The Easy Way
To brew a delicious cup of chai, you'll need the following items:
- Sauce pot. Use a pot that can hold more liquid than however much you plan to make. It's important to leave room for the mixture to boil and foam.
- 1 cup milk/alternative. Chai is generally made with whole milk, but a lot of people in Western countries tend to substitute with something else like oat milk or soy milk.
- 1 cup water. The water helps to cut the richness of the milk or milk alternative, but it depends on what you're using. See the next section for different recommendations.
- Yatri Chai Blend. Use the right amount based on which flavor or blend you are making, according to the table below.
| Blend | Amount |
| Royal Masala Chai | 1 tbsp per 2 cups liquid |
| Cardamom Chai | 1 tbsp per 2 cups liquid |
| Turmeric Ginger Chai | 1 tbsp per 2 cups liquid |
| Royal Masala Rooibos | 1 1/2 tbsp per 2 cups liquid |
- Sweetener of your choice. Start with 1 teaspoon and work your way up until the sweetness is where you want it. We usually use jaggery, which is an unrefined sugar made from concentrated sugar cane juice.
From there, the process only takes a few minutes:
- First, combine the water and milk (alternative) in the sauce pan and bring to a simmering boil.
- Add the tea and spice blend you're using along with sweetener.
- Boil the mixture for 4 - 5 minutes until it becomes a nice, rich caramel color.
- Strain into a cup and enjoy!
The mixture at some point while boiling should become quite foamy and bubbly. Just make sure you stir and spoon the chai a lot so it doesn't boil over.
Finding Your Perfect Chai with Yatri
Even for something like brewing chai, there are a lot of knobs you can tweak to find the perfect cup of chai for yourself.
From our experiments, we've discovered the following key things:
- The texture of the chai depends on fat and protein. The chai we sell at farmers' markets uses whole milk (8g fat, 8g protein/cup) and full fat oat milk (9g fat, 3g protein/cup). If you want to use different alternatives, keep an eye on the fat and protein amounts. See the table below for suggestions.
- Pro Hack: If your chai is coming out very thin with milk alternatives, you can make it creamier by adding coconut cream or coconut milk.
- If you want stronger chai, use more tea mix - don't boil longer. Usually, boiling longer will extract more flavor, but this only works up to a certain point. When you cook tea and spices too long, they become very bitter, and some compounds break down, leading to duller flavors! So if you want a stronger chai that maintains flavor potency, add more chai mix. We don't recommend boiling any chai longer than 6 minutes.
- You can experiment with additional spices and herbs like fresh ginger and mint. If you like an extra zing, you can try grating fresh ginger into your chai. Mint leaves can also add a great flavor to the chai. Our pumpkin spice chai has healthy amounts of freshly crushed nutmeg and fresh pumpkin!
- You can scale this up to a certain point. If you want to make more chai to serve more people, you can scale this up to about 8 cups (4 cups of milk/alternative, 4 cups of water, 4 tablespoons tea mix). Anything beyond that and things start getting very funky. The rest is a trade secret 😉
Recommended Liquid Amounts by Type (per 2-cup batch)
| Milk | Fat (g) | Protein (g) | Cups of Milk | Cups of Water | Other Notes |
| Whole | 8 | 8 | 1 | 1 | |
| 2% | 5 | 8 | 1.5 | 0.5 | |
| 1% | 2.5 | 8 | 2 | 0 | |
| Skim | 0 | 8 | 2 | 0 | |
| Full Fat Oat | 9 | 3 | 1 | 1 | |
| Regular Oat | 5 | 3 | 1.5 | 0.5 | |
| Almond | 2.5 | 1 | 2 | 0 | * Add 1 tbsp of coconut cream if it comes out thin |
| Soy | 4.3 | 8 | 1.5 | 0.5 | |
| Rice | 2.3 | 0.7 | 2 | 0 | * Add 1 tbsp of coconut cream if it comes out thin |
Steeped Chai
Naturally, you can also steep Yatri Chai as regular tea. This works well for any type of steeping - boiling water, sun teas, cold-brewing, etc.
For any of the above variations, we generally recommend 1 tsp of tea mix (2 tsp for Royal Masala Rooibos) for every cup of water used. If steeping in hot water, you should always use boiling or near-boiling water and for about 5 minutes.
You can adjust the amount of tea and the steep time up or down according to your taste preferences, but the above is a good general starting point.
We're excited to finally have filmed this video and put out this article for all of you to find the perfect cup of chai with Yatri's chai mix! If you have any questions or concerns, you are always welcome to reach us via the Contact page or by emailing us at support[at]yatrichai.com.
Enjoy!