Milk tea

This is still a work in progress! Enjoy this pretty picture and basic recipe for now.

Milk tea

Ingredients

¾ cup tea concentrate (see below)

½ cup milk

40 grams simple syrup (for 100% sweetness)

Ice

Directions

1. Pour the simple syrup into the milk and stir.
2. Add ice to a glass. Pour in the milk and syrup mixture, then gently pour the tea concentrate on top. Take a picture of the gradient you just made, then stir before drinking.

Notes

• Use a milk where the cream flavor isn't too strong. Most generic store brands are good, but some bougie milks will overpower the tea.
• Instead of stirring your drink, you can also shake it in a cocktail shaker. This aerates the drink, gives the drink a frothier texture, decreases bitterness and astringency a tiny bit. The downside, of course, is that your drink is less Instagrammable since it won't have the gradient.

Tea concentrate

The general technique for this is:

1. Measure out your tea leaves.
2. Pour the appropriate amount of hot water to steep the tea. You want to use a very high ratio of tea to water because you want the tea flavor to be strong to stand up to milk and sugar, and because you'll later dilute your tea with cold water.
3. Strain out the tea leaves.
4. Cool down the tea by pouring in cold water. You want to do this so that your ice doesn't all melt right away when you make your milk tea.

Since every tea is different, you may have to experiment with this to get the right flavor for your milk tea. When brewing your tea, you have 3 variables you can play with:

• Temperature: Using hotter water tends to make the tea flavor stronger since more compounds are extracted. However, this may also increase bitterness and astringency (which is oftentimes desirable), since the compounds that cause these flavors are more soluble at higher temperatures. In general, black teas can hold up to higher temperatures, but green teas will quickly become bitter if the temperature is too high.
• Amount of tea: Using a higher ratio of tea to water will make your tea flavor more pronounced.
• Brewing time: When you steep your tea for longer, more tea compounds will be extracted. Like temperature, increasing brew time may also increase bitterness and astringency, since there will be more time for the compounds that cause these flavors to be drawn out.

Here's the ratios/temperatures/times that I've been using. For each of these, I steep in 100g of hot water, and then pour in 80g of cold water at the end to cool the tea. Since the tea absorbs water, this will make about 160 grams (~3/4 cup) of tea concentrate, which is good for one 16 oz serving of boba.