Hong Kong Milk Tea is a magical, highly caffeinated, wonderfully smooth morning drink that I had for the first time in its true glory on our trip to Hong Kong.
Always served piping hot and perfectly sweetened, it has just the right amounts of evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk.
It gives you a jolt without any unpleasant buzz (speaking from my own experience anyway), and a blend of teas makes for a wonderfully strong and fragrant cuppa. It went well with everything from a plate of Hainanese chicken at a hole-in-the-wall lunch joint to a Portuguese custard tart, to a custard bun eaten on the street.
Developing This Hong Kong Milk Tea Recipe
I spent a lot of time on this recipe, watching videos online and thinking back to the many cups of Hong Kong Milk Tea I enjoyed on our short trip there. There are many methods for brewing out there, and notably, there’s a pantyhose-like filter involved.
There’s also tea “pulling” (pouring the tea from one container to another repeatedly), and many thoughts on optimal temperatures and brewing times. I’ve sifted through all the information out there to create what I think is the perfect, no-fuss cup of Hong Kong milk tea.
What Kind of Tea Should You Use?
First there’s the tea blend: many purveyors of great Hong Kong Milk Tea closely guard the blend of teas they use, but it’s always a blend! So when in Rome Hong Kong…
Ceylon is the undisputed common thread across Hong Kong Milk Tea recipes. I used a Ceylon Orange Pekoe that we had in the pantry. From there, I did a little experimenting with my mother’s stash of tea to see what kind of flavors they each yielded, and I was surprised to find that the humble Lipton black tea bag, also made from Orange Pekoe, did a great job at cutting costs AND packing the right flavor.
My parents have actually been to tea farms in China, and apparently, Lipton buys up their “tea dust” or “tea fannings,” i.e. the crushed remnants from the production of the more expensive loose leaf tea. So in a weird way, you might be getting some quality stuff! To round out my tea blend, I threw in some Earl Gray for another citrusy, robust layer of flavor.
From there, there’s the pesky question of tea ratios. I did a lot of tearing open of tea bags, and here are a couple of helpful tips for formulating the right Hong Kong Milk Tea blend:
- 6 cups of water boils down to about 4 1/2 cups of tea, or about 4 servings
- 2 standard tea bags equals about 1 tablespoon.
It’s surprising just how much tea you need to make an authentic cup of Hong Kong Milk tea, as it is traditionally so strong. I watched countless Hong Kong Milk Tea vendors on YouTube scooping huge cups of tea to make just one large pot!
To maximize your tea, you can get another small pot of tea out of the first batch of tea after you’ve boiled it. It will be slightly less flavorful but will be good for drinking black and perhaps not diluted with milk.
By the end of my day of tea brewing, I finally had the perfect cup of Hong Kong Milk Tea with a homemade Portuguese egg tart (another experiment that took some painstaking trial and error from my dad) at around 5pm.
It was delicious, and brought me right back to Hong Kong. Though tread carefully––at 2 AM that night, I was still lying awake, hopped up on 4 cups of tea!
In all seriousness, though, this is my new favorite and go-to. I hope you enjoy it, and if you find optimal tea blends, leave them in the comments!
Hong Kong Milk Tea: The Recipe
First, add 6 cups of very hot water to a pot. Add the tea and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Your tea should be very dark!
From there, pour the tea through a fine-meshed strainer with cotton cheesecloth wrapped around it. This is optional to make sure you get every last bit of tea fanning out of your drink.
Portion out the tea––one serving is a little over 1 cup. Mix in ⅓ cup evaporated milk and about 1 teaspoon sweetened condensed milk, or to taste. Stir thoroughly, and enjoy immediately!
The shortcut version of this recipe (good for single servings) is to put 1 teabag each of Lipton, your favorite Orange Pekoe, and Earl Gray teas into a mug with boiling water, let steep for 5 minutes, and then add ⅓ cup of evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk to taste.
Hong Kong Milk Tea
Ingredients
- 6 cups hot water (1.4L, makes about 4 ½ cups of tea after the boiling process)
- 10 tablespoons tea leaves or fannings (in tea bags or tea strainers; any combination of Ceylon Orange Pekoe/Lipton Black Tea, Earl Gray, or your favorite black tea)
- 1⅓ cups evaporated milk (315 ml, ⅓ cup per serving)
- 1 to 2 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk ~1 teaspoon per serving, or to taste
- a fine-meshed strainer lined with a piece of fine cheesecloth cheese cloth is optional, to get a perfectly smooth tea
Instructions
- Add 6 cups of very hot water to a pot. Add the tea and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 15 minutes.
