Bubble Tea

B u b b l e T e a

Quote:

Bubble Tea originated in Taiwan in the early 1980's at a small tea stand.

Elementary school children would look forward to buying a cup of refreshing tea after a long, hard day of work and play. Tea stands were set up in front of the schools and would compete for business with the best selling tea. One concession owner became popular with her tea when she started adding different fruit flavoring to her tea. Because of the sweet and cool taste, children loved the taste. Soon, other concessions heard about the "unique" and popular tea, so they started to add flavoring to their teas. When adding flavor, the tea and flavoring needed to be shaken well for a good all around taste. This formed bubbles in the drink, which came to be known as "Bubble Tea."

In 1983 Liu Han-Chieh introduced Taiwan to tapioca pearls. The new fad was to add tapioca pearls into a favorite drink. Most of the time tapioca pearls were served in cold infused tea. After the tea and flavor were shaken well, it topped tapioca pearls that were sitting on the bottom of a clear cup. The tapioca pearls also looked like bubbles, thus also became to known as "Bubble Tea." Bubbles floated on the top your drink and bottom of your drink.

Bubble tea is also known as boba drink, pearl tea drink, boba ice tea, boba, boba nai cha, zhen zhou nai cha, pearl milk tea, pearl ice tea, black pearl tea, tapioca ball drink, BBT, PT, pearl shake, QQ (which means chewy in Chinese) and possible many others.

Bubble drinks are usually cool, refreshing, and a sweet drink with tapioca pearls sitting on the bottom of a clear cup. Sometimes the drink is made with fresh fruits, milk, and crushed ice to create a healthy milk shake. You can also find drinks that are made of powdered flavoring, creamer, water, and crushed ice. And if you like it like the Asians do, the cool drink usually includes a healthy tea, infused by a flavoring.

Tapioca pearls are black, but can sometimes be found to be white or transparent. Depending on the ingredients of the pearl, the color varies. I've been told that the white and translucent pearls are made of caramel, starch and chamomile root extract. The black pearl includes sweet potato, cassava root and brown sugar, which add the black color. The consistency of tapioca pearls are somewhere between jell-o and chewing gum.

Source: http://www.bubbleteasupply.com/index.php?page=what.html

Do you like to drink bubble tea?
What flavors do you like/dislike?
How often do you drink it?
Do you make it at home?


I love bubble tea! :superhappy: My favorite flavors are honeydew and coffee. I totally dislike watermelon bubble tea because it tastes so weird. Every time I go to Montreal, I buy ingredients to make it at home since there are no bubble tea shops in my town. All the ingredients I need are tapioca pearls and bubble tea powder. It's not as good as the commercial ones though.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Summonmaster

I also have yet to distinguish the difference between adding milk or not. It's just that there are so many options for your bubble tea that there's no way I could do the same thing each time, except for putting in the tapioca bubbles. Otherwise it wouldn't really be bubble tea.

Is it good with milk? What are the other options for bubble tea? I don't know them since I drink regular homemade bubble tea most of the time.

Originally Posted by Summonmaster

I drink it once in a while, since it's like a luxury drink, starting at $3.00+

I wish I could make it at home

For 6~7$ of ingredients (powder + tapioca pearls), you can drink bubble tea up to eight times. The commercial one is the best, though.

There's nowhere I can't reach.