BOBOLOGY

Tavishi

I've been dreaming about strawberry matcha.

Drinks follow me into sound slumber.

I love myself a good drink: a Viet iced coffee, a blueberry latte, a strawberry matcha, a taro milk tea, you name it, I want it. I love getting fruit jellies and popping pearls in a lychee green tea or refresher of some sort.

Unpopular opinion: I don't like the texture of the tapioca boba pearl. It's too squishy and flavorless and like sabudana (coincidentally, it's from the same plant.)

Boba is made from the starch of the cassava root. A tapioca slurry is produced by making a slurry of the root, and processing it until you're left with a final, starchy liquid.

This liquid is dried until you get a tapioca starch powder.

A starch molecule is a polysaccharide composed of an abundance of two primary molecules: amylose and amylopectin. Different starches differ in amylose and amylopectin content, causing different properties like stretchiness and chewiness.

Tapioca starch is about 80% amylopectin and 20% amylose.

Amylose and amylopectin vary in structure. Whereas amylose is a linear molecule, amylopectin is much more branched.

alpha glycosidic linkages are so not sigma... (skibidi?!?)

Starches that are higher in amylopectin are generally stickier and thicker than starches high in amylose. Starches with less amylose are known as waxy starches, and generally contain less than 1% amylose. Because of this, these starches undergo retrogradation. When amylopectin is heated, it forms a thick goopy non-crystalline structure; however, retrogradation is the process by which the linear components of the branched amylopectin set themselves back in order via hydrogen bonding and all sorts of fun things.

Furthermore, when tapioca starch is added to hot water, the water softens the starch molecules and saturates it, whereas the heat separates the hydrogen bonds in the amylose, which forms a gel that amylopectin does not. Altogether, this process is called gelatinization.

Taken in combination, the amylose makes boba pearls squishy, and amylopectin makes 'em chewy.

bobabobaobaobaobaobadsofajsdkfjasldf

The process of making boba is simple.

First, you hydrate the tapioca starch over hot water with sugar until you get a goopy demon mass similar to slime. You then wait for it to cool down (retrogradation makes it easier to work with), roll it out, and make lil balls. Take the balls, pop em in hot water to boil (gelatinization), and serve with a sugar syrup. The sugar syrup keeps the boba pearls hydrated enough that they don't get stale on you.

Personally, I prefer popping pearls and lychee jellies to tapioca pearls.

Popping pearls are produced via a process known as spherification. Contrary to popular belief, this is actually the method by which Willy Wonka turned Violet Beauregarde into a blueberry.

Sodium alginate and calcium chloride react to form popping pearls. Sodium alginate is a product of brown algae (phaeophyceae!) and is used as a thickening agent. Calcium chloride is just a salt of the calcium (yummy bones).

Popping pearls are produced by taking a liquid of choice, which would be the flavor of the boba, and mixing it with powdered sodium alginate. Then, that solution is dropped into a container of calcium chloride solution.

Altogether, the calcium chloride and sodium alginate react, with the calcium replacing sodium's place in alginic acid. However, it is crucial that conditions not be too acidic. For example, a pickle juice popping pearl would not turn out well because... yeah. Sodium takes an L. Chemistry. Ew.

yash's hand is being bad

And finally, we move away from the sticky to something that is not boba but still a drink: MATCHA! I've lately been obsessed with strawberry matchas from 85 C bakery. Today I went to go get a matcha but they were out! Matcha is produced from tea plants (Camellia sinensis) grown only in shade. Matcha must be in powdered form to be considered matcha, and is so exorbitantly green because their leaves are high in chlorophyll and chloroplasts. (If you're blindfolded and trying to find someone, you'd spread your arms wider just so no matter what you can catch them- that's the logic between why this would produce more chlorophyll) The flavor of matcha stems from L-theanine, glutamic acid, aspartic acid, and more, ultimately creating an umami taste.

The three compounds above are all amino acids, except L-theanine is a non-proteinogenic amino acid. L-theanine and glutamine are very similar in structure, and L-theanine is considered a structural analog of glutamine.