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Start the New Year with a New Drink

Before I started getting into coffee or really enjoying coffee, I've drank mostly tea.

My perfect day would be:

It's a sunny 72 degs out, laying in a hammock, under the shade with a big tall glass of iced tea.

I've drank tea ever since I was young. My parents often used to tell me the story of how when I was 4 years old, I would recite poems of Confucious, like the "Three Character Classics" for sips of my grandpa's tea.

So for Chinese New Years, I've decided to get some tea in the mix and have a Yuan Yang. Yuan Yang is essentially a Cantonese version of milk tea with coffee. Hong Kong was under British rule for almost a century and the Cantonese people took to the English breakfast tea with milk.

A good ratio for yuan yang would be 3:7, 3 parts coffee and 7 parts tea. You can really play around with that ratio say if you prefer a stronger coffee taste, there is no hard rule on this.

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Setup

Beans

  • any fresh coffee beans @ 20g

Tea

  • any black tea @ 2.5g (I had some lovely English Breakfast black tea from Unravel Coffee)

Process

I decided to increase the ratio of coffee to tea just a tad because then I can have the coffee ratio be the same as the Iced pour over method but without the ice.

Recommended - 3:7 My method - 1:2

This allowed me to have 160g of coffee to 320g of tea.

Coffee Process

Three consectutive pours of 40g of water.

Time Water
0:00 40g
0:40 80g
1:10 120g
1:40 160g

Tea Process

For the tea, it was recommended a ratio of 2g of loose tea per 250g (8oz) of water. I went ahead and increased the tea ratio weight to 2.5g to get close to 320g of water as required above.

So I put 2.5g of loose leaf tea into pot and poured 320g of water and let it brew for 3-4 mins, while I am prepping the coffee.

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Add tea to coffee

When the coffee is finished, quickly add the tea to the coffee in a carafe or a cup that can hold 500ml. Give it a light stir then add condense milk, between 30g-50g... or a large spoonful to start then more to taste. Mix well and enjoy!

Thoughts

The tea flavor is pretty strong so adjust your ratio accordingly. I used about 30g of condense milk, but I wouldn't object to 50g, haha. You can even use evaporated milk and sugar. The ratios here are a good starting point and adjust as you feel necessary. Having something different is kind of nice from time to time for me.

Oh and for reference, this uses a Hong Kong style milk tea, a bit different than the ever popular boba milk tea from Taiwan. Taiwanese milk teas uses fresh milk or creamer and the ratio of tea to milk is a lot less (weaker tasting) than Hong Kong style.

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