Locca Bubble Tea Kit Review: The Best Tasting Drinks?
Summary
Pros
Cons
Ultimate Locca Bubble Tea Kit Review Summary
The Locca Ultimate Bubble Tea Kit comes with 7 flavors based prepared using premium loose-leaf tea. With this kit you can make up 20 drinks, making this set one of the most cost-effective in the market. However, this boba kit does not come with a reusable bubble tea cup and making bubble tea with Locca's set takes over an hour. However, the results are well worth it. If you want to host a boba milk tea party, then look no further!
If you're looking for a quality boba tea kit, Locca kits are a great option.
In this review, we will take a closer look at the Locca Ultimate Boba Tea Kit and discuss everything that is included.
We'll also give our first impressions of the product and let you know how easy it is to make bubble tea using this particular kit. Finally, we'll rate how delicious the bubble tea from this kit is and whether or not purchasing a Locca Ultimate Boba Tea Kit is a good value purchase.
Let’s get started!
First Impressions
The Locca Ultimate Boba Tea Kit came nicely packaged in a cardboard gift box sealed with a sticker featuring Locca's white letters on black background branding.
We liked the simple design of the packaging. There is no overpackaging, and as is, is suitable to gift away without any additional wrapping.
We should note that the box was labeled as Locca's "Premium" bubble tea kit even though we purchased the "Ultimate" kit. This is likely an effort to save on costs, since even on Locca's website the "ultimate" kit has the "premium" labeling.
We did receive all the components of the Locca Ultimate Boba Tea Kit; however, the wrong labeling could cause people to return the kit thinking they received the wrong one, if they decide not to open it.
The Locca Ultimate Boba Tea Kit includes:
- 2 vacuum sealed bags of raw tapioca pearls for 10 servings (400 grams or 14 oz)
- 1 bag of Premium Matcha (21 grams or 0.7 oz)
- 1 bag of Premium Earl Grey Lavender Tea (loose-leaf, 25 grams or 0.9 oz)
- 1 bag of Premium Hibiscus Rosehips Tea (loose-leaf, 28 grams or 1 oz)
- 1 bag of Premium Peach Oolong Tea (loose-leaf, 25 grams or 0.9 oz)
- 1 x Premium Jasmine Tea Tea (loose-leaf, 28 grams or 1 oz)
- 1 x Premium Black Tea (loose-leaf, 28 grams or 1 oz)
- 1 x Premium Thai Tea (loose-leaf, 50 grams or 1.9 oz)
- 40 x plastic single-use boba straws
- 5 double-sided recipe cards with QR codes
One of the highlights of this Locca bubble tea kit are the 7 loose-leaf teas it comes with. This provides a great variety of boba flavors than most bubble tea kits in the market.
The loose-leaf teas are individually packaged in black ziplock bags, with clear labels indicating the tea name and preparation instructions (such as recommended water temperature and steeping time).
As can be seen, the Locca boba tea kit comes with a lot of tea. If you like tea, this is great. But if you want to exclusively drink bubble tea, then the tea will last you longer than the tapioca pearls.
You see...
Locca claims the kit is enough for 56 drinks, though there are enough tapioca pearls for only 18 to 20 drinks (as per Locca).
In addition, this boba kit does not include a reusable boba cup or a reusable straw.
Instead, it comes with 40 plastic straws. Locca does not offer any reusable components for sale, which is a bit of an annoyance for those of us who want to reduce plastic waste.
We don’t know what to do with 40 plastic straws!
To be fair, we do see this kit as being more appropriate for bubble tea parties (more on this later), so the need of so many plastic straws is understandable.
Is It Easy to Make Bubble Tea with this Kit?
Making pearl milk tea with Locca's DIY bubble tea kit is easy thanks to the clear recipe cards.
However, it is a time-consuming process that takes over 1 hour to complete.
To make bubble tea with Locca's kit you will need to:
- Make the sugar syrup (about 5 minutes plus some cooling time).
- Cook the tapioca boba pearls, a process that takes up to 55 minutes (35 minutes to cook and 20 minutes to rest).
- Soak the cooked tapioca pearls for 10 minutes in the sugar syrup.
- Then follow the instructions of the recipe card of your drink of choice, which takes about 5 to 10 minutes depending on the boba tea flavor you want.
As can be seen, Locca's bubble tea kits are not the best option if you want to quickly satisfy a craving by making your own boba tea.
If you want to make bubble tea in just a few minutes, then we recommend you check out our Pearly bubble tea kit or Retea bubble tea kit review!
Given the long preparation time, this kit is best suited if you want to invite some friends to a bubble tea party.
Making boba tea with this kit would be a very fun activity and well worth the effort because Locca's bubble tea creations are delicious!
You Can Make Delicious Bubble Tea!
Locca's Ultimate bubble tea kit shines when it comes to flavor.
Locca's main advantage over other bubble kits is its use of loose-leaf tea, which definitely yields better flavors than powders or even tea bags.
One of our favorite flavors was the Organic Original Matcha, which is made using real matcha!
However, let us warn you that the folks at Locca are definitely sweet tooths!
Their recipes call for 1.5 to 2.0 oz of sugar syrup per drink. This results in a very sweet drink overshadowing the more subtle flavors of the drink.
Instead, we recommend using 1 to 2 tbsp of sugar syrup. But again, this is down to personal preferences.
When we prepared bubble tea with this kit, we took down some notes and thought we'd share them with you so you can maximize your drink's flavor!
- Make sure to stir right away when you add the raw tapioca pearls to the boiler water. They stick to each other almost immediately.
- Depending on your stove, medium heat may be too much when cooking the raw tapioca pearls. We had to lower the heat because the water was evaporating too quickly.
- Don't forget to keep on stirring the tapioca pearls every 1 to 2 minutes!
- Reduce the sugar syrup from the recommended 1.5 to 2.0 oz to 1 to 2 tbsp!
Locca states the cooked tapioca pearls are only good for 4 to 5 hours. The reason is they become quite hard to chew.
However, if you were unable to finish all the tapioca pearls, you could store them in the syrup in the fridge and then microwave what you need (2 to 3 tbsp) for 20 to 30 seconds.
We tried this and rendered the tapioca pearls chewable again, but after a few days, they do need to be tossed out.
A Good Value Proposition?
We think Locca's ultimate boba tea kit is a great value proposition.
It comes with sufficient ingredients to make 18 to 20 drinks (and you will have a ton of leftover loose-leaf tea). For a price of $64.50 (at the time of writing), each drink costs about $3.23 which is a bargain!
At about $3.23 per drink, this kit yields amongst the lowest costs per drink of any bubble tea kits we've tested!
In addition, Locca boba milk teas use loose-leaf tea, the drink quality-to-cost ratio is very high!
However, as we noted, Locca's Ultimate Boba Tea Kit is best used to prepare large batches of bubble tea for a party since it is time-consuming to make and the tapioca pearls last 4 to 5 hours (or at best a couple of days if you microwave them).
Our Verdict: Locca Ultimate Boba Tea Kit
Locca's Ultimate Boba Tea Kit is for sure one of the best boba tea kits in the market.
It shines when it comes to the quality and variety of the ingredients - the 7 flavors are all premium loose-leaf teas without any chemicals or unknown ingredients.
This results in mouthwatering bubble tea drinks!
However, it takes over 1 hour to make your own delicious bubble tea drink. So, this kit is best suited for parties!
Also, Locca's bubble tea kit yields an excellent value, each drinking costing about $3.23.
We definitely recommend Locca's Ultimate Boba Tea Kit if you plan on making large batches of bubble tea or are looking to host a bubble tea party!