- From there, pour the tea through a fine-meshed strainer that has cotton cheesecloth tied around it. This is optional to make sure you get every last bit of tea fanning out of your drink.
- Portion out the tea––one serving is a little over 1 cup. Mix in ⅓ cup evaporated milk and about 1 teaspoon sweetened condensed milk, or to taste. Stir thoroughly, and enjoy immediately!
Loved your recipie. I tried it with 2 bags of Lipton instead of one and it came out wonderful. Thank you.
Authentic tasting HK milk tea. I used your 4 servings method to make 1 cup of HK milk tea. It went something like this. Bring 1 cup water and 1 Lipton yellow label teabag to boil. Simmer for 15 mins. This will give you 2/3 cup of concentrated tea. To that I added 1/3 cup (5 tbsp) evaporated milk and 2 tsp sugar (because I don’t have condensed milk). Heavenly HK milk tea 🥰
Yay! Glad you liked it, Jill :)
We were born and raised in Hong Kong and lived there for 3 – 4 decades and we’ll say that this recipe is as close as it gets and it is awesome! Thank you so much and we love your recipes!
Thank you so much, Bernice!
Not authentic, wrong ingref
You’re not the first to say so! i’ll have to keep researching to refresh this one one day soon.
I wish these comments didn’t exist. They are so unhelpful. It just criticizes but doesn’t offer anything else.
Thanks, Mike. Sometimes people need to vent!
I love this SO MUCH. Ever since I found this recipe I’ve made it so many times. I have one question though, I tried making a large batch to stick in the fridge for future milk teas. It brewed fine, but the tea itself turned cloudy instead of the clear dark brown it was when it was first brewed. Is this normal? I’m not sure. Thank you again for your recipe!
Hi Jordan, you should not drink the tea if it turns cloudy. How many days was it in the fridge before it turned cloudy?
I have an answer for this – the same thing often happens with my iced teas (merely the next morning after making the tea!), and it continued happening even when I was careful to sanitize the pitcher and boil the water thoroughly to eliminate bacterial contamination, which I assumed was causing the cloudiness. I did some research just now! Iced tea turning murky is apparently a reaction between sugar and the tannins from the tea which occurs if the tea is not allowed to cool to room temperature before being chilled. To avoid the cloudiness, allow the tea to reach room temperature before refrigerating it or adding ice/cold water. In the case of cloudiness caused by tannins and sugar bonding (as opposed to bacterial growth or contamination), the tea is still safe to drink despite being cloudy, but the taste may be slightly negatively affected.
Love this recipe! Instead of evaporated milk, I lightly boiled normal milk and kept stirring instead of evaporated milk, and it still works! I look forward to making this again!
Thanks, Tommy, that’s a great tip! So glad you enjoyed it.
Hi, Kaitlin! I just wanted to say I really appreciate your thoroughness in creating this recipe! This was one blog post I didn’t mind – and actually enjoyed – reading to hear about your process and journey with this drink.
I haven’t tried it out yet, and wanted to make sure I got the tea right before making it. For the bigger batch, when you say “any combination of Ceylon Orange Pekoe/Lipton Black Tea, Earl Gray, or your favorite black tea)”, am I to mix 10tbsp of each kind or is it enough with just one type?
Thanks in advance for your response!
Hi Natalie, thank you so much! <3 Some of the more hardcore milk tea drinkers among our readership have unleashed their disapproval on me for using Earl Gray so I would consider avoiding that lol. If you only have one kind of tea, you can surely just use one. If you have a couple you can mix and match based on your tastes. To me, just Lipton would taste flat/weak, which is why I wanted to mix in another kind of black tea, and dare I say, I really like Earl Gray.
Hope that helps! :)
I too have been experimenting with different teas for the past 10 years to create this amazing taste and Earl Grey is the closest to me in giving that floral “herg” taste that I look for in HK milk tea. It is very tough to get it exactly right but since we can’t easily get leaves to make HK tea ourselves, this recipe is the next best thing. Good luck.
Thank you, Wendy!