Is Suntory Premium Morning Milk Tea Halal?
Is Suntory Premium Morning Milk Tea Halal?
Suntory Premium Morning Tea Series is a brand new product from Suntory Japan. It is more popular known as transparent milk tea from Japan. There is also the transparent lemon tea from this Suntory Premium Morning Tea Series. It is widely available in most convenient shops in Japan such as Lawson, Family Mart, 7 Eleven and more.
There are some smaller mini marts are bringing in the Suntory Premium Morning Milk Tea into Malaysia and Singapore and that’s why it is so expensive. It is around RM 10 for a bottle and it is only less than RM 5 for one bottle in Japan.
We previously wrote about an article about Tokyo Banana and you can read it at Is Tokyo Banana Halal?
A few days ago, there is an Instagrammer claimed that Suntory Japan actually emailed them and stated there is alcohol in Suntory Premium Morning Tea Series. It created a debate among the netizens as why there is alcohol in a milk tea drink?
Thus, today a popular Halal website in Japan called Halal Navi Senpai clarified the matter as they received the email from Suntory Japan.
Using Google Translate app, we translated the whole article to English as below:
Suntory Customer Center.
We sincerely thank you for your continued patronage on our products and thank you from the bottom Thank you for your inquiries regarding alcohol of “PREMIUM MORNING TEA Milk”. For fragrance of this product, tea, lemon etc.
All extract fragrance from genuine material. As raw materials alcohol is not used. However, there is a possibility that a very small amount of alcohol (ethanol) used in dissolving perfume is contained in the product. I would be pleased if you served as Mr. Arisa. We will continue to strive to develop products that will make our customers happy. I would like to continue to like Suntory products, thank you Suntory Customer.
In conclusion, they used the ethanol in dissolving perfume in the product. That’s why when you drink the Suntory Premium Morning Milk Tea, it has the strong fragment milk tea scent.
The next big question is, is food ethanol HALAL? We did a research on this since we wanted to know more about HALAL food products and we got a number of references on this issue.
According to this article – ALCOHOL – HALAL OR HARAM? What is alcohol and khamar (by http://www.halal.upm.edu.my/article/alcohol__halal_or_haram_what_is_alcohol_and_khamar_-30270)
“Foods or drinks that contain flavoring or coloring materials containing alcohol for the purpose of stabilization is a permissible to be used if the alcohol is not produced from the khamr source and the quantity of alcohol in the final product is not intoxicating, and at the rate not exceeding 0.5% alcohol.”
There are also other references on this matter as the links below.
2.https://m.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=226240230817502&id=370041643006417
In conclusion, can we consider Suntory Premium Morning Tea Halal?
