Beipu Hakka Ground Tea 北埔擂茶
Beipu Hakka Ground Tea is featured among the local specialties of Taiwan.
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Beipu Hakka Ground Tea (北埔擂茶) is a drink made by grinding tea leaves together with grains, beans and nuts and then pouring on hot water. It belongs to Beipu (北埔), a Hakka township in Hsinchu County (新竹縣), Taiwan, where the Beipu Old Street (北埔老街) is known for it alongside Oriental Beauty tea, also called 'Pengfeng tea' (膨風茶).
How it is made
The word lei (擂) means to grind. In the version described by Beipu's No. 39 shop, peanuts, sesame and tea leaves are ground in a ceramic mortar with a pestle cut from a guava branch until the oil comes out and they form a fine, even paste. The shop's own ready-mixed powder of more than twenty ingredients, among them beans and grains, is ground in, hot water is poured on, and toasted rice is scattered over the top. The National Cultural Memory Bank (國家文化記憶庫) describes the Beipu mix as green or high-mountain tea ground to a paste with peanuts, sesame and other grains, then brewed with green tea powder and brown rice added. Shops also sell ready-ground packs that only need water.
Flavour and texture
Beipu's ground tea is sweet. The Memory Bank contrasts it with ground tea in Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi, which is savoury, ground with strongly scented ginger, tangerine peel, cinnamon and mountain litsea (山蒼子), and eaten poured over rice.
Where it comes from
The Hakka families long settled in Beipu did not drink ground tea. Chinese Wikipedia dates its arrival in Taiwan to after the Second World War, with Hakka migrants from Hepo (河婆) in Jiexi County (揭西縣), Guangdong. An essay in the National Central University Hakka College e-paper, citing an article by Ma Yuying (馬玉英) on the Hakka Affairs Council (客家委員會) website, says Beipu was the first place to turn it into a local speciality, when the government began its 'one township, one speciality' tourism programme in 1998. The No. 39 shop says it opened in Beipu that year as Taiwan's first ground-tea shop, and that it turned the traditional salty tea into a sweet one and a powder after the salty version proved unpopular.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.