Friday, January 29, 2010

Japanarama Review: Afternoon Tea - Milk Tea



Mmm..milk, sugar, oh and some tea, ha.

Cold Milk Tea is one of those items that you can find in pretty much every convenience store/grocery store/vending machine in Japan.  For me, it traces back to being little and drinking this (hot and cold) every chance I could get.  It's technically really easy to replicate at home: Black tea, sugar, and milk.  Taaaa-daaaaaaa.  But for some reason, especially if you grew up drinking the bottled kind, it just doesn't taste as good when you make it yourself, haha.   

I picked up this bottle of Afternoon Tea to try out because it was different from their regular Afternoon Tea drinks.  This one apparently has 2x the tea leaves and 2x the milk, compared to their regular Afternoon Tea bottles.  The drink is made by Kirin, which makes lots of consumer products- most notably, beer- but has a slew of other non-alcoholic beverages as well.

This tea is v. balanced in terms of tea vs. sweet flavors.  The Assam tea flavor is pretty strong, but there's enough milk in it to level it out.  It does get a little too sweet for me after drinking 1/2 of it- I probably wouldn't finish off a whole bottle in one sitting.  It's a great, nostalgic flavor that I think any tea drinker would enjoy.  I wish I bought another bottle- but on the other hand, it's a little dangerous to keep a lot of these on hand, because I'd probably drink a bottle every day if I could. 

I got this bottle at the Mitsuwa market in Edgewater, NJ.  If you have any Asian/Japanese markets by you, it might be worth taking a look through their refridgerated and shelf-stored beverage sections to find this one.   

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