Bubble Milk Tea

My friend Helen very kindly brought this in to the office for me to try because she thought it was weird and that would interest me – and of course she was right. Canned bubble tea is exactly the kind of thing that seems out there enough to tick that “I HAVE TO TRY IT” urge that I often get…

Normally I think I would have low expectations for something like this – but I recognize the company “Ocean Bomb” from a line up of Pokemon Sparkling Beverages that they do. I’ve had over half the line up of those now, and they were surprisingly good. So I think my expectations were a little bit raised. My reaction is honestly two fold…

Fold number one is that the drink itself is HELLA sweet. Like, it tastes like someone made a Thai Milk Tea, which is already extremely sweet, and then sweetened it some more and that’s the drink. It’s not bad, but it’s extremely cloying and finishing a full can would be hard for me to do. Fold Two is that there are actually “pearls” in the can so the first time I drank one was very shocking and because you’re drinking a milk based beverage your mind automatically goes into curdled milk/unnatural clumping of things territory and it’s perturbing. However, pausing a beat and realising what you’re drinking is a lot better. They don’t taste bad – but they’re clearly agar based and not tapioca, so the texture is more of a tendon-like texture than soft and chewy/gummy. I hate agar based pears because of that texture (I think it’s because, as a non-meat eater, it puts me in an uncomfortable mindset) so I didn’t enjoy the presence of the pearls at all.

Ultimately – would I drink this again? Nope.

Very glad I tried it though because it’s weird and interesting in the best way.