Chai Lattes, Iced Chai and Mocktails from Chai Concentrate

Our original recipe: “In a tea mug take 80ml of the concentrate. Add sugar or honey to taste. Then add hot milk, followed by whipped cream to top.” Our 2022 chai latte recipe works the same way in one go: 4 spoons of any Teabox masala chai steeped in half a cup of water, then 1¼ cups of milk or a dairy-free alternative, foamed, with a sprinkle of cinnamon or nutmeg on top.

Froth the milk with a frother, a whisk or by shaking it in a jar, or simply heat concentrate and milk together in a pan until steaming, which gives a cup closer to Indian chai. Frothing methods, milk choices and café-style variations are in our chai latte guide, and for a shot of espresso in the cup see Dirty chai.

India has its own frother. In Tamil Nadu’s tea shops, the tea masters “do this trademark pour from several feet to mix the milk, tea liquor and sugar and create a frothy concoction,” as our 2015 story on India’s chai wallahs describes. Pouring the latte between two jugs a few times, from as high as you safely can, does the same at home.

How much milk for your blend

Match the milk to the concentrate. Our Assam Masala Chai takes plenty: with milk, our procurement team’s Avishek finds it “impressively dense, full-bodied and sweet.” Kolkata Street Chai is more aromatic, and in his notes “a dash of milk brings out the flavors even more,” so pour less.

Fill a glass with ice, pour in the chilled concentrate and top it with cold milk. Our 2015 Summer Iced Chai used about 4 tablespoons of milk per glass, which keeps the spice and tea to the fore. Frozen concentrate cubes work even better than ice.

For a milk-free version, the same recipe suggests lemon juice and mint, “or enjoy the chilled masala tea as it is,” though its author added that chai without milk is “like pizza without cheese.” More cold recipes are in How to make iced tea.

Iced chai nearly became a Teabox product. When we planned our first summer range in 2015, “We were leaning toward iced chais,” until someone, quite likely from marketing, said “No, not chai!” and the team made iced tea blends instead.

Chai popsicles

A concentrate also freezes into dessert. Our 2024 chai popsicle steeps 3 tablespoons of a saffron and rose chai in 2 cups of water for 5 to 7 minutes, strains it, and stirs in ½ cup of sweetened condensed milk and ½ cup of whole milk before freezing. The condensed milk keeps the frozen tea creamy rather than icy.

Concentrates also make good mocktails. One of our holiday recipes stirs 120 ml ginger tea concentrate with 80 ml litchi juice, 5 ml rose water and 15 ml sugar syrup over ice, garnished with julienned ginger and rose petals.

Our 2017 summer series built a whole menu the same way, each on 120 ml of an iced tea concentrate:

• Kopi Chia: 35 ml almond milk, 40 ml whiskey, 7 ml brown sugar syrup, a dash of cinnamon and ice, in a glass rimmed with coffee and cinnamon powder; the almond milk makes it a dairy-free creamy drink.
• Orange Sorbet: 15 ml honey, a dash of pepper and 45 ml brandy, showing that a spice note can carry a cocktail.
• Tropic Topic: 45 ml whiskey, 15 ml lime juice, 20 ml sugar syrup and a splash of soda, a sweet and sour balance.

For our Berry Blitz cocktail the tea was brewed for the time on the pack, infused “for not more than 2 hours,” cooled and strained, then refrigerated overnight before mixing. Chef Priya Vijan, who created the recipes with our iced teas, gave the rule that applies to any concentrate drink: “balancing the sweet with sour is the key to get a perfect drink!”

If your concentrate is heavy on fresh ginger, simmer the ginger in water rather than steeping it raw. Writer Srinath Perur found that ginger contains enzymes that clot milk: they are most active above about 60°C and are neutralized above about 70°C. Raw ginger meeting warm milk is why a ginger chai sometimes splits. Boiling the ginger in water first, or adding it only once the milk is very hot, avoids it.

He found it only happened above a certain quantity: a bigger pot of milk took longer to heat, so it was still in the clotting range when the ginger went in. The two fixes taste different, too. Boiling the ginger in water first gives “a brash ginger burn,” and adding it to milk hot enough to sizzle against the pan gives “a mellow glow.” His full story is The Science Behind My Ginger Chai.

For a concentrate, this makes the simmered whole-spice method the safer choice for ginger: the ginger is boiled in water before any milk is near it.

Caffeine in a chai made from concentrate

A concentrate is still tea, so it carries tea’s caffeine; how much depends on how much leaf goes into each cup. See Does chai have caffeine? Tea 101 puts a cup of masala chai at about the same as a cup of black tea, roughly 50 mg, and every 80 ml serving of our concentrate holds the tea of about one teaspoon of leaf, close to one ordinary cup. Caffeine varies with the leaf, the amount, the water temperature and the steeping time.