HEYTEA Supreme Brown Sugar Bobo Milk Tea

The HEYTEA Supreme Brown Sugar Bobo Milk Tea is $10.49 and 445 calories, which makes it the heaviest drink HEYTEA sells in the United States. Slow-cooked brown sugar bobo in real dairy milk tea.

This is the tea version of the drink sitting next to it on the menu. Where the Original is milk, brown sugar and pearls with nothing else, this one brews tea into the milk before the syrup goes in. The difference is a handful of calories, 50 cents, and a noticeably different finish.

Tea is what stops the cup from being one long sweet note. Brown sugar syrup and dairy together are rich to the point of flat, and the tannin in the tea cuts a line through the middle of that richness. The molasses is still the loudest thing in the drink, but it has something to push against now.

The pearls are the same slow-cooked tapioca as the Original: dark all the way through, soft enough to bite cleanly, and steeped in syrup rather than sweetened afterwards. They streak the inside of the cup as the syrup runs, which is why this drink photographs the way it does.

At 45g of sugar it carries the most of anything on the menu, and the 14g of fat and 445 calories put it firmly in dessert territory. There is also 9g of protein from the milk, which is the highest figure on the list and the reason this fills you up rather than leaving you hungry an hour later.

Sugar level is worth thinking about here more than anywhere else on the menu. The brown sugar syrup is a fixed part of the build rather than an adjustable sweetener, so Less Sugar changes less than it does on a fruit tea. If you find it too sweet, the answer is a different drink rather than a different setting.

Like the Original, this is best drunk within the first twenty minutes while the tapioca is still soft. It is also the drink most worth ordering in shop rather than for delivery, since the pearls suffer more than anything else on the menu from a long journey.

For the version without tea, the Original is $9.99. To build something similar for less, order a Black Milk Tea at $8.49 and add brown sugar bobo at $1.68.