Bubble Tea | 珍珠奶茶

Bubble tea, bubble milk tea, pearl milk tea, boba milk tea, or just boba, is a popular drink in today's Taiwanese culture. It is drink invented in tea shops in Taichung, Taiwan, during the 1980s. As you can probably guess, bubble tea is a tea based drink and is usually mixed with fruit or milk. It comes in hot and cold versions and almost always has marble sized, chewy, black tapioca balls. They're called "pearls" (珍珠 zhēnzhū) or "boba" (波霸, bōbà) hence where the other names come from. The bubbles or pearls don't really have a taste, it is added more so for a texture of chewy-ness sensation. Though sometimes some shops do soak the pearls in honey or sugar water. 

Evolution of Bubble Tea:
Since bubble tea's popularity, many new inventions and variations have come into being, along with a huge expanse of flavors.

Bubble tea has two types: fruit-flavored teas and milk teas.Some shops do offer hybrid "fruit milk teas" too. Most milk teas include powdered dairy or non-dairy creamers, but some nicer shops use fresh milk. The nicer shops also use 100% fruit instead of the powder.

The oldest known bubble tea consisted of a mixture of hot Taiwanese black tea, small tapioca balls, condensed milk, and syrup or honey. Sometimes they use just use sweetened condense milk to replace the last two ingredients in one go.The regular bubble tea has a coffee color.

The tea base is now often replaced. First was bubble green tea, which uses jasmine green tea (茉香綠茶) instead of black tea. Big tapioca balls were used and replaced the small ones. Then more fruit flavors were added until, in some drinks, fruit flavor replaced the tea.  Flavors may be added in the form of powder, fruit juice, pulp, or syrup to black or green tea, which is then shaken in a cocktail shaker or mixed with ice in a blender. Cooked tapioca balls and other mix-ins (such as honey, syrup, and sugar) are added at the end.

Now there are fruity, flowery, or tea flavors available. Common flavors include mango, lychee, strawberry, taro root  rose, and lavender.

Some cafes use plastic dome-shaped lids (like the type you get with icees or slushies), but most in Taiwan that I've seen use a machine to seal the top of the cup with plastic cellophane (pretty much just a plastic covering). This lets the workers shake up the tea and makes it spill-free. To drink, you just need to stab your super sized straw (for the tapioca) through the plastic and voila, it is ready to drink. 

Typical bubble tea shop

Today, you can find shops entirely devoted to bubble tea all over Taiwan, but also in Flushing Queens New York and Chinatowns in all cities.

Original Milk Tea

Note: For children and the elderly it is best to be careful when drinking the tapioca balls, there have been instances where they have become a choking hazard. So it is best to drink bubble tea slowly and with care :)