A Homemade Iced Chai Tea Latte

These longer days and hotter nights make me definitively lazy, make me yearn for hydration and cool and refreshment to flood me like I’ve got a miracle IV for that sole purpose. The only solution is to eat cool, drink cool, and prep ahead for it all: Enter this magnificently spicy iced chai tea latte concentrate. With a quart of this in the fridge at all times, you just need a splash of your milk of choice to let the refreshment flow.

Even better, this concentrate is just the right balance of sweet and spicy, spiked with heavy doses of fresh ginger, cardamom, black pepper, clove, star anise, and cinnamon. The poetry these spices write in liquid cadence is perfect: Energizing without being overpowering, and delicious with any kind of tea you like. I made mine with black tea, but it would be just as zingy with a caffeine-free option like rooibos. chai-concentrate-spices

Welcome to the closest thing to an IV for liquid refreshment you’ll find this summer.

By Lily Diamond
Published on August 12, 2016

Ingredients

6 cups water
1/3 cup honey, maple syrup, or sweetener of choice
16 pieces fresh ginger, 1 to 1 1/2” round by 1/8” thick
14 whole cloves
10 whole cardamom pods
3 2-3” cinnamon sticks
2 teaspoons black peppercorns
2 whole star anise
5 black or rooibos teabags
3 cups milk of choice (I like almond)

Directions

Bring water and honey to a boil in a large stock pot. Add all spices and reduce heat to low. Simmer another 30 minutes, covered, then remove from flame and add teabags. Cover, and let steep at least 20 minutes, or as long as you like (I let mine steep at least an hour or two—you can steep as long as you like for added spice). Strain through a fine mesh sieve or cheesecloth into a carafe or jar, discard spices, seal, and refrigerate. Will last in the fridge for up to a month. Combine with milk of choice, hot or cold, in a 2 parts concentrate to 1 part milk ratio.