Various Kinds of Milk Teas - Jinju

<Various Kinds of Milk Teas>               Jinju Eom

I enjoy teas a lot as much as coffee. Instead of working in Starbucks, I had worked in a Hong-kong style milk tea shop in Korea for 8 months. There were four different kinds of black tea leave in my store: Assam, English breakfast, Earl grey and Golden monkey. Their flavors were clearly different so depending on the kinds of leaves, customers could enjoy various flavors of milk teas. Of course I loved them, too. While I worked in the shop, I had big interests in not only tea itself but also the methods of making milk teas. So I’d like to introduce you some of them.

Milk tea is literally made of milk and tea. To make authentic English milk tea, the cup must be warmed up with hot water first. Pour 30 ml of pasteurized milk into the preheated cup, and then pour hot tea into it. By the way, there is always controversial about the problem of putting milk first or tea first when boiling milk tea. There are also short for these things; MIF (Milk In First) means to put milk first, and TIF (Tea In First) means to put tea first.

In addition, Royal milk tea is a tea with a 1: 1 ratio of black tea to milk. In order to make it, 200 ml of water is put into a milk pan or a small pot, and boiled. Then, tea leaves are put in this hot water, and it is brewed using a weak fire for 2 to 3 minutes. Then add the same amount of milk as the amount of water, then heat it again and stop when it begins to bubble. Mix the proper amount of sugar or syrup, and filter the tea with a strainer to complete the royal milk tea.

 Last, to make Hong kong style milk tea, we need strongly brewed tea base and condensed milk. As it may be a secret recipe of owner, so I cannot explain the exact amount of ingredients. Not only hot, but we can also enjoy it with ice .People like to drink with Boba which is made from tapioca starch. There is no sweetness in Boba itself, so usually it is cooked with lots of sugar to give them sweetness.

 Like the above, we can modify the taste of milk tea by making in different way with using only tea and milk. I think it is attractive indeed to know the various recipes from the one root.