might be an exemption depending on the flavors you choose to blend. But there are some subtle flavors that you can blend with white tea that will change the flavor and give you a whole new experience.
The point is it takes some experimentation to find these Blends that are going to really do it for you. Every herbal tea can be a potential blend idea. Lavender and Chamomile are some of the most popular tea blends around.
You can pick up a ton of Blends in the store and these are great because they’re tried-and-true and they’re pretty popular. They have to be if they’re going to be sold like that. But those Blends aren’t the end-all-be-all of crafting teas without sugar. You can easily take some loose-leaf black tea, cut up some vanilla beans put it in a tea tin with your black tea.
A week later you’re going to have some of the most delicious vanilla black tea that you ever tasted. Or you can take some chamomile flowers and some lavender flowers and some hibiscus flowers put them in a tea tin and you have an incredible Floral Tri-tea blend that is going to rival anything that you can buy in a store.
Drinking tea is about experimentation. You’ve got to find out what’s perfect for you but you also got to expand your horizons a little bit and get out of your comfort zone. In this case, the comfort zone is adding sugar to all your teas. Get out of that comfort zone a little bit and try and discover some of these other flavors that may change the way you think about putting sugar in your tea.
My Final Thoughts On Tea With No Sugar
How you take your tea is an incredibly personal choice. I’m by no means implying that if you drink your tea with sugar you are somehow not a true tea drinker. It’s a personal choice. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t put sugar in any of my teeth and I find the flavors of them to be outstanding on their own merits.
There are some teas that I simply don’t like. I don’t think adding sugar to them is going to make them appeal to me any more than they already do. So I stick to just the tea. Whether it’s herbal or green, black or white, oolong or Pu Erh, it’s always just the flavor of the tea that I’m interested in.
There are plenty of other teas that you can drink without sugar. These are just the eighth that I feel are the best representation Of outstanding teas without sugar. If you’re drinking all your t’s with sugar I ordered you to give these a try I think you might enjoy them just as much as you do your regular tea.
Whenever I recommend tea to friends or family I always tell them to drink their first cup without any sugar or added flavors. Make sure that you steep it properly. Make sure that you don’t over-steep, that you don’t use poor quality water, and that you don’t use water that is too hot. All of these things can affect the flavor and turn what could be a great cup of tea into a bitter mess.
But I always explain to them that they want to try the tea with nothing in it first to see if they actually even like that type of tea. If it’s not good to your tastes with nothing in it then you just cover up a tea that you don’t like with sugar or lemon or milk or whatever you put in it.
So that is my recommendation to you today. Whenever you try a tea try it plain. No sugar, no milk, no fruit, no nothing. Just plain naked tea and see if you like it.
Thanks for stopping by and as always have a wonderful day.
