Tibetan Butter Tea

Po cha is Tibetan butter tea: compressed brick tea boiled until strong, then churned with butter, traditionally from yak, and salt until smooth. It is savory, closer to a broth than a sweet tea, and is poured again and again for guests.

Origin & Story

In a Tibetan home the bowl is never empty. The host keeps topping it up to the brim, so a guest cannot finish it, and good manners say to take small sips between refills. If you do not want more, the courteous move is to leave the bowl untouched until you leave. Some reports say people may drink dozens of small cups in a day.

Tea reached Tibet from China long ago, by tradition in the seventh century, and tea drinking was common by the eighth. The butter version became popular around the thirteenth century, when tea bricks of the dark teas known as hei cha, including pu-erh, were carried to Tibet along the Tea Horse Road from Yunnan and Sichuan. Bricks were easier to carry over the mountain passes than loose leaf, and they kept the trade alive for centuries.

The fat and salt make sense at altitude, in cold, dry air, and they turn a tea into something closer to a meal. The traditional method is slow. The brick is boiled for hours, sometimes described as half a day, until the water is nearly black, then strained into a tall wooden churn with butter and salt and plunged until it turns smooth and a little thick. Modern kitchens use a blender or a French press and are done in minutes.

The drink is served hot, because as it cools the butter separates and the texture turns heavy. Butter tea is also drunk in Nepal, Bhutan and Ladakh.

Boil 10 g of crumbled brick tea in 300 ml of water for 15 to 20 minutes, strain, and churn with 8 g of butter and a pinch of salt until smooth.

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