If you’re a fan of chai tea, then you know how hard it is to find the perfect blend. There’s so many that are very close, but if they just dialed up or dialed down one ingredient (I’m talking about you cardamom) then it would be perfect. Or sometime you find the perfect tea blend and it gets discontinued. That’s right David’s Tea – what did you have to throw away Pure Chai? You had a home run with that one.
So, instead of drinking subpar chai tea, we decided to make our very own tea blend, perfectly suited to our taste. The end result was so good that we were surprised it took us this long to do it. Plus, it was pretty easy and most of the ingredients we already had at home. We loved our chai tea blend so much we were inspired to use it to make chai two more ways: a chai whisky sour cocktail and a homemade chai tea latte.
- Fillable tea bags or tea balls
- Loose leaf black tea
- Cinnamon sticks, broken into pieces (you can do this by smashing it with the base of the palm of your hand. If it’s a hard stick, you can position the stick under the flat end of a knife and then smash it with the base of the palm of your hand)
- Whole cloves
- Black peppercorns, crushed using a mortar and pestle (or a meat tenderizer if you don’t have one)
- Ginger, you can use candied pieces if you want to make a big batch of tea and store it, or if you’re making just one tea bag at a time we would recommend using fresh ginger cause it’s spicier!
- Star anise
- Cardamom pods
- Honey (optional)
Grab a tea bag or ball and fill it with a 1 tbs of black tea along with your desired combination of other ingredients. So, if you like a super spicy chai tea like we do, you’ll want to add more ginger and peppercorns. Here’s our blend to replicate or use as a guide:
- 1 tbs of black tea
- 1/3 of a cinnamon stick, crushed into pieces
- 1/2 inch of ginger, peeled and cut into 4-6 smaller pieces or 8-10 pieces of candied ginger pieces
- 6 peppercorns, crushed
- 6 cloves (we love cloves)
- 1 star anise
- 1 cardamom pod (a little goes a long way here)
- 2 cups of water (more or less depending on the size of your mug)
