Classic pearl milk tea is the drink every shop needs to get right, because it is the one most customers judge you on. The good news is that it is also one of the simplest to standardize. Doking’s official recipe card for a 500 ml cup is 30 ml fructose syrup, 70 ml milk base, 150 ml brewed Assam black tea, and about 80 g of cooked black tapioca pearls, and the ingredients come to roughly $0.70 a cup at wholesale. Here is how to build it, brew it, and buy for it.
The recipe (500 ml, over ice)
| Ingredient | Amount | Doking SKU |
|---|---|---|
| Fructose syrup | 30 ml | Fructose Syrup 1.6 L |
| Milk base (non-dairy creamer) | 70 ml | Non-dairy Creamer 1 kg |
| Brewed Assam black tea | 150 ml | Assam Black Tea |
| Cooked black tapioca pearls | ~80 g | Black Tapioca Pearl |
Build it over ice, shake or stir to combine the tea, milk and fructose, then add the pearls last. That is the whole drink. The skill is in consistency, which means a fixed ratio, a brewed-tea standard, and pearls that are always fresh.
Brew the tea base
A milk tea is only as good as the tea under it. Doking’s standard for black tea:
Steep 100 g of Assam black tea in 2000 ml of water at 100°C. Stir about 20 times, leave it for 10 minutes, then filter out the leaves. Add 500 g of ice and stir until it melts. You now have a strong, cooled base that will not disappear behind the milk.
Brew in batches you will use within a few hours, and taste each batch. Old or over-steeped tea is the most common reason a milk tea goes flat or bitter.
Cook the pearls
Fresh pearls are the difference between a drink people come back for and one they finish out of politeness. Doking’s method for 1 kg of dry pearls:
Bring 7000 ml of water to a boil with 100 ml of syrup. Add the pearls while stirring so they do not stick. Once they float, cook on medium heat for 25 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and leave them covered for 20 minutes. Rinse with ice water, then hold them in a mix of 150 ml syrup and 500 ml water so they stay soft and lightly sweet.
Cook small and often. Pearls are at their best for only a few hours, so frequent batches beat one big morning pot.
What it costs, and why
At Doking by-the-case wholesale prices, the ingredients in one cup come to about $0.70. At a $5 to $6 menu price, that is roughly an 88% gross margin on ingredients, before you account for cups, lids, straws, labour and rent.
The number holds because of how you buy. Black tapioca, for example, is $6.50 for a single 1 kg bag but about $3.50 to $3.75 per kg by the case. The same is true of the fructose, tea and creamer. Buy the drink’s ingredients by the case and the 88% is real. Buy them by the bag and you give a chunk of it back.
Order the case list
To run this drink you need four Doking ingredients, all shelf-stable and all sold by the case:
- Black tapioca pearls (20 x 1 kg case)
- Assam black tea (25 x 450 g case)
- Non-dairy creamer (20 x 1 kg case)
- Fructose syrup (8 x 1.6 L case)
Those same four also carry most of your other milk teas, so one order covers a big part of the menu. We stock all of them by the case in Toronto (Ontario) and Montréal (Québec), with local delivery and free samples if you want to dial in your ratio before committing. Ask us for current by-the-case pricing for your province.
