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A rich cup of chai, blended with just the right spices, is a beautiful thing.
Learning how to brew chai tea at home with the right balance of black tea, spices, milk and honey gives you the tools to recreate your coffee shop favorites on demand.
There’s no single right answer for how to prepare chai tea, but we’ll aim to give you everything you need to create your own ideal blended milk chai using a few simple rules.
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It all comes down to making a concentrated tea brew and combining it with the cream and sweetener of your choice. This way, you won’t dilute the flavor of your spices and tea. Your spice blend might change with the seasons, but the most important ingredient is the tea itself.
Start with good tea, and you’ll have a great chai latte.
What is Chai? Where Does it Come From?
The word “chai” just means tea, but for many of us, it evokes a creamy and spiced chai latte. The Yuan Dynasty inspired the modern English and Indian milk tea tradition that grew into the chai latte of today. Should you put milk in chai? Milk tea is nearly as old as tea itself - do what tastes best to you!
Chai is often made with strong-brewed Assam black tea, but we find that malty, chocolatey, and flavorful black teas like Laoshan Black yield rich results. These base teas are paired with spices like cardamom and clove, then mixed with milk and sweetener like honey.
Making Chai Tea: How to Craft Your Own Blend
Ready to make your own spice blend for the perfect chai? It’s all about balance!
When you start, every spice has its own smell, but a successful blend comes together to form something new - an integrated sensation that exceeds its parts. The freshness and origin of your spices will make a huge difference to proportion, so take the time to source good ingredients and experiment with proportions!
If you want a caffeine-free chai spice, avoid herbal tisanes like cocoa, guayusa, and more.
After years of working to find the perfect spice blend to complement our favorite chocolatey black tea, we created our Auburn chai spice recipe. Our blend includes over 15 different spices, including unique “secret” additions like saffron and tulsi.
Classic Chai Spice Recommendations
For a basic chai spice, start with the classic spices below and balance them to your liking. They are listed in recommended order from the most to least by weight, so include more of the spices at the top (cinnamon, ginger) and less of the spices at the bottom (peppercorn, clove).
• Cinnamon
• Ginger
• Cardamom
• Peppercorn
• Clove
How to Choose a Base Tea for Your Chai
The best base tea for a spice chai blend needs to taste great on its own!
For best results, a loose leaf chai tea base should have flavor that stands out even with milk, and it should be rich enough to bring together all the spices. A chai tea base should not be bitter or drying. Blended chai isn’t about covering up your tea; it's about your tea boosting the spices, the milk, and the honey.
Choose teas that have been sourced with care and stored properly.
Some of our favorite teas for chai include:
• Laoshan Black Tea - malty sweet black tea with chocolatey flavor
• Gong Ting Shu Pu’er - a strong fermented tea from Yunnan
• Hand-Fired Qianjiazhai Black - with crisp floral notes and big texture
How to Brew Chai Tea Step-By-Step
Wondering how long to steep chai tea or how to prepare chai tea with milk? Let’s get brewing! The best way to prepare chai tea helps you keep a rich, strong brew that still comes out creamy and balanced.
Brewing Chai - Step by Step
Step 1: Prep Ingredients
Before you begin, you’ll need your base tea (we use Laoshan Black), your chai spice (we use the Auburn blend), sweetener and milk. Honey and almond milk work very well, but you can adjust based on your preferences.
You’ll also need a pot, a strainer, a heat proof bowl and a measuring cup to hone your ratios.
Step 2: Get the Chai Cooking
You want your chai tea brewing temperature to be a full boil. Use one cup of water per 12oz mug serving (the rest of the liquid will be milk). Add 5 grams of chai spice for every cup of water.
To brew two 12oz mug servings, heat 2C of water to boiling, then add 10g of chai spice.
Cover and simmer for ten minutes.
Step 3: Add Your Base Tea
Next, add 8 grams of your base chai tea leaves per cup of water.
Allow to simmer gently for two minutes, and remove from heat. Allow the pot to sit for four more minutes while the leaves steep.
To brew two 12oz mug servings, add 15g of tea leaves to the simmering spice mix.
Step 4: Strain Your Tea
Pour the entire mixture through a strainer into another pot or heat proof bowl.
Depending on the size of your batch, a tea strainer can work as a very fine strainer for this purpose. The best chai tea leaves like Laoshan Black are whole leaves, so they won’t block your strainer.
Step 5: Add Milk and Honey
For an ideal chai tea to milk ratio, add ¼ cup milk per cup of chai base and bring the liquid to a low simmer before serving. Add honey to taste.
• Almond milk is a tasty dairy alternative
• Heavy cream makes the most traditional chai
• Coconut milk is a rich alternative
Cooking With Chai: A Slight Brewing Variation
Want a powerful chai concentrate you can add to other hot drinks, use in baked goods, desserts or even co*cktails? With a few adjustments you can make a double-strength concentrate to keep in the refrigerator for all your favorites.
