Mock Lipton's Iced Tea

I used to live off of Lipton's Instant Iced Tea. Every morning I'd wake up, make myself a tall glass, chug it down, and only then start my day. As someone with low blood sugar, it both hydrated me and gave me that sugar boost I needed to get started on my day. Ok, maybe it wasn't the cheapest or the healthiest option, but it was one I loved nonetheless.
On a hot summer day, this drink was especially thirst quenching and refreshing. Unfortunately this drink is exorbitantly priced where I live because it needs to be imported from the US, so for so long, I needed to cut this drink out of my diet, which was a shame, as it was a good way to encourage me to drink, and with a tendency towards dehydration, I could use that push.
Fortunately I've discovered a great, frugal way to make mock Lipton's Iced tea, a drink that tastes exactly like the real deal, can be made at home, and is quite cheap, to boot.

Homemade Iced Tea- Lipton Style.

This tastes exactly like Lipton's instant lemon iced tea.

Doesn't that look so refreshing?

Tea Concentrate Ingredients

10 bags of plain, unflavored tea

3 cups boiling water

Iced Tea Ingredients

1/2 cup tea concentrate

1 scant tablespoon citric acid (food grade)

1/2-3/4 cup sugar

8 cups water

Ice cubes (optional)

Instructions

1. Cover 10 plain tea bags with 3 cups boiling water and let seep until cool. This is your tea concentrate and you want to make a lot at once because it is more energy efficient and heats your house less frequently.

2. To make iced tea, mix 1/2 cup tea concentrate, 3/4 to a cup of sugar, less than 1 tablespoon of citric acid with 8 cups of water. You want to dilute the tea concentrate until it is quite light, otherwise it will make your iced tea taste bitter and disgusting. (This is why simply taking a cup of plain tea, chilling it and adding lemon and sugar does not make palatable iced tea. It is way too strong.) 

Variations: Feel free to play around with this and adjust it to taste. I prefer a sweeter iced tea and with a nice tang, but less of the tea concentrate. Others prefer different ratios of tea to sugar to acidity. Experiment and discover which ratio appeals to you most.

I've also successfully made iced tea with herbal tea made from verbena and lemon grass grown in my mother's garden. You can try using different teas as the base for your iced team but do keep in mind that it should be quite diluted in order to taste nice.

Note: I used citric acid in my recipe because it is cheaper than lemon juice where I live. Real lemons are out of season currently, bottled real lemon juice is quite expensive, and the cheap stuff is so diluted with water that I end up going through a bottle in one day, so it ends up being more expensive than it seems. If you have access to cheaper lemon juice, you can replace the citric acid with approximately 1/4 cup of lemon juice.

Do you ever make iced tea? How do you make yours? Or do you simply buy the instant, powdered stuff?