Coffee or tea? With this drink, we get both

Hong Kong divert tea
Hong Kong divert tea is a categorical partial in yuenyeung. (Photo: CityFoodsters/Flickr)

For many people around a world, it’s a initial doubt of a day: Coffee or tea?

Some people competence not caring how they get their caffeine, as prolonged as they get it. But for others, a answer is partial of their identity, and they are ardent when it comes to fortifying their elite libation as a higher option.

There’s a genre of caffeinated beverages that challenge a common definitions. These drinks go by opposite names: yuenyeung in Cantonese-speaking regions, kopi cham in a Malay word, and spreeze in Ethiopia. Savvy coffee-shop congregation can even sequence off-menu options such as “dirty chai,” that is a chai tea peaked with a shot of espresso.

These beverages all have one thing in common: they enclose both coffee and tea.

The world’s 2 many renouned beverages in one cup

Cafe in hong kong with yuenyeung
Coffee with divert tea is served in internal cafes famous as cha chaan teng in Hong Kong. (Photo: CityFoodsters/Flickr)

Perhaps we consider a thought of a coffee-tea reduction is an unholy kinship or a world’s biggest invention. This family of drinks is utterly common in certain tools of a world. In places like Hong Kong, there is even a children’s chronicle done with Ovaltine.

The recipe for coffee with tea varies from place to place. The many common version, according to Saveur, comes from travel stalls and internal cafes in Hong Kong and Macau. These places, famous as cha chaan tengs, have been portion a reduction of roughly dual tools divert tea (black tea and precipitated milk) to one partial coffee for scarcely a century. Some cafes use evaporated divert and sugarine instead of honeyed precipitated milk. The reduction can be served prohibited or over ice, with a elite heat customarily depending on a weather.

The thought has widespread to other tools of Asia as well. A multiplication of libation hulk Asahi has mass-produced Wonda Tea Coffee, that is display adult on grocery store shelves in droves, according to Japan Today. It got a selling pull from Japanese cocktail star and mythological comedian Takeshi Kitano.

Why are ducks a pitch of yuenyeung?

Mandarin steep pair
The masculine Mandarin steep is easy to spot: He’s a one with all a adorned colors. (Photo: Maciej Olszewski/Shutterstock)

The Chinese name for coffee with tea refers to Mandarin ducks, that are called yuānyāng in Mandarin Chinese and yuenyeung in a Cantonese dialect. Male and womanlike ducks of this sold class are really opposite in appearance. Yuen refers to a colorful masculine ducks and yeung to a females, that competition some-more pale colors. The name is a curtsy to a incompatible kinship of coffee and tea. If we wish to take a analogy further, Mandarin ducks customarily partner for life, definition a incompatible pairing works many improved than we competence expect.

So how do we make it?

Purists might tell we that yuenyeung is best in a cha chaan teng in Hong Kong. Here, a ideal reduction is roughly 7 tools divert tea to 3 tools coffee. The seven-to-three ratio is ostensible to give both a coffee and tea a full season form but carrying one ambience repress a other. The divert tea is done with clever black tea and possibly honeyed precipitated divert or evaporated divert and sugar. Some recipes call for makers to intentionally over-steep a tea (for during slightest 6 mins instead of a common 3 to 4 minutes) to emanate a stronger ambience that can mount adult to a thick, honeyed divert component. Other recipes call for hot a tea leaves in a H2O rather than steeping them.

The ensuing splash has sour records that are matched by a benevolence and density of a milk. If a yuenyeung tastes too harsh since of a oversteeped tea, we can scold it by adding some-more precipitated milk.

Most recipes call for unchanging season coffee done with dim roasted bean (such as an espresso fry or French roast). The couple above to Saveur as one choice and here’s another recipe from The Spruce Eats.

A tellurian drink

kopi cham in Singapore
In Singapore and Malaysia, coffee with divert tea is called kopi cham. (Photo: mailer diablo/Wikimedia Commons)

You will really come opposite this libation in Hong Kong and Macau. Cantonese restaurants around a universe might have variations. In Malaysia and Singapore, we will find kopi cham, that is identical to yuenyueng. Though there are some coffee and tea beverages in a United States, nothing have grown over eccentric variations that have done their approach to coffee shops or restaurants. The many common choice in this genre is chai with espresso.

One yeunyueng movement that earns comparisons to a Hong Kong chronicle comes from a hearth of coffee, Ethiopia. While a East African republic is customarily compared with coffee, black tea is also popular, and people mostly splash it with spices, not distinct Indian chai.

While Starbucks did offer a yuenyeung frappuccino in East Asia a while ago, many mainstream coffee shops do not have a coffee-and-tea combo on a menu.

That said, all a mixture we need to emanate a homemade coffee-tea libation are widely accessible roughly anywhere in a world, so if we wish to examination with this astonishing matrimony of these dual renouned caffeinated beverages, only give it a try during home.


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