We made bubble tea with the experts at Milksha (PHOTOS)

Do you like bubble tea? What about bubble tea with only fresh ingredients and no preservatives, additives, or flavours — shipped all the way from Taiwan?

Milksha, which means “milk shop,” was founded by a dairy farmer in Taiwan, and unlike a lot of bubble tea spots, uses fresh organic milk instead of milk powder. Milksha’s Robson Street store is its very-first North American location, and following close behind is their brand new Richmond location. As a city, we feel pretty lucky about that.

The shop prides itself on making its bubble tea with the freshest ingredients shipped in straight from Taiwan, and everything from the store’s flash-frozen signature honey-infused pearls, to its taro, orange juice, and even filtered water is prepared so Vancouverites can experience the closest thing to real Taiwanese bubble tea.

When we went behind the scenes with the team at Milksha, we got the scoop (literally) on everything from their premium Dajia taro, to how they make their tea, to where their ingredients come from.

Pouring milk/Milksha

In our behind-the-scenes visit, we learnt that you should skim the bubbles off the top of the tea — because, despite your intuition, having actual bubbles in bubble tea is bad (it’s the pearls that look like bubbles that give bubble tea its name, after all).

The experts even let us scoop some real-deal Dajia taro. The taro at Milksha is unlike that in a lot of bubble tea drinks you see in Vancouver, which is bright purple from artificial colouring. Milksha’s taro is a lighter, greyish-purple colour because it’s natural.

Scooping taro/Milksha

The popular spot sources its taro from the Taiwanese region of Dajia, where the taro is grown in an ideal climate that isn’t too dry.

The fresh taro is then flash-frozen and shipped in a climate-controlled freight, so by the time it arrives in Vancouver, it’s still in the near-same condition as it was in Taiwan. Once it’s here, the team at Milksha steam and mash it on a daily basis so it’s kept as fresh as possible.

Measuring honey-soaked pearls/Milksha

Speaking of things cooked every day, so are Milksha’s pearls, the shining star of its bubble tea. They’re flown by air straight from Taiwan and are kept as fresh as possible by flash-freezing.

The Milksha pearls are cooked for 90 minutes every day (so you know they’re fresh) and then soaked in honey. Take it from us, these sweet, squishy balls of tapioca are seriously soft and super yummy, especially when compared to other pearls you’ll find around town that are bought dried, instead of frozen fresh.

Measuring tea/Milksha

The tea that they use at Milksha, like all of their ingredients, also undergoes a special process to ensure it’s top quality. This isn’t just any old filtration process either; it’s a nine-step one. This is to ensure that Milksha’s water they use for tea is the same pH level as in Taiwan. Instead of using tea bags, the shop also steeps its tea leaves for four hours to extract a more intense flavour.

We definitely wouldn’t call ourselves bubble tea experts just yet, but we definitely had a lot of fun making bubble tea at Milksha.

Want to experience the closest thing in Vancouver to the real Taiwanese deal? For the truest Taiwan tea out there, Milksha is where it’s at.

Milksha Vancouver

Where: 1258 Robson Street, Vancouver
Hours: Wednesday to Monday, 1 pm to 10 pm; Tuesday closed

Milksha Richmond

Where: 6111 Number 3 Road, Richmond
Hours: 1 pm to 10 pm