Iced Chai Latte: How to Make It at Home, Plus a Make-Ahead Chai Concentrate

Our iced chai began by accident, when a hot cup of masala chai cooled in an air-conditioned room and turned out to be just what a summer afternoon needed. This is the recipe that came out of it.

Meeta Sharma, who wrote it for our blog, had given up on bought iced drinks first. “I have a deep aversion to packaged juice and ready-to-make syrups,” she wrote; “it’s all sugar, artificial flavors, more sugar.” She adjusted her usual masala chai recipe for the cold, and after repeated attempts it became her summer afternoon drink. Read her story in Forgive Me Chai, It’s Summer (Iced Chai Recipe).

Iced chai latte recipe (two glasses)

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons Assam loose-leaf black tea, such as our Classic Assam Black
• 2 cups (about 480 ml) water
• A ½-inch cinnamon stick
• A ½-inch piece of fresh ginger, grated or crushed
• 3 to 4 green cardamom pods, seeds only
• ¼ teaspoon fennel seeds
• Sugar or honey, to taste
• Cold milk, to top up (up to 1 cup, about 240 ml, for both glasses)
• Ice

Method

1. Bring the water to a boil in a medium pan.
2. Add the tea and all the spices and simmer for about 4 minutes.
3. Turn off the heat and let the tea cool. Stir in sugar or honey to taste, strain into a jug or flask, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
4. To serve, fill each glass with ice, pour in the chilled chai and top with cold milk. For a latte, use up to half a cup of milk per glass; for a lighter iced chai, about 4 tablespoons.

For a frothy top, shake the cold milk in a jar first, or use a French press. Cold foam is lighter than hot foam but holds well enough for a glass. For other cold brews, see How to make iced tea.

If you would rather skip the milk, Meeta suggested lemon juice and mint, or the chilled masala tea on its own, though she added that “chai without milk is like pizza without cheese.”

For several lattes, brew a concentrate once and keep it in the fridge. Our recipe: steep 5 teaspoons of chai in 400 ml of hot water for 10 minutes and strain. For each mug, pour 80 ml of the concentrate, add sugar or honey to taste, then top with hot milk (we finished ours with whipped cream). Store the rest of the concentrate in the fridge.

That batch makes about four mugs. If you have the concentrate, an iced chai latte takes a minute: concentrate, ice, cold milk. For storage, syrups and powders, see Chai concentrate, powder and syrup.

For a taller iced drink, use more. When we built a series of iced tea drinks in the summer of 2017, each of the seven started from 120 ml of tea concentrate, poured over ice.

Sweeten the concentrate while it is warm, or keep a little sugar syrup to hand, for the same reason as the recipe above: sugar does not dissolve well in a cold drink.

• Thai cha yen: our 2017 round-up describes “an amber-colored blend of Ceylon or Assam tea with sugar and condensed milk, with spices like star anise, tamarind and orange blossom, served over ice,” often topped with evaporated milk for an ombre effect.
• Hong Kong pantyhose tea: strong chilled black tea with evaporated or condensed milk over ice, named for the long tea sock it is often brewed in, which looks like a stocking.
• Malaysian teh tarik: black tea, sugar and condensed milk, poured back and forth between mugs for its froth; it can be served hot or cold.

Read the full round-up in Iced tea traditions from around the world.

The iced chai we nearly made

In 2015, when we set out to make our own iced teas, the team first leaned toward iced chais, until someone, “quite likely from Marketing,” said, “No, not chai!” Our range plan that year had included “2 new iced chais” for the summer.

A frozen version came later. In 2024 we froze Kashmiri Saffron Rose Chai into popsicles: 3 tablespoons of the chai steeped in 2 cups of water for 5 to 7 minutes and strained, then mixed with ½ cup sweetened condensed milk and ½ cup whole milk, with ½ teaspoon of cardamom powder and 1 teaspoon of rose water if you like, and frozen for at least 6 hours.

The blend is Kashmiri Saffron Rose Chai.