Bubble tea, or boba tea as many places call it, is gaining rising popularity across the US and other countries worldwide.
Some people think about it as the strange sensation of splurging a chewy pearl up through a large straw, chewing it while drinking the tea. So, what does boba taste like to be exact?
Usually, very sweet! The tapioca balls give a creamy yet frothy texture when sucked through the straw. The taste of boba tea will vary between each bubble tea flavor.
This article covers all your texture and taste questions about bubble tea.
What Is Inside Bubble Tea?
Boba (aka tapioca tea, milk tea, boba nai cha, or bubble tea) is generally a tea-based beverage invented in a tea shop in Taichung city, Taiwan.
A glass of boba tea includes four primary parts: genuine brewed tea (often loose-leaf), creamer or milk, toppings, and sweetener.
Tea shops produce the tea using loose leaf tea as it allows them to concentrate more on their teas, and the taste feels much better that way. Instead, if you use a teabag, you won’t achieve such a deep flavor profile as loose leaf tea.
To make creamer, people use a broad range of milk, from almond milk, dairy milk, oat milk, sweetened condensed milk, soy milk, evaporated milk, and others.
For sweeteners, the two most common ones are brown sugar and simple syrup.
What about toppings? There are plenty, but the popular ones are tapioca pearls, grass jelly, popping boba, puddings, and many more.
What Does Boba Taste Like?
Boba tastes like a sweet and well-balanced milky drink with chewy boba pearls. For us, though milk tea is sweet, it’s not overpowering as tea somehow counteracts the creaminess and sweetness of boba tea flavors.
Boba cafes make a nice concentrate of the teas and use it as their bobas’ base.
Depending on the tea they brew, you will taste a robust black tea, light green tea, or even light jasmine tea. Sometimes, you can also encounter the taste of herbal teas in certain kinds of drinks.
If you take one more sip, you’ll notice that the chewy boba pearls also have a distinct flavor.
Many modern milk tea shops soak their tapioca pearls in brown sugar or simple syrup or honey to level up the sweetness for sweet-tooth drinkers. That’s why you can taste an added flavor in your boba.
Unless the cafe soaks the pearls into something, they taste like nothing every bite and chew.
The sweetness level also depends upon the syrup added. It can taste slightly sweet with a pleasant tea fragrance, or you will feel like a malty, deep, syrupy honey flavor.
You can choose your comfort level when ordering. Both are fantastic in a pleasing way.
In a nutshell, if you ask us to describe boba’s taste in three words, it would be creamy, balanced, and addicting!
How to Make Bubble Tea at Home?
What if there is no boba cafe near you? Sometimes, it’s OK to pay a visit downtown and reach your favorite store for a delicious sweet drink.
But if you’re a severe bubble tea geek, you can choose to make yours at home, which is economical, time-saving, and energy-saving.
First, you’ll need to buy some essential boba-making ingredients and accessories at an Asian-goods market or order online.
The correct tapioca pearls and loose leaf tea are a critical part of your bubble tea success. Please ensure you have these two crucial ingredients to proceed with making boba nai cha.
This video shows you how to make cafe-quality boba at home easily:
Follow it so that you can have a delicious homemade glass of sweet milk tea.
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Is There Any Difference Between White and Black Tapioca Pearls?
Although white tapioca pearls are more straightforward to find, a gourmet boba should feature black, round tapioca pearls.
Aside from the eye-catching color, black pearls are sweeter than white pearls. That’s why young people are into them more.
It is the additional brown sugar that creates either the sweetness or the attractive color of black pearls.
Apart from that, there’s no significant difference between white and black tapioca pearls. Both originate from cassava roots and share cooking instructions in common before being added to bubble tea.
Wrap Things Up
What does boba taste like? It tastes a lot of fun!
Boba appeals to sweet-tooth drinkers, particularly teenagers, thanks to the variety of mouth-watering flavors you can choose from.
You should give it a try when there’s a chance. We bet you’ll regret not tasting this beverage early before!
