Chai Latte Variations: Vanilla, Chocolate, Oat Milk, Regional Chais and Dirty Chai

Vanilla chai latte

Add a few drops of vanilla extract to the milk as it heats, or warm the milk with a split vanilla pod and remove it before frothing. Vanilla adds a sense of sweetness, so you may want less sugar.

Vanilla in the milk is easier than vanilla in the leaf, as we found out. In 2015 our blenders tried a saffron vanilla chai: “CTC chai, vanilla, saffron, spices,” brewed with milk. They changed the amounts of spice, saffron and vanilla again and again, and “fifteen versions of the chai were made and drunk that day.” It was, by our own verdict, “the worst tea we’ve ever made,” and “for a week after, no one mentioned ‘chai’.” The full story is in Tea Blends That Didn’t Quite Make It.

Caramel and vanilla did work later, in our Caramel Spice Chai of 2019, which we described as “like sipping on sweet notes” with “notes of vanilla and caramel.”

Chai hot chocolate

For the holidays we turned Jaipur Masala Chai into a chai hot chocolate, “perfect for cozy nights.” It is a chai latte’s sweeter, richer relative and a good way to use a chai blend in winter.

Chocolate and chai spices go together better than they sound. Peter Keen, writing for us, said his own change of heart about chai came with a chocolate chai: “Dark, bitter chocolate and pungent pepper didn’t sound promising. It was superb.” Our Choco-Orange Chai of 2023 began the same way: “you eat something and wish that you could drink it too.”

Oat milk is the most popular dairy-free choice because it is naturally slightly sweet and froths well, especially “barista” versions made for coffee. Soy milk also foams well. Almond and coconut milks are lighter and foam less, and some plant milks can separate if they get too hot, so heat them gently and add them to the tea, not the other way around.

Whichever you use, a strong Assam base matters even more, because plant milks can mute the tea. A full-bodied blend such as Assam Masala Chai, which our tasters call “impressively dense, full-bodied and sweet” with milk, holds up best.

One of our published tea drinks with a plant milk was a cold one: in 2017 our Kopi Chia drink paired 120 ml of tea concentrate with 35 ml of almond milk, 7 ml of brown sugar syrup, a dash of cinnamon and 40 ml of whiskey over ice.

One caution for the instant route: our Instant Chai Latte Mix already contains milk solids, so it is not a dairy-free option.

Any of our chai blends can be the tea in the recipe above, and each gives the latte a different character:

Avishek Mandal, leading one of our chai tastings, tasted Assam Masala Chai as ginger first, “rendering a warm feeling,” then cinnamon and clove, with a “subtle hint of cardamom & black pepper” at the finish. Kolkata Street Chai opens with ginger and nutmeg before the cardamom, and its saffron “lends delicate sweetness” at the edges. He called Kashmiri Saffron Rose Chai a “bright & brisk, medium-bodied cup” and “a dessert-like blend,” which makes it a festive latte rather than an everyday one.

All five are in our chai collection. The easiest way to choose is to try several: the Authentic Indian Chai Complete Trial Pack has ten blends, with four 10 g sample packs of each.

Add a shot of espresso to a chai latte and you have a dirty chai, a coffee shop favorite that one of our writers found “more of a flavored coffee” than a tea. Keen saw the chai latte itself as “a tea espresso targeted at offering coffee lovers a lower caffeine dessert treat”; a dirty chai puts the real espresso back.

It has reached India too. By 2020, our writer Samvit Kher found that in high-end pubs, “chai-tini, chai-spiced whiskey, dirty chai, and many such fusions are seen on the menu.” Our dirty chai guide has the recipe, an iced version and how it compares.