DIY Chai Concentrate Recipe
I’ve wanted to try making my own chai at home for a while now. When you look online, there are many different ways you can make chai: there’s the powdered mixes (these often include powdered milk), concentrates, and dry spice mixes. Today I’m making chai concentrate for the first time!
Concentrates are great because you can store them in the fridge up to a week! It makes it super easy for anyone on-the-go that wants to whip up a chai to their liking. All you need to do is add milk and if you like, ice! By making your own concentrate, it also allows you to adjust the recipe the way you want beforehand, so that every cup you make with it is perfect. Also, for those of you sharing with the dairy-free, it allows you to choose what milk/milk substitute to use for each cup.
If you search for chai concentrate recipes, there are tons of different ratios and suggested amounts of the spices that go into it. After looking around at several recipes, I got a general idea of how to make it. Of course, this is my first test of making concentrate at home, so there will be adjustments made for future batches. This article is gonna explain some tips and things that I’ve learned from this first experiment (and if you make it to the end I have a surprise)!
So let’s start with the basics: all chais generally have the same base of spices. They are…
Tip 1 : Adjust it to your preference! You can adjust the amount of sugar, and the ratio of spices to suit your tastes/make it your own, but these spices are the general base recipe. You can even add additional spices and ingredients such as orange peel, fennel seed, and more to make it a personal recipe. It may take some trial and error, so experiment with it!
In addition to these ingredients, you’ll also need black tea, vanilla extract (optional) and some sort of sweetener (today I used brown sugar, but you can also use white sugar, honey, or maple syrup). In this particular test batch, I used Assam Black Tea (this is one of the few things I didn’t get from Amazon, it was purchased previously from another company and I had it in my house so I used it).
Tip 2 : You can use any kind of black tea— even Lipton or a generic brand. Loose leaf with a good caffeine content will get you more of a buzz.
Obviously, quality does make a difference, but you don’t need to spend a ton of money importing exotic spices. I was able to find almost all of these ingredients on Amazon, and I’ll link them throughout this article as well as at the very end.
Once you’ve got your spices out you want to grind them, leaving out the black tea, vanilla, brown sugar, and cinnamon stick(s). Today I ground mine by hand using a mortar and pestle (just be careful you don’t lose some of your spices during this process, when I was grinding some flew out!).
Tip 3 : Make sure you buy whole spices and freshly grind the spices yourself! Trust me, this adds more flavor because it releases some the oils inside them. Grind them so it becomes coarse but not fine. If it’s too fine then it will slip through the strainer and into your drink! Of course you don’t have to do it this way, you can use pre-ground spices.
After this I poured 2 cups of water into a pot and added my freshly ground spice mixture, black tea, cinnamon stick and brown sugar/sweetener of choice, and let that boil for 10 minutes. After it’s done boiling and you take it off the stove, strain it into a pitcher.
Tip 4 : Double strain to make sure you keep your drink smooth! We first strained into a bowl, and then used a smaller strainer.
After straining, add in your vanilla extract then place it in the fridge for one hour to chill. And that’s it! Now you have a homemade chai concentrate that you can keep for up to a week.
When you’re ready to make yourself a cup, just pour the concentrate and add the milk of your choice. I’ve found that a 1 to 1 ratio is what works best.
For me, making this for the first time actually turned out really good for a first try! Still though, I’m gonna make adjustments like adding less vanilla and more spice to make it taste the way I like it.
Below I made a little infographic for a basic recipe, with a general idea of the amounts of the spices for you to add. Again, from here you can customize it to your liking. If you make it, let me know how it goes! Make sure to save it for later to your Pinterest boards using the button :)
And for while you sip your chai, one of the best things to do is curl up with a good book. With Kindle Unlimited you have access to millions of ebooks and thousands of audiobooks. You can get a 30 day free trial to start off, then it’s as little as $9.99 a month! You’ll always have a good book to go with every cup of chai.
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