What is Bubble Tea?

Your guys all know I love drinking green tea, but today I'm gonna tell you about bubble tea, another kind of tea which is now gainning popularity in Thailand especially in Bangkok. You can see this kind of tea everywhere: shopping centers, department stores, tourist attractions, or even in the markets.

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, depending on the countries it is sold .

Tapioca pearls are black, but can sometimes be found to be white or transparent. Depending on the ingredients of the pearl, the color varies. 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. They are the size of a marble.

A clear cup with black balls on the bottom can easily identify bubble tea drinks. Another obvious trait is a huge fat straw. The fat straw is needed so that the tapioca pearls can be sucked up with the drink and eaten. Bubble Tea's appearance definitely makes it unique.

Thank you for the information from www.bubbleteasupply.com and the picture from  http://made-in-asie.blogspot.com/2010/08/bubble-tea-boba-adresse-paris.html