Konbini Kinyoubi: Milk Tea Taste Test

Welcome to Konbini Kinyoubi, where every Friday (Kinyoubi) we visit our local convenience store (Konbini) and buy something delicious.

In Japan, you don’t have to wait in line at a Starbucks to get a to-go coffee. If you’re on the run, you can obtain coffee in the form of a bottle or can from a vending machine in the train station. And sometimes, if you’re new to the country and/or in a rush, you buy something that looks like coffee, but isn’t. That’s milk tea.

Milk tea, or afternoon tea, is pretty much what it sounds like: tea and milk. It doesn’t taste too strongly of tea, instead offering a bit of spice in the way a chai latte does, along with refreshing milk. You can get it by the bottle cold in the summer and warm in the winter, and it’s a nice change of pace around 3pm if you’ve already had several cups of coffee that day.

You may be familiar with the term “milk tea” from boba tea, the kind with tapioca balls in it, and unfortunately we can’t really compare the two because Eriko and I haven’t tried boba in more than a decade. However, for some reason, bubble tea has become really popular in Kobe lately. Don’t know what that’s about.

For our taste test today, we got two of the most popular kinds of milk tea from 7-11. Both of these were cold bottles, since that’s what we wanted. First up: Royal Milk Tea.

As you can see, the color is close to that of a bottled latte, hence the sometimes confusion. We both remembered this as being the classiest of the milk teas, and were a tad surprised when it turned out to be a little watery. I could definitely get the tea taste from it, which isn’t always that strong.

Fun fact: Marie Antoinette didn’t really say “Let them eat cake.” The phrase existed in literature before she ever came to Versailles. No I will not provide a source on this.

Eriko remarked that it was light and contained a lot of milk, but agreed it was a bit watery. Overall it was refreshing, but not as good as we’d remembered.

Up next is Kirin, in a big tall bottle. This one had much more of a spicy kick to it, which probably meant it had a bunch of sugar, but I’m not about to read any labels.

Eriko agreed this one had a stronger taste and was a bit better. It could be that as non-habitual milk tea drinkers, we gravitated toward the sweeter one in the same way people gravitate toward Pepsi over Coke in blind taste tests because it’s sweeter according to that one book I read one time.

We left them half-finished in the fridge and tried again the next day, and both were quite refreshing and tasty on a warm afternoon.

"Both light and easy to drink," said Eriko.

I agree. Milk tea is easy to drink. Even as a coffee guy, I enjoy the occasional change of pace milk tea provides. I recommend giving it a shot if you find yourself in Japan in the disgusting heat of the summer 15/10 all the money to the konbini. Ciao.