How to Make Bubble Tea at Home

You came to the right place! 

Making bubble tea at home is very simple! Trust us, we won’t make things difficult here. Since you’ve come across this article, we’re here to answer all your questions that you can possibly have when creating bubble tea at home. 

From the equipment you need to the ingredients you need, we’ll keep things very simple and easy to follow. Also if you haven’t already checked out our community of more than 15000 people, please check it out here @talkboba. 

Shall we get started?  

What is Bubble Tea?

If you didn’t know already, bubble tea is a tea based drink or beverage typically consumed in Asian culture but rapidly expanding to other cultures thanks to the work of many boba cafes spreading the knowledge of what milk tea is. 

Nowadays it’s all over the world but it all started in Taiwan known as panty hose tea or simply milk tea. (If you’re curious read why it’s called panty hose tea here). The taste and ingredients within bubble tea are very simple. It consists of 3 parts: the tea base, the milk or creamer, some sort of sweetener and of course the choice of boba pearls or anything other toppings. 

That’s it! See more of what bubble tea is here. 

How to Make Bubble Tea at Home 

There are endless amounts of bubble tea flavors that we can talk about but we’re going to stick with the most simple, black milk tea. Know the most simple form of bubble tea will allow you to build knowledge for more unique flavors in the future. Check out all our boba flavor recipes here if you want to jump ahead and start with something very unique. 

Otherwise, stick around! We’ll teach you how to make bubble tea at home specifically black milk tea. Simply follow the steps below starting with your boba pearls (tapioca pearls), your tea base, your creamer or milk and last but not least the sweetener. That’s really all there is to making bubble tea at home! Check it out below. 

Where Do I Get those Boba Pearls? 

Another step in making a generic black milk tea with bubbles (boba pearls) is having great tapioca pearls. If you’re just starting out, you can always buy some store bought tapioca pearls and follow the directions on the back of the packaging, these are just as delicious. Many boba cafes actually source their boba pearls from stores anyways! 

However if you want to take it up another level like we mentioned before with the tea blends, you can always make tapioca pearls at home from scratch, some of the newer boba cafes do this. Tapioca pearls are actually made from tapioca starch from the cassava root, did you know that? If you’d like to learn more about the cassava root, check out the in depth article we wrote about, what is cassava root? 

What Kind of Tea is in Bubble Tea? 

The flavor or type of tea that is used for bubble tea might vary depending on what flavor of bubble tea you are making. Since we’re focusing on black milk tea, the loose leaf tea that we are focusing on is obviously a black tea blend. Other teas can be used by taking a look at our boba flavors page if you’re interested in other varieties. 

Generally speaking we @talkboba like to use loose leaf black tea blends from popular brands like Positively Tea Company or VAHDAM Tea. Now, you can always buy any blend of black tea that you desire but if you want to take your bubble tea making up a notch, within different tea brands there’s also different tea blends. 

What does this mean? With different tea blends of black tea, you will find different ratios of black tea leaves that are combined to make up a very unique tasting black tea. Some of the most popular black tea blends are: the English breakfast tea blend or the Irish breakfast tea blend. Want us to write an article about all the different black teas, let us know here! 

Is there Milk in Bubble Tea?

Absolutely! Unless of course it’s a non-dairy type of bubble tea. Many people like their own dairy or creamer for bubble tea. Though if you aren’t sure where to start you can always be safe with sweetened condensed milk similar to this.

Many popular boba cafes use this to make their black milk teas. Since it has the sweetener element already, you won’t have to add any sweeteners or syrups to your bubble tea after this. 

Other popular milks or creamers used in making bubble tea is 2% milk, almond milk and even oat milk nowadays. Have you tried oat milk before, let us know if you have, we still have yet to try some of the most popular ones like Oatly. 

What Sweeteners Do I Use for Bubble Tea?

Generally boba cafes will use some sort of syrup to sweeten their bubble teas. Like we mentioned before if you use sweetened condensed milk to make your black milk tea with boba pearls, you won’t have to use any other sweetener. After two teaspoons of sweetened condensed milk, you should be good to go! Unless you want it to be sweeter or course… 

Some sweeteners you can utilize are brown sugar syrups, classic sugar syrup or even table sugar but a lot of the times we don’t like using that. 

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After following these tips and steps in making your bubble tea at home, you should find yourself with a simple but very delicious and classic black milk tea. If you need step by step measurements and instructions, sort of like a recipe book, check out how to make hong kong style milk tea (black milk tea). 

We also have other flavors of boba or bubble tea that you can create at home too! Check out all the boba or bubble tea flavors we have written full recipes guides on. Some of the most popular ones are the hong kong style milk tea recipe and the strawberry matcha milk tea recipe. We personally think our matcha recipes are great too, some of the team make it daily at the office! 

We hope this article how to make bubble tea at home has helped you a lot, let us know if you start crafting some amazing milk teas at home. Let 42,000 other people know you’ve tried the recipes here @talkboba. Til next time, and remember just talk about boba, duh! 

• How to Make Tapioca Pearls from Scratch
• How to Cook Tapioca Pearls
• Everything You Need for Bubble Tea