Pop & Bottle Peaches & Cream Matcha Almond Latte

By Emily Shoemaker, VRG Intern

As a member of Gen Z, I can confidently report that boba is one of the most popular treats of my generation. Commonly made with milk tea, boba combines some type of flavored drink as a base with tapioca pearls or other add-ons (often coated in a sweet syrup) to make a customized drink unique to your tastes. I have spent many hang outs at boba cafes and have even collected the materials to make the tapioca pearls at home. Today, I’ll be trying a plant-based milk tea, in this case matcha, to make my drink fully come to life.

The brand I tried is called Pop & Bottle. Their company is women founded and women led, born from a pair of friends “who bonded over their love of coffee and endless quest to find coffee products that met their quality and health standards.” Their drink options range from oat milk lattes, almond milk lattes, and coffee concentrates, and they can be bought through their website and in person through retailers such as Target and Giant. For my taste test, Target only had the almond latte variety, so I got two matcha flavors. I drank the Peaches and Cream Matcha Almond Latte by itself and made the Matcha Almond Latte into boba after.

On its own, the latte is very pleasantly mild in its flavor. It doesn’t overwhelm the palate or feel thick on your tongue. I found the flavor to be more in line with strawberry milk paired with a matcha undertone. The Peaches and Cream Matcha flavor was much sweeter than its Matcha counterpart, but it was in line with what I would hope to find in a flavored matcha drink.

For the second latte, I pulled out the boba that my family already had. We use the small size so that a normal sized straw can still suck up the pearls. For a more traditional experience, feel free to use larger ones. The cooking instructions are very simple, boil the pearls on high for 20 minutes until transparent. After that, take a spoonful of brown sugar and dissolve it in a small amount of hot water (enough to cover your pearls). After mixing the boba into the brown sugar mixture, you have your boba add on!

     The flavor of the matcha is not very sweet by itself, so I enjoyed the brown sugar adding a sweet edge to the drink. The pearls made the experience feel much more fancy and reminded me of a lot of good memories with my friends. I would recommend doing this with their coffee options as well, as boba can be enjoyed with just about any kind of flavored base and would make for a lovely morning pick-me-up!

For more information, see: https://www.popandbottle.com/pages/almond-milk-lattes