Milk Tea Vs Bubble Tea: What's The Difference?

It's like that old adage about "not all rectangles are squares but all squares are rectangles" – all bubble tea is milk tea, but not all milk tea is bubble tea. Let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). Bubble tea (aka boba tea) is a type of milk tea that originated in Taiwan during the 1980s. Milk tea, however, is a beverage without a single origin. Nuanced variations of milk tea belong to the U.K., China, Japan, India, and countless other culinary destinations around the world.

Technically speaking, a London Fog is milk tea, and so is a matcha latte. They're both forms of tea with milk. Perhaps the simplest form of milk tea is British milk tea, which just adds a splash of cream to hot black tea. All variations of milk tea are typically made using regular whole milk, condensed milk, or evaporated milk and black tea. Adding milk to tea creates a smoother flavor and adds slight sweetness, especially if you opt for a sweeter option like half-and-half or full-fat vanilla oat milk.

Boba is chewy tapioca balls, and when added to milk tea, the drink becomes bubble tea. Milk tea can be served hot or iced, but bubble tea is nearly always served chilled. It also has a higher ratio of milk to tea, more sweetener and starch, and boba tea flavors range from black sesame to taro, almond, rose, brown sugar, matcha, honeydew melon, lychee, mocha, and more.

Milk tea is especially popular in England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Sri Lanka, and China. It has a naturally sweet, creamy, balanced taste, but some preparations add spices, additional sweeteners, or bold flavorful ingredients like fresh fruit. For instance, a spiced chai latte is a form of milk tea. Arguably the most popular form of the beverage is Hong Kong-style milk tea, which combines black tea with evaporated or condensed milk. It pairs extra well with savory, custardy li shu bao, for the record.

Regarding the tea leaves, Assam, Irish or English breakfast tea, and heartier Ceylon are all popular choices for brewing milk tea. These black teas bring a full-bodied flavor and mouthfeel alongside a relatively neutral taste that can easily complement other flavorful ingredients without clashing. These black teas provide a solid foundation atop which to craft a bolder milk tea.

To make standard milk tea, steep your black tea for five minutes to yield a brew that is strong but not bitter. Then, pour your steeped tea into a mug, teacup, or pint glass, and stir in the milk. That's it! For a richer brew, stir in brown sugar and half-and-half; this assembly is known as Japanese Hokkaido-style milk tea. With Hokkaido-style tea, as well as all other milk teas, it's all about silky texture, light sweetness, and balance.

Bubble tea is the refreshing, texturally compelling sipper that fans worldwide love to drink-chew. (Taiwanese brand Xing Fu Tang makes our all-time favorite bubble tea.) This is a more complex style of milk tea, combining brewed tea, condensed milk, a sweetener like honey or brown sugar, and boba tapioca pearls. That chewy boba gets sucked up alongside every sip of the milk tea via an extra wide straw. The starchy balls nestle at the bottom of the cup, eager to be vacuumed up (it's a lot of fun).

That black-hued boba is made from a compressed combination of brown sugar, tapioca starch from the cassava root, and water, which get rolled into a kneadable dough and boiled until firm. Some bobas are also blended with sweet potato starch for added firmness. Under the heat, that brown sugar naturally caramelizes, and to mix, the iced, milky tea gets shaken like a cocktail.

"Popping boba," on the other hand, is not chewable, rather it bursts in the mouth. Served in fruity milk teas, popping boba is made from fruit juice, powdered sodium alginate from brown seaweed extract, calcium chloride (the part that forms the thin poppable outer skins), water, and sweetener. Boba tea is a highly customizable beverage, and you can even make it at home. Boba balls can be purchased from most specialty Asian supermarkets, boiled at home, and then added to a cup of hot or iced brewed milk tea. 

Beyond the obvious presence or absence of boba, one of the chief factors distinguishing milk tea from bubble tea is their base ingredients and subsequent capacity for range. In general, milk tea is brewed from black tea with some type of milk added. Any flavorings beyond that come from spices, as it does with Thai milk tea and its blend of orange blossom, star anise, and tamarind. In bubble tea, however, those characteristic bold flavors can come from added fruit juices, extracts, or different flavors of boba. The modern phenomenon of boba tea is far more than just chilled milk tea with tapioca pearls. Also affecting flavor is the tea leaves. Bubble tea can also be brewed from green tea instead of black, which is often the case when crafting fruit-forward flavors.

The final notable difference here is fashionability. You could serve milk tea at a proper sit-down royal tea party, while technicolor boba tea comes from grab-and-go counters, even though it originated in Taiwan's traditional tea shops. According to Reader's Digest, the global boba tea market was valued at roughly $2 billion in 2019 and is anticipated to exceed $4 billion by 2027. International fast food giants like Dunkin and McDonald's have even put bubble tea on their menus. In short, boba tea is a little more hip and trendy (but certainly not fleeting) than longstanding, straightforward milk tea.