Want an easy recipe for recreating Thai tea at home? This Thai tea latte has all the creaminess and flavor of Thai tea and uses simple ingredients found in any kitchen.

It’s the perfect twist on Thai tea that is creamy and sweet. All you need is Thai tea leaves or mix, milk, sweetener, and ice. That’s it! Once you make it, you’ll save $7 on buying Thai tea outside.

Here’s how to make a great Thai tea latte at home.

What is Thai Tea?

Thai tea, as the name suggests, is a popular sweet and creamy iced tea from Thailand. It’s one of the most popular drinks in Thailand, and you can find it in every store and on the street market.

It’s made from black tea leaves and spices, including cardamom, cloves, and star anise. While you can make it from scratch, most vendors use a Thai tea leaf mix with flavorings on the tea leaves.

When brewed, Thai tea has a bright orange hue, partly from the tea and from added food colorings, which give it that appealing color.

What Does Thai Tea Taste Like?

Thai tea is sweet, almost with a vanilla taste, with mild spice flavors. The most pronounced spices are star anise and cardamom. The tea with the spices gives it a unique floral taste and aroma, but it is mild enough to appeal to all palates.

You add condensed milk and sugar to Thai tea for sweetness, which helps round out the flavors. Traditionally, you’ll also top the drink with evaporated milk, which adds a creaminess like no other.

Why is Thai Tea Orange?

As mentioned, Thai tea is orange because of its food coloring. Many premade Thai tea leaves and mixes have food coloring added to them.

However, Thai tea without food coloring is already slightly orange from the spices added. Additionally, Thai tea is the result of the blend of US and Thai culture, where orange food coloring was added by Thai chefs in America to appeal to Western customers.

It somehow gained massive popularity, and now it’s all over Thailand, especially at street food markets.

Where to Get Thai Tea

The best place to get Thai tea leaves is online. There are tons of brands that sell them, like famous ones such as ChaTraMue. There are also lots of small businesses that offer Thai tea mixes or leaves as well.

You can also buy Thai tea as a mix from ChaTraMue or go to your local Asian market and go down the tea aisle. There’s bound to be at least a mix of tea blends you can pick up!

How is Thai Tea Made

Traditionally, Thai tea is just spiced black tea with some sugar and milk. For the street stall version, you’ll see brewed black tea mixed with condensed milk, aerated with a tea sock, and then topped with evaporated milk.

The street stall version is my favorite! It’s creamy, sweet, and has a great texture. It’s important that all Thai teas use crushed ice, never cubed. I think it’s because it cools the tea down faster.

How to Make Thai Tea at Home

If you have the ingredients (and time), you can try making Thai tea with condensed milk and evaporated milk. It will be the most creamy, delicious milk tea you’ve ever made.

But if you want a simpler version, you can sub out condensed and evaporated milk with sugar and regular milk.

You brew your Thai tea leaves, add sugar, and top with ice and milk. It won’t have the same creamy taste but will still be delicious.

Some cafes also use half and half instead of milk to make it creamier, so that’s also an option!

But if you’re looking for convenience, you can buy the Thai tea mix, which only needs hot water. Or, grab a cup from your local boba shop or cafe.

What is a Thai Tea Latte?

Imagine an iced latte, which is espresso, milk, and ice, but substitute the espresso for Thai tea, and you’ll get a Thai tea latte!

It’s not as simple as swapping espresso or just regular Thai tea; you’ll need to make a concentrated Thai tea.

Since there’s a lot of milk, the Thai tea needs to be stronger than usual, either by using extra scoops of tea or less water to brew your tea.

You can use any milk you like, but I think the best is whole milk. It has enough fat to make the drink creamy but not overwhelmingly so.

I also like using condensed milk as the sweetener to replicate the same Thai tea taste, but regular sugar is also fine.

Is Thai Tea Healthy?

The simple answer is that it depends.

If you brew your tea and add a ton of sugar and milk, it’s probably more of an indulgent drink. If you make your tea with little to no sugar and just a splash of milk, it’s more of a thinner drink.

Depending on how you prepare your Thai tea, it can or cannot be healthy.

However, most Thai teas from the store or boba shop are probably very caloric and sugary. Most of them come with tapioca pearls, which are calorie-dense and have upwards of 20-30 g of sugar.

So, I don’t recommend drinking multiple store-bought Thai teas in a week, but they do taste good.

Tips

Here are some tips for making a great Thai tea latte at home:

• Mix the sugar and milk together, then add ice and tea on top. That way, you’ll have a nice layer that sits on your milk and looks pretty.
• You can add boba to your drink at home, which you can boil at home, or use an instant boba pack.
• For different flavors, you can use different sweeteners or syrups, like orange blossom syrup, rose syrup, vanilla syrup, etc. I haven’t experimented that much with it, but it sounds like it could taste good.
• If you want a stronger tea flavor, you can steep the tea leaves for longer or use more tea leaves. Brewing the tea leaves for longer will make the tea more bitter, but it washes out with the milk. However, more tea leaves don’t always mean a stronger flavor if you don’t brew them for enough time. Try it out!