Sometimes serious tea connoisseur does not like the concept of drinking tea with milk. However, there is no loss in you knowing that some teas go very well with milk. You may have a new discovery in taste.
The idea of adding milk in tea is not only giving the milky flavour, but also to increase the body of tea. The milk is very rich in calcium and it will drastically increases the body. Thanks to the body, the flavour becomes richer and it widely spreads on our palate. It could be the reason why the tea with milk is being loved by many people.
Please refer to the following article for the effect of milk to the taste of tea.
In fact, not only black tea, there are many other teas that goes well with milk. Generally, as far as I’ve tasted, the deeply fermented or heavily baked tea gives a good result with milk.
When I was in Taiwan, I heard that deep fired oolong can get along with milk very well. So I tried it as soon as I came back from Taiwan.
It is essential to choose the tea that is deeply fired. Based on my experience, the lightly fired oolong does not get along with milk. In our tea line-ups, I suggest Deep Fried Da Yu Lin, Deep Fired Deep Fermented Dong Ding Oolong or Taiwan Tie Guan Yin (Mu Zha Tie Guan Yin), Deep Fired Tie Guan Yin, and Anxi Rougui. In near future, I am planning to release Deep Fired Formosa oolong and Deep Fired Li Shan Cha. These teas also will be a good match with milk.
Some people mix Hoji Cha (the roasted Japanese green tea) with milk too. The Hoji Cha with milk gives the baked flavor that reminds me of the camp fire. You can also consider Iced Hojicha with milk.
I believe very less number of people has ever tried ripe pu-erh tea with milk. If you select the ripe pu-erh tea with the right quality, the pu-erh tea with milk turns out to be an excellent quality. I was very impressed by the colour when I blended milk in ripe pu-erh tea. It looks exactly like a chocolate drink. I thought “Wow! It looks so delicious!” It is very important to select the ripe pu-erh tea from the natural farming tree. The natural farming tea gives an extraordinarily strong aftertaste. The ripe pu-erh with milk gives a unique dry fruity flavour. Due to the high mineral content in those natural farming tea, the tea tastes very smooth and you may feel the lingering sweetish taste on your palate. I tried Wu Liang Shan ripe pu-erh and Gong Ding Jin Hao with milk. I felt it was completely a new drink. These teas originally have very strong aftertaste. When tea is added with milk, thanks to the body that comes from the milk, the taste and the flavour becomes very three-dimensional and soft.
RIpe pu-erh + Milk: It looks like chocolate drink.
I also tried to mix Gyokuro with milk. Unfortunately, it becomes a very odd drink. It gives the flavor like Matcha. However, it also gives the umami taste like creamy soup. It was a very mysterious drink after all.
Since I gave up Gyokuro with milk due to the “umami” taste, I decided to test Uji Sencha Jubuzan and Tsukigase Zairai Sencha that was produced with natural farming method, and thus these teas usually contain very less amino acid. As I expected, the natural farming Sencha has pretty good affinity with milk. It gives no wired flavour or taste like what I’ve experienced with Gyokuro. However, the flavour of tea becomes too delicate once it is mixed with milk. It was like I was drinking one kind of milk. I thought it is necessary to increase the concentration of tea. It may be nice if it is served as iced sencha with milk.
After I have conducted the experiences mixing various type of tea with milk, I got to know that the aftertaste of tea is crucial in order to obtain a good effect between the mixture of tea and milk. Since milk can enhance the body, it is less important whether the tea has strong body.
Why do you brew green tea at lower temperature?