I’ll leave the reason why Ceylon tea was in the beginning selected for HK milk tea. I hope some other people will discuss on that. Let me discuss what makes a good milk tea base.
The objective is simple, a strong enough tea with some aroma to with stand the addition of condensed or evaporated milk, and a lot of white sugar. For commercial side of the consideration, it has to be cheap enough and quick enough to infuse. And withstand poor storage in the conditions of the kitchen or bar in the diners or the food shacks where it is prepared.
As a consumer, I’d push away the commercial perspective and think only about taste and quality. To me, whether the cost is 50 cents or 5 cents for the cup really is cheap enough, for commerce, it is 10 times the cost, especially when the customers are more cost conscious than quality-wise.
In terms of taste, teabags won’t work. They are far too tasteless. Neither is cost. I don’t need that extra bags, which is very likely to be more expensive than the broken leaves inside.
The fact is, a lot of varieties of tea infused to over strength can work for milk tea. Green, puer, oolong and of course, black. Choose teas that possess a lot of taste and aroma. The coarseness of the body due to over strength will be remedied by the dense milk and sugar later.
However, if you want a black tea to the style of those in HK diners, but in better quality and taste, get a good grade thoroughly fermented black tea with good aroma, whether its the baked, sweet kind of aroma or floral, brighter kind. Length of taste is important. The “Ceylon” taste is most prominent in productions from Uva, Ceylon. You’ll find higher pitch in Nepal’s, more middle tones in Assam’s and Yunnan’s, and much rounder in Fujian’s and Sichuan’s, generally speaking and regarding only better ones.
Once you liberate yourself from the confinement of broken grades, single origin better quality teas are good choice each with its unique, standalone character.
The key in HK style milk tea, however, is not so much the tea choice, but the steeping method, which I have discussed in the related article.
