The Book of Boba Tea, Chapter 1: Brewing Tea (第一章：泡茶)
The way of tea
I love milk tea with tapioca pearls. Each week I visit my neighborhood pearl milk tea place at least twice. The owner’s nice, and by now everyone who works there knows my order by heart: medium oolong milk tea, hot, no sugar, with amber pearls and lactose-free milk. My favorite tea in the world, with mildly sweet chewy tapioca pearls, and milk options that suit my dietary needs.
As a Taiwanese, I am powered by tea. My boba habit is probably irksome to my mother, a bona fide tea connoisseur, though she’s never really bashed me for it. She relishes preparing and savoring exquisite Taiwanese teas with my father on the weekends at her custom-made gigantic tea table in our living room. I’m not kidding, our living room “coffee table“ is not for coffee but a gigantic carved stone exclusively for making tea the Taiwanese way. When the table is filled with water, it looks like the carved buffalos on the table are soaking in the water, quite a fun sight. When she’s ready, my mom can drain the water into a receptacle underneath it.
Our family love for tea can be traced to my grandfather, who has a habit of making and sipping tea with his traditional teapot and teacup set. Every morning at 10 am sharp, it’s tea time for him with my grandmother and whoever visitors and family they have around. People often bring him nice tea as gifts, and he would often gift teas in return. With my aunt becoming a certified tea ceremony master after she retired, I can declare that I come from a family full of tea enthusiasts.
I have often wondered whether I could make my own milk tea at home that hits the spot as well as store-bought. I know that boba shop teas taste good, so they must have good sources of tea leaves suited for tea drinks, and have access to ingredients for commercial use that’s not practical for the home. In the past, my attempts at making tea that’s flavorful enough to stand up to milk while not tasting astringent have been disappointing, to say the least.
I started by researching the best ways to brew tea for boba. The good thing is once you have this down, no matter where you are in the world, you can make Taiwanese shop-style tea using whatever tea is available to you.
The key to brewing tea comes down to the variety of tea, the temperature of the water, the ratio of tea leaves to water in weight, and the steeping time.
Tea varieties
These days Taiwan produces many wonderful varieties of tea for sipping: Red Jade black tea (紅玉紅茶 ) and Oriental Beauty oolong (東方美人) are two of my favorites. For boba tea though, a strong flavored Assam, Ceylon, or a mix of both have been used due to their robust flavor, affordable costs, and ease of access. The general rule is to choose teas that are heavier roasted, have stronger flavors, and aren’t too rare or expensive to go through in great quantities. For oolong teas, Tie-guan-yin (鐵觀音), a heavily roasted variety of oolong is a favorite, and Jasmin green (茉莉綠茶) is a good choice for green tea. Within each variety, you can experiment and find a variety that is a good balance of smooth and bold.
The temperature of the water
Different teas have different optimal brewing temperatures. While black tea can withstand higher temperatures while being brewed, if you boil it for too long it gets bitter and astringent very quickly. While in recipes such as brewing masala chai, black tea can stand up to boiling for 3 minutes, I prefer to brew black tea at 195-200F. For oolong, it’s slightly lower than black at about 180-185F. For green, I aim for 170-175F. The goal is to extract maximum flavor out of each tea without unwanted bitterness.
The ratio of tea to water
Traditional Chinese tea infusions brew teas that are delicate in flavor and aroma. Families and friends often sit around a tea tray, chatting and sipping small cups of tea. When brewing tea for tea drinks which need to stand up to being sweetened, iced, flavored, and paired with the creaminess of milk, you would need to have a heavier hand and make stronger tea, almost to the point of being a tea concentrate. For any type of tea, a good starting point is 1:40, tea leaf to water by weight. That means if you’re brewing 1 cup of tea, which is around 240ml/240g, you’d need around 6g of tea, or 3 standard tea bags.
Steeping time
By now you can see that we’re not going against conventional wisdom for brewing tea in terms of temperature, but rather we are choosing tea varieties with bolder flavors, using a higher tea-to-water ratio, and going for longer steeping times. Depending on the tea variety and the size of the tea leaves (are the leaves still whole, or are they finely ground?), you might have to brew a bit longer than what is suggested, up to 8 minutes. Not a fan of bitterness? You can also try going the cold brew route. Just know that you will need a lot more tea leaves.
Two milk teas
Today I will share my way of making black milk tea and green milk tea at home. Once you know how to make the tea bases, you can customize them to your liking by adding milk or not, making them as sweet as you’d like, at a temperature that you like. Since green tea has a more delicate flavor, use less milk than you would with black milk tea, and skip the half and half.
Next week, we’ll look at the history of boba milk tea, and explore how to make tapioca pearls at home.
INGREDIENTS
For the Black Tea Base
12g/ 5-6 tea bags of black tea (Assam, Ceylon, and breakfast tea varieties are recommended)
2 cups/480ml filtered water
1 1/2 cups milk, divided
4 tbsps half and half, divided
For the Green Tea Base
12g/7-8 tea bags of green tea (Jasmine green or Japanese Sencha)
2 cups/480ml filtered water
1 cup of milk, divided
Brown sugar syrup
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1/2 cup of water
DIRECTIONS:
To make the black tea base: In a tea pot, steep tea bags or loose leaf black tea in 195F/90C water. You can achieve this temperature from pouring boiling water into a glass measuring cup and then pouring it into a tea pot. Let steep for 5-8 minutes. Remove tea bags, use directly or chill for cold teas.
To make the green tea base: In a tea pot, steep tea bags or loose-leaf green tea in 175F/80C water. You can achieve this temperature from pouring boiling water into a glass measuring cup, let sit for a minute, and then pouring it into a tea pot. Let steep for 5-8 minutes. Remove tea bags, use directly or chill for cold teas.
To make the brown sugar syrup: Boil 1/2 cup of water with 1/2 cup of brown sugar until the sugar dissolves. Let cool and store in a squeeze bottle.
To make black milk tea: mix 1 cup of black tea base with 3/4 cup of milk and 2 tbsp of half and half. Serve chilled with ice or hot. Sweeten with brown sugar syrup to your liking.
To make green milk tea: mix 1 cup of green tea base with 1/2 cup of milk. Serve chilled with ice or hot. Sweeten with brown sugar syrup to your liking.
In Chapter 2, we go all in on making tapioca balls !