奶茶 中文

Free milk tea from Black & White at 100 cha chaan tengs, weekdays until 30 November. Which shop, which day →

The Hong Kong Milk Tea Handbook · hkstylemilktea.com/iced-milk-tea/

凍奶茶 Iced Milk Tea · Hong Kong

How to make iced milk tea that doesn't go watery

Ice melts, and melted ice is water. The better cha chaan tengs keep it out of the drink altogether: the glass stands in a bowl of ice, or the tea is chilled in a bottle. At home the rules are the same. Brew it strong, sweeten it while it's hot, chill it fast, and keep the ice on the outside.

  • Prep 5 min
  • Cook 20 min
  • Chill 30 min
  • Serves 2
  • Per glass about 125 calories

The recipe

You need

Ingredients

  • Black tea blend, the same as for hot milk tea36 g
  • Water, freshly boiled700 ml
  • Sugar, stirred in while hot4–6 tsp
  • Evaporated milk, unsweetened, chilled120 ml
  • Ice, for the outside of the glass2 bowls
Two ways to keep ice out of the drink

Ice bath: stand each glass in a bowl of ice and a little water, the cha chaan teng's 冰鎮 way. Milk tea ice cubes: freeze a glassful of this recipe in an ice tray the day before. As they melt, they turn into more milk tea.

Equipment

Everything from the hot recipe: a cotton tea sock or a lined sieve, and two heatproof pots to pour between. Add a heatproof jug or bottle for chilling, and a large bowl of ice water.

Method

About an hour, mostly waiting

  1. Brew it stronger than hot. Make the tea as in the hot recipe: a hard 3-minute boil, four pulls, 12 minutes covered, two more pulls. Use about a quarter more tea. Cold drinks taste weaker than hot ones, and any ice that melts thins it further.
  2. Sweeten it while it's hot. Stir in 2 to 3 teaspoons of sugar per glass now. Sugar dissolves easily in hot tea and badly in cold. In a cha chaan teng, iced drinks arrive already sweetened; order 少甜 for less.
  3. Chill it fast. Pour the tea into a heatproof jug or bottle and stand it in a bowl of ice water. Stir now and then; it will be cool in about 15 to 20 minutes. Then cover it and finish chilling it in the fridge. Hong Kong's Centre for Food Safety recommends an ice-water bath for cooling cooked food quickly.
  4. Milk in the glass first. Put 60 ml of cold evaporated milk in each glass and pour the cold tea onto it. You want the same solid tan as the hot version.
  5. Keep the ice outside. Stand each glass in a bowl of ice, or use milk tea ice cubes. Plain ice works too, as long as you drink it quickly.
  6. Don't leave it out. Drink it within a couple of hours, or keep it covered in the fridge. The Centre for Food Safety says cold drinks shouldn't stand at room temperature for more than two hours.
The condensed-milk version

For an iced 茶走, leave out both the sugar and the evaporated milk, and stir 2 to 3 tablespoons of condensed milk into the hot tea instead.

Printed from hkstylemilktea.com/iced-milk-tea/ — the full page explains why iced milk tea goes watery and how cha chaan tengs serve it.

The problem

Why iced milk tea goes watery

An ordinary cha chaan teng 凍奶茶 is hot milk tea, milk already in, poured over ice. Cooling a hot drink that way melts roughly its own weight of ice, so by the time it's cold, close to half of what's in the glass can be water. Every fix below attacks that.

Fix one

Brew it stronger

Recipes for iced milk tea advise brewing 20 to 30% stronger, so whatever dilution happens still leaves a proper cup.

Fix two

Chill it first

Tea that's already cold barely melts the ice it meets. Chill it in an ice bath, then the fridge, before it goes anywhere near a glass of ice.

Fix three

Ice outside the glass

The 冰鎮 method: the glass sits in a bowl of ice, which chills it without touching the drink.

Fix four

Ice made of milk tea

Freeze some milk tea in an ice tray. The cubes chill the drink, and as they melt they add more milk tea, not water.

On the menu

How the cha chaan teng does it

Five ways to order it cold, and what each one means. Romanisation is Jyutping; the numbers are tones.

凍飲Cold milk tea
凍奶茶dung3 naai5 caa4
Iced milk teaHot milk tea poured over ice. It arrives sweetened: a regular 300 ml glass has about 22 g of sugar, and asking for 少甜 brings that down to about 15 g, according to a dietitian quoted by Sing Tao in 2026.
凍奶茶走冰dung3 naai5 caa4 zau2 bing1
Iced, no iceChilled milk tea with no ice in the glass, so nothing dilutes it. Some shops charge extra for this; one Sau Mau Ping café's price list asks HK$5.
冰鎮奶茶bing1 zan3 naai5 caa4
Ice-bath milk teaThe glass stands in a bowl of ice. The chain Tai Hing says it came up with it, borrowing the idea from ice buckets for beer.
原裝凍jyun4 zong1 dung3
Chilled as it comesMilk tea chilled in the fridge and served without ice. The term appears in a Hong Kong teaching booklet on food culture published by EdUHK.
樽仔奶茶zeon1 zai2 naai5 caa4
Bottled milk teaMilk tea chilled in a small bottle. Localiiz says it was once poured into empty soft-drink bottles and refrigerated. Shui Kee in Sheung Wan says it invented the format.
Cold costs more

Iced drinks almost always cost a little more than hot ones. HK$2 extra has long been the norm, sometimes HK$3, and a café charging HK$4 made the news in 2026.

More drink words in the cha chaan teng glossary →

Sources

The physics is approximate: cooling a hot cup to fridge temperature with ice alone takes a little under its own weight of ice, depending on how cold the ice was to begin with.