Homemade Chai Concentrate

A chai latte at a coffee shop is almost always made from a boxed concentrate, poured over milk, and sold for five dollars. The concentrate itself is not complicated: strong black tea, whole spices and a little sugar, simmered together and strained. Making it at home takes twenty-five minutes once, and then every subsequent cup takes about ninety seconds.

Cardamom is the spice that makes chai taste like chai rather than like spiced tea, and it is the one worth buying whole. Crack the pods with the flat of a knife before they go in the pot. The seeds inside hold the flavor, and an intact pod keeps it locked away. A small bag from the bulk bin or an Indian grocery costs a fraction of the little supermarket jar and holds enough for a dozen batches.

Use a plain, sturdy black tea. Assam, English breakfast, or the cheapest orange pekoe tea bags on the shelf all work, while delicate teas get buried under the spices. This is a place where the inexpensive option is also the right one.

Homemade Chai Concentrate

Black tea simmered with cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and cloves into a concentrate that keeps two weeks — ten chai lattes for less than the cost of one.

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Prep Time 5 minutes mins

Cook Time 25 minutes mins

Course Drinks

Cuisine Indian

Servings 10 servings

Ingredients

  

• 4 cinnamon sticks broken in half
• 10 green cardamom pods cracked open
• 10 whole cloves
• 10 black peppercorns
• 2 inches fresh ginger sliced into thin coins
• 2 star anise pods optional
• 1 pinch salt
• 4 cups water
• 6 black tea bags or 2 tablespoons loose black tea
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar granulated sugar, or honey
• 3/4 cup milk per serving, any kind
• 1 pinch ground cinnamon for dusting

Instructions

 

• Combine the cinnamon sticks, cracked cardamom pods, cloves, peppercorns, ginger, star anise if using, salt, and water in a saucepan.
• Bring to a boil, then reduce to low and simmer for 15 minutes. The water will turn pale gold and the kitchen will smell like the drink before you have made it.
• Take the pan off the heat, add the tea bags or loose tea, and steep for 5 minutes. No longer – black tea turns bitter and astringent past the five-minute mark, and boiling it is worse.
• Remove the tea bags without squeezing them. Squeezing forces out tannins and adds bitterness.
• Stir in the sugar until it dissolves completely. The concentrate should taste distinctly too sweet and too strong on its own, since each cup gets diluted with three times its volume in milk.
• Strain through a fine-mesh sieve into a clean jar and discard the spices. Cool to room temperature before sealing.
• To serve hot: combine 1/4 cup concentrate with 3/4 cup milk in a mug and microwave for 90 seconds, or heat and froth in a saucepan. Dust with cinnamon.
• To serve iced: pour 1/4 cup concentrate over ice and top with cold milk.
• Refrigerate the concentrate for up to two weeks.

Notes

For a dirty chai, add one shot of espresso or 1/4 cup of strong brewed coffee to the finished hot cup.

Buy cardamom, cloves, and peppercorns whole from an Indian grocery, an international aisle, or a bulk bin. The price difference against the supermarket spice jars is often four to five times, and whole spices keep their flavor for years while ground ones fade in months.

The cheapest black tea on the shelf is the correct choice. Spices this assertive flatten any nuance an expensive tea would bring.

Do not skip the peppercorns. They contribute heat rather than pepper flavor, and their absence is the main reason homemade chai tastes flat compared to the coffee-shop version.

Simmer the strained spices a second time with 2 cups of fresh water for a weaker but perfectly usable second batch. The flavor is lighter, which suits an iced chai.

Freeze the concentrate in an ice cube tray for portions that keep for months. Two cubes plus hot milk makes one cup.

For a traditional masala chai instead of a concentrate, simmer everything with milk from the start in a 1:1 ratio with the water and skip the dilution step entirely.

Honey should go in after the concentrate cools slightly rather than into boiling liquid, where its flavor breaks down.

Keyword chai concentrate, homemade chai, make-ahead, spiced tea