How to Make Pot Milk Tea at Home?

What’s so intriguing about Black Tea? It has a diverse and complex flavour notes and combinations with various ingredients that you could explore. While it tastes amazing and warming when you are enjoying the tea alone, Black Tea also works a perfect base for different mixed drinks - the most classic and common one must be milk tea.

Hong Kong is famous for its chan chaan tang milk tea with a classic mix of Ceylon black tea. However, there’re still millions ways in making milk tea and the one that we are introducing today would be the Pot Milk Tea. The brewing recipe we are suggesting here could be used with various tea types, including Masala Chai and other teas with strong flavours. It could both present the elegant and aromatic tea flavours with a rich and gentle milky note.

Ingredients | Serving for two

Water | 300ml
Black Tea | 10 g
Milk | 250ml
Sugar | 1~2 teaspoons

Recipe

1. Pour filtered water in a small pot.
2. After boiling, add the black tea and turn to a low heat to simmer for a minute or two, until the tea is fragrant and brown.
3. Pour milk and cook on low heat.
4. Cook until the milk is bubbling around the edges then you may turn off the heat.
5. Strain out the black tea dregs.
6. Add the sugar and melt it ( if you will add honey, you will need to wait for the milk tea to cool down a bit before adding it )

Little Tricks to Make a Better Pot Milk Tea

1. Always start with water. Tea is infused better in water than milk. So for better fragrance and body of the tea, we won’t boil the tea directly in milk. Comparing to water, milk is too rich and full for steeping out the complete tea flavours.

2. To select the right tea for pot boiled milk tea, it’s better to pick some with stronger body and in finer cut. Say Ceylon, Assam, Darjeeling. Except for plain black tea, flavoured black tea is a great choice as well, say rose black tea, earl grey, chai tea, etc.  

3. Besides black tea family, other fine tea with strong aromatic note works well too. Say roasted oolong, Houjicha, Genmaicha, etc. A lot of interesting taste to be explored.

4. Subject to how fine the tea leaves are, taste it often to ensure the tea hasn’t gone too bitter. Just like when you are cooking, taste it during the cooking process. 

5. When milk is poured into the pot, keep a close eye to it. Turn off the heat if it comes to simmer and the overall intensity is right.

6. Other than whole milk, you may also use non-dairy ones. However, make sure that the one you choose has a rich fat content in order to create the rich texture.

7. To increase the sweetness, instead of white sugar - honey, brown sugar, or red sugar can bring more complexity to the tea.

8. To prevent astringency, try not to stir too much. A few gentle stirs would be nice enough.

9. Besides tea, longan pieces, ginger or spices are welcome to match with milk tea. It’s fun to create your own recipe!