How To Make Chai Tea Concentrate

“Chai” is the Hindi word for “tea,” so “chai tea” means “tea tea.” Silly as that sounds, chai tea is a delicious black tea that is both spiced and sweetened and mixed with milk. Masala(masala meaning spice) chai is the proper name. It also contains caffeine and will give you a boost when sipping in the morning.

Here’s how to make chai tea concentrate:

Boil water.
Add sugar and let dissolve.
Add and steep chai spices.
Strain the tea.

If you want to learn more about how to make chai tea concentrate, keep reading!

Boil Water
When you want to make any tea or tea concentrate, you’re going to need to boil some water, either on the stove or in the microwave. Very hot water is necessary for dissolving your sweetener and spices.

For our purposes here, you’ll want to get a saucepan and 4 cups (946 ml) of water. Place the saucepan on the stovetop and bring the water to a boil. This should only take a few minutes.
Add Sugar and Let Dissolve
Add in ½ cup (100 g) of sugar or the equivalent of your favorite sweetener, and let it dissolve in the boiling water. This step is optional because some people prefer a taste that’s less sweet. However, your experience will vary depending on how much or little sugar you use.
Add and Steep Chai Spices
Chai spices can vary, but they all have the same type of spices. Now, these can come loose in tins, or in teabags. If you’re using loose spices, you’ll need to steep them for at least 10-12 minutes before straining.

Steeping tea bags essentially means letting them soak in the water. The process extracts flavor from the bags, and water is used because it’s the ideal liquid to receive the flavor. Different kinds of tea will need to be steeped for different lengths of time.

In this step, you will add your 12 chai tea bags to the boiled water and let them steep for 15 minutes.

How To Make Chai Tea Concentrate From Tea Bags

You will need two kitchen tools to make homemade chai tea, including a mesh strainer and a medium saucepan.

Here’s a list of saucepans and mesh strainers that can get the job done from Amazon.com:

Utopia Kitchen Nonstick Saucepan is a small saucepan made of good quality aluminum alloy and sold at a reasonable price. Its small size makes it perfect for making tea.
Cuisinart Chef’s Classic Nonstick Saucepan is a little smaller than Utopia’s, but its small size also makes it ideal for making tea. Its glass lid is also break-resistant.
Markerstep Fine Mesh Strainers come in three different sizes and will make straining the tea out of the saucepan easy.

Aside from a saucepan and a mesh strainer, you will also need:

4 cups (946 ml) of filtered water
½ cup of sugar (100g)
12 chai tea bags

Here are two tea bags from Amazon.com that I highly recommend:

Stash Chai Spice Black Tea is a high-quality tea bag made from black tea, ginger root, cloves, allspice, cardamom oil, and cinnamon.
Tazo Decaf Chai Black Tea has the same blend of spices as Stash and is a highly regarded name brand to boot.

Store-bought chai tea is on the expensive side and comes with many questionable ingredients. However, if you make your own, you can control exactly what goes in your tea and pay less for it, too.

How To Make Chai Tea Concentrate With Spices

Chai tea with spices, also known as “spicy chai,” is made by adding spices to regular chai tea concentrate. The following is a homemade recipe for spicy chai tea:

1 tbsp (8 g) of cardamom pods
1 tbsp (13 g) vanilla extract
4 black tea bags
2 cups (490 g) of your choice of milk
2 whole allspice berries
2 cinnamon sticks, broken in half
2 tbsp (12.1 g) of ground ginger
1 star anise
6 cups (1440 ml) of filtered water
1 tsp (1.65 g) whole cloves
¼ tsp (1.75 g) of black peppercorn

The exact amount of ingredients in this recipe serves about 5 mugs of tea. To prepare, do the following:

Add all the spices to your saucepan. Crush the cardamom pods with a spoon first.
Add your filtered water and bring to a boil.
Reduce the heat to a simmer and stir for 20 minutes.
Turn the heat off and add in the tea bags and vanilla extract.
Strain the tea bags and spices and mix in your choice of milk.
Strain the Tea

In this step, you will pour the tea out in cups, straining the bags, or the loose spices, so that they remain in the pot. For this, you can use a mesh strainer or simply place the lid of the saucepan over the top with a small space open and pour.

Now that you know how to make chai tea concentrate, you can pour it out into cups and enjoy it. You can also freeze the tea to have a cold drink later. One fun thing to do is pour chai tea into an ice cube tray and use it as ice in the water.

How To Make Homemade Chai Tea Latte

Now that we’ve made chai tea concentrate, we can use it to make a chai tea latte. A chai tea latte will need concentrated milk, but you can use coconut milk, oat milk, or cashew milk if you need alternatives.

For a chai tea latte, you will need:

½ cup of chai tea concentrate (182g)
½ cup milk (125 ml)
½ cup of sugar (100g) (optional)

You can also experiment with the amount of milk or chai tea concentrate to find what tastes best for you. For example, if you want a stronger flavor, add less milk and more chai tea concentrate.

In a recent article, I discuss shelf life and how to store chai tea concentrate.

Health Benefits to Drinking Chai Tea

The earliest versions of chai tea were made entirely of spices. The drink didn’t really become tea until the British colonization of India. Before the British, however, chai tea was a beverage favored by nobles in the royal courts of India thousands of years before its current form.

Chai tea can help combat stress and even prevent cancer due to its antioxidants, such as theaflavins and catechins.

And depending on the recipe, the tea can also contain beneficial minerals and vitamins such as:

Vitamin K
Potassium
Manganese
Calcium

Potential health benefits of drinking chai tea include:

Lower blood sugar: Chai tea is a black tea, which helps to regulate glucose in your system, preventing dangerous spikes in blood sugar. If you love consuming sugary beverages, then chai tea can help you control your blood sugar.
Lower blood pressure: For those chai tea recipes that use cinnamon, chai tea can aid people who have diabetes by preventing hypertension.
Support for brain function: The black tea in chai tea recipes can aid long-term and short-term cognitive function, while cinnamon can help memory and focus. The caffeine in black tea and L-theanine can also improve focus.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it’s better to make chai tea at home since commercially bought tea may include ingredients that aren’t beneficial or may even prove harmful. A saucepan, a mesh strainer, and a couple of bags of black tea will start you on your way to healthy, homemade chai tea.

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Photo altered by dejittr.com | Photo attribution: Kamal Preet Kaur