I picked up a Too Good to Go bag from this place quite awhile back. We've taken our time with trying out the stuff we got in our bag so it's taken me awhile to write this review.
Impressed with all the goodies we got in this bag. For $7.99 we got a packet of Taro Bubble tea, Iced Lemon Tea, and a Chai Latte mixture. Plus I got to choose an entire package of bubble tea mixture to go with it all. I chose a Milk tea package. It included 6 packets each of milk tea powder, boba pearls and drinking straws.
The flavors were great for every drink that we tried. I especially loved the Milk Tea drink. That's the last one we tried. For a DIY bubble tea, this brand is quite impressive and I wouldn't hesitate to try it again.
The package comes with directions for making either cold or hot drinks. My one complaint is with the directions given for making cold drinks. These direction I think though, are not unique to this company. I think other DIY bubble tea kits give the same directions. So here's what happened. The instructions say to mix the powder with hot water. So I poured the powder into our reusable glass bubble tea cups, then proceeded to mix hot water to dissolve the powder. Next, the instructions say to add "X" number of grams of ice cubes to that hot water mixture. This is where I ran into problems. I had 3 cups of bubble tea that I was preparing. One had the Chai Latte mixture, another had the Iced Lemon Tea mixture and the third was for the Taro mixture. When I got to the Taro tea mixture, as soon as I started stirring the ice cubes into the hot water mixture, the glass in my reusable bubble tea cup cracked and broke off! I had purple taro bubble tea mixture all over our kitchen stove. My reusable cup was now broken and no good for using, plus we weren't able to try the Taro drink since it was all over the stove and had to be wiped up.
After a bit of Google research, what happened actually made sense to me. It's basic science. Extreme heat and then all of a sudden extreme cold...it led to thermal shock which cracked the glass. I am pretty sure this is not the only brand to give these kinds of directions for making cold bubble tea but after suffering the loss of my glass reusable cup, it seems to me that instructing people to mix hot water into a cup and then instructing them to immediately mix ice cubes into that same cup is ummmm...a bad idea. Especially when the majority of reusable bubble tea cups out there are made of glass. The rapid, uneven change in temperature is bound to crack some glasses.
So after losing out on our chance to try the Taro drink, in order to escape having another cracked glass, when it came to making the Milk Tea drink, I decided to make it a hot beverage, then let it sit on the counter long enough to cool down and be put into the fridge overnight. Next day I took the drinks out of the fridge, then microwaved the pearls and added them to the drink. This method took longer of course but was much safer. Hubby made another suggestion for future reference which I might try next time. He suggested mixing everything in a metal pot next time instead of our glass cups. That way we could add the ice cubes, and the metal wouldn't break like the glass did. When everything is mixed, then it could be transferred to our reusable glass cups.
Pros and cons: His suggestion would allow us to enjoy our cold drinks quicker, rather than having to wait several hours or overnight for our cold drinks. On the other hand, if we're making more than one drink at a time, and we usually are...that calls for quite a bit of ice per drink. I don't really enjoy having to measure out so much ice, and even just having enough ice cubes around for that many drinks is a bit of a stretch for us. My overnight method is longer but...no ice cubes required. Just a bit of advance planning and patience.
In terms of flavor, I would absolutely recommend this brand of bubble tea. And as I said, my issues with the directions for making cold drinks are not unique to this brand. Just that when my glass cracked, it happened when I was making it with this brand. Thermal shock is a scientific phenomenon though so the same thing could have easily happened with any other brand. read more