Chai Syrup

Masala Chai Concentrate – the essentials in a compact form

Chai Latte is much more like the modern Western adaptation of the traditional Masala Chai, in gastronomy usually made with some chai tea syrup, often full of flavors and aromas.

This homemade chai syrup is not some crap that just imitates the taste, but is everything that can be found in a masala chai, i.e. loose tea and whole spices, but already compacted into the best chai concentrate, which turns into syrup with the sugar. I maintain that this chai latte syrup recipe is worthy of the depth and complexity of an original masala chai, even though it is really simple to make it.

Make your own chai syrup

Anyone can buy syrup, but you can also make your own syrup! Here, I’ll briefly talk about my favorite vegan chai syrup recipe. As always, you can find all the details at the end of this post.

Ingredients for homemade chai syrup

As already described, a variety of spices are part of a Masala Chai. My spice mixture is very much based on that of  Yogi Tea Classic *). The spice mixture for this masala chai syrup therefore consists of  cardamom *),  cinnamon *),  black peppercorns *),  cloves *), and fresh ginger. I further added  allspice *).

The mixture can also be enriched with fennel seeds and/or anis seeds (I’m not a big fan of either, at least not the seeds, fresh  Fennel I like it though). A touch of chili is also possible. In any case, use whole spices, as ground spices as ground cinnamon would end up in the bottle when straining.

Make masala chai concentrate with or without black tea / caffeine

In addition to the spices mentioned, the homemade chai latte syrup also contains water, (brown) sugar, and if you like –  black tea *). Yes, you can make your chai latte without black tea. To do this, you can simply skip the tea. Like this, you can still drink chai tea before bed because it won’t have caffeine. If you make it with black tea (loose or with teabags) chai syrup does have caffeine!

The recipe calls for 20 tablespoons or 100 grams of black tea, which sounds like a lot at first. However, this amount is for two liters (67 oz) of syrup. By the way: If you are looking for a chai syrup recipe with tea bags, please use around 25 to 30 bags; they replace the amount of 100 g of loose black tea.

Back to chai tea caffeine content: For a cup of chai latte you will need one to two tablespoons of chai concentrate (depending on how sweet and intense you like it). Let’s say one and a half tablespoons. If a tablespoon contains around ten milliliters (or 0.5 fl oz), you can make 133 chai lattes from two liters (67 oz) of syrup.

One tablespoon of loose black tea, which approximately contains 50 mg of caffeine, makes an average of six to seven chai lattes. This means that each cup will have less than 8 mg of caffeine. You see, the chai tea caffeine content is quite low (a pure cup of black tea contains approximately 25 mg of caffeine if you prepare it with 1/2 tbsp of black tea).

A good thing of making chai syrup with black tea: If you are tired of forgetting to take out the tea bag and “enjoy” bitter tea every time, then syrup is the perfect solution, because with chai syrup with black tea, you only have to think about it once, namely when preparing the syrup. However, given the amount, you should set a kitchen timer or an alarm clock just this once – if you are a mess like me.

How to make Chai Syrup for Latte

Let’s move on to the next important part, namely the chai syrup preparation. One thing first: making your own authentic chai latte syrup at home is really easy. You can find the detailed recipe at the end of this post. But more or less it basically looks like this:

1. Cut the fresh ginger into slices
2. Crush the spices
3. Roast the spices very briefly
4. Add ginger, sugar and water and simmer for approx. 20 minutes
5. Strain and let it boil again
6. Add black tea (optional) and let it steep briefly
7. Strain
8. Pour into bottles that have previously been rinsed with hot water and close immediately

Pro tip, I came up with the following idea by accident because I felt it is a pity throwing away the delicious smelling spices after straining them. I therefore put them on a plate and stirred them once every day. When I baked something, I put the plate in the already switched off and still warm oven to dry it further. The result is a super nice natural room scent.

Chai Latte Recipe

Finally, the open question is how to make chai tea latte with chai syrup. Preparing Chai Latte almost doesn’t deserve its own chapter, because you simply take one or two tablespoons of your homemade chai latte syrup and mix it with (plant-based) milk.

You can replace half of the milk with water. It doesn’t necessarily taste better, but it’s still tasty and reduces milk consumption, which in turn is cheaper and means we don’t have to carry so much home.

How to use Chai Syrup: Hot, Cold, Dirty

Drinks made out of this flavorful chai can be enjoyed hot or cold.

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The hot chai latte with foamed milk is probably the best known. Pro tip: Enjoy it on a cold autumn or winter day with heavenly  Austrian Vanillekipferl, a  moist carrot cake,  soft apple-cinnamon rolls or a piece of his  healthy baked oats breakfast cake.

The Indian spiced tea also tastes excellent cold as an iced chai latte, despite the very Christmassy spices. If you want to make an iced chai latte with chai syrup, you simply blend it with a glass of cold (plant-based) milk and ice cubes.

And the dirty version would be the dirty chai latte, which is a chai latte with coffee. That sounds like a lot of caffeine! Have you ever had a dirty chai latte before? I don’t like sweetened tea and coffee at all, but I love sweet chai latte. Maybe I’ll give it a try.

Ho ho ho

With this chai syrup, not only you will be happy, but also your loved ones, because it is a wonderful DIY (Christmas) gift from the kitchen. Family, friends and colleagues are equally happy about the delicious chai syrup for chai latte.

Please make sure that you use bottles that are really tight. I ordered my  swing top bottles *) from Amazon. They are affordable and 9 pieces of 8 oz each are perfect for the amount of syrup listed in the recipe (2 liters or 67 oz), if you leave a tiny bit of room at the top. c