Have you purchased bubble tea supplies for your home

[kindermom]

I love bubble tea. I wanted to be able to make it at home. Has anyone purchased the supplies for their home? Is it hard to make the tapioca? And who have you used to buy the supplies from?

TIA!

[tlew12778]

I am pretty sure you can just get the stuff at a local supermarket, or at the least, at a local asian grocery store.

You can buy the tapioca... I have never heard of people making it themselves.

This site has a lot of recipes/instructions: http://www.bubbleteasupply.com/index.php?page=recipes.html

I have never tried making it myself it bc I am severely allergic to tapioca.

ETA: more links:
http://coffeetea.about.com/cs/bubbletea/ht/ht_bubble.htm
http://www.ellenskitchen.com/recipebox/bubblet.html

[kindermom]

I have shopped around a bit and found bobadirect.com has the best prices with reasonable shipping. But I am not sure if they are reputable. Unfortunately the Asian grocery store I know of did not carry it last time I was there.

My old bubble tea hang out had to make the tapioca balls puff up. That is the step I do not know anything about. Is it hard to make them soft?

Any other suggestions?

[jnettie]

We got the bubble tea supplies at a local Asian market, and the tapioca comes already puffed in a jar kinda like a jelly jar. The brand is called Florence.

[kindermom]

I just bought 5 minute black tapioca from the Asian market. I found one that was not quite as dirty as my old store. But they did not sell the powder drink mix! :( Piece by piece I will get this tea!