Going from Sweetened to Unsweetened Tea

I think slowly removing the amount of sugar will help. Your palate may only need time to adjust. Since you’re looking for a tea, I recommend a turkish black tea by Caykur. It’s a straightforward tea that was amiable to my southern palate.

My favorite teas contain licorice root. Super sweet without needing any help

I was the same! I drink 5-6+ cups a day and used to have 2 sugars in all of them! Thats sooo much sugar! I found that switching from sugar to non at all never worked for me, but a slow transition worked the first time I tried it.

I did half a tsp less than normal for 2 days, then cut another half for another 2 days etc. By the end of the week I was drinking without sugar. At first I thought it didn’t taste as good, but then I tried my normal 2 sugars, and it was disgusting!

If you’re really struggling, you could always cut down and keep that level for like a week until your used to it, then cut down again. You could also eat a mouthful of fruit after each sip of tea, something like dates, to give you that kick of sweetness afterwards.

Also I found that drinking better quality tea than standard black tea bags also really helped when it came to flavour!

Hope this helps! Let us know how you get on, I’m curious!

get decent tea, loose leaf chinese & taiwanese. It tastes so good (sweet, yes sometimes!) that you wont need sugar.

try as many oolongs as possible, jade coloured, to darker roasted ones.

I like what-cha.com selection, I am UK based so its easy for me to get smaller sample sizes and try many different teas as they are too.

Yes! I even like tazo teas! Tend to be very sweet when brewing fruit based.

“Do you have recommendations for teas that may help me transition?”

I don’t know what you have been drinking so far but unless you have been drinking quality tea (i.e. if you have been drinking tea-bags, supermarket tea and whatever else normies drink) then I would simply recommend getting better tea.
For me at least, it was a revelation when someone first introduced me to proper quality and competently brewed tea. Until that point I never really liked tea and could only drink it with lots of milk and sugar (today I would rather gnaw off my leg than add milk and sugar to tea).
So my advice is to up the stakes, give your taste-buds a few weeks to adapt and never look back. I don’t think you will want to add anything at that point. Taking up gongfu brewing also helps since it gives you more control over how the tea taste.

You might try a first flush Darjeeling, it is a very light tea. I do put sugar in mine but I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t be drank without sugar too. It is not a tea that needs milk at all. I get mine from Vadham Teas from India. At this point they might be out of first flush but you can look.

I am not that much of an expert, still learning now, but in my own opinion, black tea would be a good option. I know some black teas have some fruity tastes; I have one that is lychee black tea and it has been one of my favorites.

I used to always sweeten my teas, and my pallete has now naturally adjusted so I never have to sweeten my tea unless it is really astringent (and then I tend to just add milk rather than sugar). I think it was simply a combination of time and and gradually using less sweetener (this was easier to do in naturally sweet blends). Eventually I just came to not need sweetener anymore, and now teas taste a bit strange when I add them.