Transparent Milk Tea Exists, And It's Hurting Our Brains

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but Japan has some of the weirdest food and beverage trends around. You can come up with some weird-ass idea, and we’ll bet that 90% of the time you’ll be able to find in Japan. Of course, Japan also has loads of delicious foods like baked cheese tarts and Tokyo Banana, but it’s the more unusual trends that really pique our interest.

netizens-are-going-crazy-for-this-transparent-milk-tea-thats-world-of-buzzCan you trust your eyes?

Suntory, which you might know as one of best whisky distilleries in Japan, has released a line of transparent beverages that have been taking everyone by surprise. Transparent beverages might not seem like anything new; after all water, vodka, juice, and even tea are all common beverages that are naturally transparent. Here’s the thing – Suntory’s new Premium Morning Tea is a transparent milk tea. In our years of reviewing food, we never thought we would see a day where we would use ‘transparent’ to describe a milk-based beverage. Milk itself is milky – an opaque white drink, so how in the world can there be a milky drink without the milky look?
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Premium Morning Tea Milk, not mislabelled water

As if they were trying to make your head hurt more, Suntory claims that the milk tea is not artificially flavoured to retain the transparency. Because it wouldn’t stop bothering us, we actually went to search how Suntory managed to create a transparent milk-based beverage. It turns out that milky beverages are milky because they contain lactic acid bacteria when you ferment milk. Instead of using milk or skimmed milk, Suntory uses extracts from whey, a clear byproduct of milk! ABSOLUTELY GENIUS.

Apparently, the drink tastes unmistakably like milk tea. It also has caffeine in it to wake you up since it’s meant to be consumed in the morning. The only thing that you’ll find missing is the creamy texture of milky drinks. We love our milky drinks full of creamy deliciousness, but we can’t say that Suntory didn’t under-deliver on what they promised us. This transparent tea is part of the Suntory Tennensui line, Suntory’s premium mineral water line, which would explain the water-y consistency.

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Still not convinced?

This isn’t the first transparent drink that Suntory has released. Previous drinks such as  the Yogurina water, which as the name suggests tastes like yoghurt, and the Premium Morning Tea Lemon, a lemon tea flavoured drink, are also transparent. Considering the popularity of the drinks (seriously, everyone is just singing their praises on the internet), Suntory is on a streak. We are already looking forward to the next drink! What’s going to be next? Transparent coffee?

You won’t be able to try the Premium Morning Tea in Singapore because they aren’t importing it even though it’s widely available in many Japan convenience stores, but you can always convince one of your friends to bring a bottle back from Japan for you. While you’re at it, get them to bring back the entire range of transparent waters too! If you want to stock up on it, you can also order a 24-pack of the elusive transparent milk tea from Q0010, which comes with free shipping worldwide.