The trick? More tea and spices with longer brew times:
• Boil 2 cups of water, add 15g of chai spice blend and simmer for 30 minutes
• Add 15-20g of base tea, simmer with the spice mix for another 4 minutes, allow to infuse off the heat 8 minutes
• Strain, then add 2 ½ tbs of honey while the concentrate is still warm. Do not add milk
• Use immediately, refrigerate for later use, or freeze into chai ice cubes
Serve with your favorite milk at a 2:1 ratio milk to concentrate, or use as an ingredient in co*cktails and mocktails, poured over ice cream, and more.
Makes two cups of extra strong concentrate. If sealed and refrigerated, use within one week. If frozen, use within one month.
Can you brew chai tea in milk, or do a chai tea cold brew?
Unfortunately, you can’t heat milk as hot for as long as you need to get the most flavor out of your tea and spices - that’s why a concentrate works best. You can definitely cold brew your tea and spices for an iced spiced black tea, but a hot brew creates a more versatile concentrate.
The Best Way to Drink Chai Tea
You’ve got your spice blends and techniques down. What’s the best way to drink chai tea? Tradition dictates a hot mug, but there is so much more to explore.
Hot or Cold?
You can drink chai tea hot or iced - it just depends on your mood!
For iced chai, start with a concentrate and add your milk of choice. Mix well and serve over ice!
What about cold brew chai tea? We find that you don’t get as rich a spice flavor without hot brewing.
For hot chai, don’t skip the step where you heat your milk. Otherwise, the milk cools your mug too much.
Chai Teaware
All tea tastes better served out of beautiful tea ware. Half the fun of drinking tea is in the tea set you put together. Maybe it's an antique handed down to you, or simply a favorite mug - just make sure that if you put in the work making great chai, you present it in a way that makes you happy!
Chai Teapots
A teapot that keeps your brewed chai warm works best if you’ll be sipping throughout the day. The teapot makes for a great presentation when serving guests.
• Nixi Pottery is made in Tibet specifically around the milk tea tradition
• A simple glass teapot can show off the color of your chai, especially if you are simply infusing black tea and chai spices
Chai Tea Cups
Chai tastes best out of your favorite tea cup! Pick one that is beautiful to look at, and pleasurable to sip from.
• Nixi Cups are hand-built specifically for milk tea
• Brew mugs come with covers to keep your chai hot
- • Jian Zhan cups are small but beautiful to sip from
Shop Teas and Teaware
to Start Experimenting With Chai at Home
The best chai is the one you love to drink!
If you start with complex, sustainably-produced tea hand-picked and finished by small family farmers like the He Family in Laoshan Village, you can’t go wrong. Great chai is all about bringing out the best in great tea!
Blend up your favorite spices, or try our own chai blend, perfected over years of blending and sourcing. Once you hone in your chai brew, you’ll have the tools to go far beyond what you can find at your local coffee shop.
This article has been updated from an older post, originally published January 25th, 2013.
Posted on February 21, 2022
Written By David Duckler
Leave a Reply
Charlotte Zimmerman
I am always on the lookout for a good chai. I still have yet to find my perfect blend. I did try this one out today using Shui Xian Wuyi oolong, no milk or honey though, and it tasted really good! The oolong was a great base to go with the chai spices!
January 25, 2013
Ash-Lee Hommy
mm can't wait to try the chai spice while it's still wintery cold!
January 25, 2013
James Dean Jerry
This sounds delicious. I guess I'll have to buy more Laoshan black first though haha.
January 27, 2013
Jenna
Ahhh, this is so exciting! I can finally make a chai as strong as I want! Ahahaha. This will definitely be part of my next order; it's too bad it wasn't out just a few days sooner!
January 28, 2013
Ryan Conaughty
My friends just got a cup of chai from a local coffee roaster and said they love chai now. I am sending them this page so they know that they can make it themselves. But only with your tea!
January 28, 2013
Laura Aponte-Blizzard
I lovelovelove chai so much. I like adding extra cloves and having it with cream. :)
January 28, 2013
Meghan Donovan
I hadn't thought of making my own chai with oolong before...great idea! One of my favourite drinks in the winter...so comforting on a cold day. Thanks for the tips!
January 31, 2013
Joely Smith
Totally worth sharing - it seems chai is a gate way to loose leaf tea for many. I know I enjoyed a good chai long before I was "into" loose leaf tea. I know a lot of people who love a good Chai but would also say they don't drink tea :)
February 4, 2013
Katy Ross
The chai concentrate sounds great. I'm definitely going to try it out.
February 6, 2013
Jennifer McConnell
This sounds delicious and well-balanced... looks like I have another thing to add to my shopping list.
February 11, 2013
Michelle Dadighat
I usually steep my tea directly in the milk to make chai, but that concentrate looks good - I have yet to find a concentrate that worked well.
February 24, 2013
Yssah Llave
i would also recommend almond or soymilk instead of dairy milk to maximize the health benefits of drinking tea :D
March 6, 2013
Sarah Cairns
This is a great article. I'm looking forward to trying out some of these with your spice mix.
March 12, 2013
Sarah Hunter
Although I don't care for chai, my husband loves it. He wants to make it on his own so I'm glad I found your instructions here. Thanks!
April 8, 2013
Larraine
Very interesting article will try the chai concentrate and the oolong also.
January 13, 2014
Scott
I've never been a huge fan of chai, but now I want to try to experiment with creating my own. sounds fun!
March 4, 2014
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