Tiger milk tea is a smooth, sweet, iced milk tea flavored with rich toffee-like muscovado brown sugar syrup and served with chewy black boba pearls. This bubble tea sensation needs no introduction. It might appear intimidating to make, but it is one of the most basic brown sugar boba recipes.
Let us learn more about it before getting into the recipe.
There are numerous variations of Bubble tea. Aromatic flower-scented bubble tea, fruity bubble tea, chocolate bubble tea, and whatnot. But this brown sugar boba is still the heart of boba culture.
Tiger milk tea is nothing but bubble tea flavored with a dark brown muscovado sugar syrup. It gets its name from the tiger-like stripes formed on the glass when the syrup dunked boba is put into it.
The dark brown syrup dunked boba leaves dark stripes along the sides of the glass. When milk is poured into the glass, the stripes become more evident. That is how this bubble tea got its name.
Though tiger milk tea is a pretty popular drink, it is called by different names, which usually causes confusion. Let us look into the other names that might be used to refer to tiger milk tea.
Around the Asian countries, it is called tiger milk tea, brown sugar milk tea, brown sugar boba, or tiger bubble tea. Whereas in the USA, it is usually called Tiger boba or tiger boba tea. This is because bubble tea is called boba in the USA.
It tastes like a rich iced milk tea with a deep caramelized sweet flavor, coupled with chewy tapioca pearls. So, yes, it is nothing fancy, just a normal bubble tea, but the sugar does wonders here. Not just in terms of appearance. Non-refined sugar, muscovado is used to make a caramel-like syrup, along with the tea dominating the tiger milk tea flavor profile.
It also has a low-lying flavor of typical boba which comes from the black tapioca pearls. Overall tiger milk tea is a sweet iced milk tea, with a caramel-like flavor from brown sugar or muscovado sugar.
What do you need to make tiger milk tea or the brown sugar boba?
You need two tea bags for making this recipe. This recipe will yield 2 large or 3 medium-sized drinks. And two tea bags work perfectly for the recipe of this quantity. If you like strong tea flavor in your milk teas, then add one more tea bag.
If you are using tea leaves, 2 teaspoons of green tea leaves or black tea leaves will be sufficient.
I am using black tea for this recipe; hence you can call it a black tiger milk tea. But you can use any tea that you like.
Jaggery is brown-colored unrefined cane sugar that comes in brown and dark brown variants. It looks just like brown sugar, but unlike brown sugar, Jaggery does not undergo any kind of refining. Hence it contains natural molasses. It has a unique toffee-like flavor.
Muscovado sugar is the traditional choice for making tiger boba. But in case of non-availability, you can substitute it with other types of unrefined sugars. A few substitutions that should work just fine are panela (unrefined sugar from Latin America), Black Sugar (Japanese unrefined sugar), or sucanat.
If you have none of these, go with dark brown sugar. Brown sugar is the most easily available substitute, hence this tea is often called brown sugar boba.
I am using whole milk, you can whatever suit your diet and taste. You can substitute it with plant-based milk like oat milk or soy milk for making vegan tiger milk tea.
If you are making tapioca pearls from scratch, this is going to be a tiring recipe. Trust me it is! In reality, it is nothing like those YouTube or Instagram videos. It is not easy to handle tapioca dough. Initially, it is too hot and sticky to handle, and once it becomes easy to handle, it hardens very quickly.
So, you can purchase boba from the store that sells black boba pearls.
I am obsessed with a black boba or black tapioca pearls. I think they make bubble tea a bubble tea. The popping boba, jelly boba, jelly cubes, etc. are all good from time to time but you cannot beat the classics. And this recipe is a very classical dirty boba recipe.
When we make tiger boba at home, we often miss the contrasting stripes that we get in those served in boba cafes. Just after pouring the milk, the syrup stripes merge with milk and vanish! Where is the fun?
Well, the stripes will eventually dissolve into the tea, but for the sheer esthetics of it, we like them to stay for a few minutes, so that we can click some gram-worthy pics.
So, if you want lasting stripes on your boba, follow along.
It is all in the assembly. When you put the syrup dunked boba pearls into the glass, place them very close to the rim and let them slide down the glass by slowly straightening the glass. Cover all the sides of the glass. Usually, a glass would take 5-6 long handle iced tea spoons of boba. So, you will have enough coverage.
Then, let the glass rest on the counter for 2 minutes. This rest duration allows the sugar syrup on the glass sides to solidify so that when you pour in the milk, it does not dissolve immediately.
Hence it buys some time to gaze and admire your hard work and click a few images.
Can I refrigerate the bubble tea?
Refrigerating the bubble tea is something that I would never recommend but if you have no choice, then you can refrigerate it overnight. But a disclaimer that the boba in the tea will be hard. You can enjoy the tea though.
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