For the love of chai.

Brewing tea at home is one of the main ways I find peace and calm during the day.

So much so that I’ve written in the past about brewing and drinking tea as a mindfulness practice.

At the top of my tea favorites list is chai. Nothing can beat that strong, bitter black tea with warming spices, cut through with sugar and full-bodied, creamy milk. Over the past year, I’ve found myself making more and more chai drinks at home, using everything from loose-leaf to concentrates. It's been a process. A super-fun one.

Yes, there are plenty of store-bought or coffee shop chai options out there, but many tend to be overly sweetened. The classic Starbucks Chai Latte is delicious, but it has a whopping 42g of sugar, so I don’t want that to be my go-to chai treat. I did, however, draw inspiration from their menu to experiment with blending chai and matcha, recreating the viral Starbucks iced chai matcha latte. I used Tazo chai concentrate like they do at the Bucks, but you could brew chai to make this as well. The concentrate is tasty but again, quite sweet even if you opt for the skinny version.

I am, of course, talking about masala chai. Since “chai” means “tea” in several languages—like Persian, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, and others—the phrase chai tea essentially translates to tea tea, which does sound a bit silly. So, the argument goes that the singular term chai should suffice, as it already implies “tea.”

But language evolves, and in English, chai often refers to a specific type of spiced tea, typically brewed with black tea, milk, sugar, and a mix of aromatic spices like cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. Such as when you’re ordering from an extensive menu at a tea shop or something, you’d say you want the chai tea and not the Earl Grey tea.

It seems like a mix of linguistic evolution and cultural borrowing has shaped this phrase. Thoughts? 🤔

I used to regularly brew masala chai from scratch with plain black tea and spices, and while I love the flavors this produces, it’s time-consuming to do this process for a quick cup between meetings. For ease and simplicity, I tend to prioritize a pre-mixed loose-leaf chai. These days I buy the one from A.Tellin Co. when any of the versions are in stock. Right now, I have a bulk bag of the Winter Chai in my pantry. If you’re a tea lover and want to try some flavors that will blow your mind, this is the place to shop. The quality is superior and the bulk prices are wholesale. I feel like I’m getting away with something every time I buy from this shop.

I will also regularly brew Persian cardamom tea with some oat milk in the mornings and a great shortcut is to brew black tea already infused with cardamom as a quick substitute for masala chai. It’s not the same at all, but it satisfies a similar craving. Another is the recipe I’m sharing in this post, Yemini chai.

Yemini Chai Recipe

Recently, my Yemeni coworker was kind enough to introduce me to the comforting warmth of a Yemeni chai. When I tried her spiced tea, I was hooked! Note that she insisted we use Al-kbous tea as the black tea.

Here’s the wonderful recipe she shared with me:

Yemini Chai Recipe

Ingredients: