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Milk teas are kind of an indulgence for me. It’s a little embarrassing to admit to drinking them at all, since they basically go against my entire tea philosophy, being pretty much the tea world equivalent of starbucks coffee-like drinks. In other words, with the amount of sweetener and milk dumped in, the percentage of actual tea in these is pretty low. Still, just like every so often I find myself really wanting some diet coke despite knowing that I am basically pickling my insides, sometimes I just want a nice sweet dessert type drink. This is especially true during the winter when you can get these nice and hot (oh, vending machines with hot drinks, you are so awesome) but sometimes it happens in the summer too. Or, as happened today, I might be in a bakery and the only tea that they have that I have yet to do a write up on is a milk tea. So I guess this time it was fate!

I can’t say that I’ve ever been really able to distinguish between different milk teas, they mostly just taste like very lightly tea flavored sweet milk and this one is no different. The whole zero calorie thing is pretty nice, since I think your standard royal milk tea has at an estimate a billion calories. I don’t think it really detracts from the taste, but I’m not exactly a source to be trusted for that sort of thing, since I’m not really able to distinguish the taste of coke and diet coke either. (I can do it with pepsi and diet pepsi though. because diet pepsi is gross) I mean, I’d probably be able to if I drank them side by side (although why would I do that?), but for me the difference isn’t so severe that I can tell when drinking them in isolation.

The biggest problem that I have with milk tea is that after finishing it I could generally do with a drink. That is, it’s thirst-quenching power is so low that it has circled around and actually causes thirst. Also, it’s got kind of a weird aftertaste – I vaguely recall that aftertaste being present in all milk teas, but a this is my first one during this particular visit, I can’t really be sure, perhaps it’s an effect of the artificial sweetener?

All in all, a nice enough tea latte, and definitely a good substitute if you want a cookie or something.

gmathis

Where do you find these you’ve been posting about recently? You can bet there won’t be an outlet for them in my part of the country!

Ewa

Ah well, I’m doing an intensive language course in Japan right now and one of my sillier goals is to chronicle all of the bottled iced tea that I can find so that I’ll know which ones I like for future reference instead of randomly picking the one with the prettiest label like I used to do.
I mentioned it when I started but I guess anyone who missed that post would be kind of confused :D

sophistre

I went to Japan for two weeks with my highschool roommate, and that’s one of the things I miss most…the bottled iced tea in transit stations…mmm.

__Morgana__

I’m sure you can taste the difference between Diet Coke and regular Coke. Regular Coke is incredibly sugary. I can barely stand it after years of drinking diet drinks. I pretty much feel that way about any regular soda except maybe root beer and ginger ale. Diet Coke is sweet in a different, sort of petrochemical way. But I love my petrochemicals! I used to drink it by the gallon pre-tea, and I still indulge.

Ewa

Hmm, perhaps your right, as I was writing I was trying to think of when I’d even HAD normal Coke last and I couldn’t.

Cofftea

While I’ll ignore your Starbucks comment (you don’t want me opening that can of worms lol!), I do agree that “milk” tea or tea latTEAS normally don’t have enough tea in them for my liking either. I like enough tea for the total volume of my beverage (i.e. 2tsp of chai for a 12oz cuppa using 6oz each milk and water) which would be the equivilent of me adding an extra shot to an espresso misto.

gmathis Whoops, forgot you’re out of the States! Hope it’s going well.

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gmathis

Where do you find these you’ve been posting about recently? You can bet there won’t be an outlet for them in my part of the country!

Ewa

Ah well, I’m doing an intensive language course in Japan right now and one of my sillier goals is to chronicle all of the bottled iced tea that I can find so that I’ll know which ones I like for future reference instead of randomly picking the one with the prettiest label like I used to do.
I mentioned it when I started but I guess anyone who missed that post would be kind of confused :D

sophistre

I went to Japan for two weeks with my highschool roommate, and that’s one of the things I miss most…the bottled iced tea in transit stations…mmm.

__Morgana__

I’m sure you can taste the difference between Diet Coke and regular Coke. Regular Coke is incredibly sugary. I can barely stand it after years of drinking diet drinks. I pretty much feel that way about any regular soda except maybe root beer and ginger ale. Diet Coke is sweet in a different, sort of petrochemical way. But I love my petrochemicals! I used to drink it by the gallon pre-tea, and I still indulge.

Ewa

Hmm, perhaps your right, as I was writing I was trying to think of when I’d even HAD normal Coke last and I couldn’t.

Cofftea

While I’ll ignore your Starbucks comment (you don’t want me opening that can of worms lol!), I do agree that “milk” tea or tea latTEAS normally don’t have enough tea in them for my liking either. I like enough tea for the total volume of my beverage (i.e. 2tsp of chai for a 12oz cuppa using 6oz each milk and water) which would be the equivilent of me adding an extra shot to an espresso misto.

gmathis Whoops, forgot you’re out of the States! Hope it’s going well.

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I’m a Pole who grew up in Texas, is currently a graduate student in California studying Japan. How’s THAT for random?

Being Polish, my family has always drunk a lot of tea, and I am no different. I may drink more tea than water. On the other hand, I can’t say that I’m very particular about it; I’m generally pretty careless with steeping times and water temperature and I don’t even have a proper teapot (mostly because the lid broke during the move to California ;_;).

I always drink my tea unsweetened and I only add milk in the case of the most egregiously chai-ish of chais. (not really a big fan of milk in general)

Given that so many of my entries seem to be about my morning tea, I felt I should add something here about me and mornings: I fail at mornings. I fail at them a LOT. Therefore I often also fail at proper tea making in the mornings.

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Santa Barbara

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