Dirty Chai Blog Post

Monday, October 29th, 2018 by

People are passionate about their beverages. We want them flavorful, pretty, fresh, and inexpensive. We need them fast, in the biggest cup you’ve got, with our choice of milk, and a generous dash of whip. Remember those multicolored pastel drinks that were all the rage? What about freakshakes, the mother of all milkshakes, topped with every confection imaginable? People are having fun with their drinks, and we are on board. One of our favorite trends these days is the Dirty Chai Tea Latte. You can have all the warm, spicy flavors of chai without sacrificing the essential, revitalizing joy that is coffee. Basically, you can have your cake and eat it too. Bonus: you can make it at home!

Some of the best innovations come from necessity. We’ve all made those “I really need to go food shopping but I don’t feel like it” meals. You stare into your bare cabinets and try to figure out how you can work those pitiful, mismatched ingredients into something edible. There are entire cookbooks on the subject matter. Scarcity can turn anyone into an innovator.

The aromatic tea we know and love was born in tougher times. Masala Chai is a Hindi term that translates to “mixed-spice tea”. In the early 1900s, black tea was very expensive in India. Vendors used milk, sugar and spices to keep their brew flavorful while keeping costs down. To stimulate the sales of Indian tea, the British-owned Indian Tea Association encouraged big employers to offer tea breaks throughout the work day. They also encouraged chaiwalas, tea vendors, to sell their brew along the developing railway system.

Traditional Masala Chai used black tea, typically the local Assam or Ceylon, blended with real spices that varied based on region and availability. Chaiwalas became an important part of the culture and continue to exist all over India. They are one of the only consistent presences in a very diverse country, from lazy rural villages to busy cities streets. People from all walks of life flock to chaiwalas for a reprieve from the hustle and bustle of daily life. Over tea, you’ll see people congregate, night and day, discussing anything from politics to sports.

Masala Chai became popular in India, but it didn’t stop there. Over the pond it went, right to our local coffee shops and tea houses, in all its spicy, fragrant glory. Any trendy coffee shop will boast the “Best Dirty Chai,” but as DIY-ers, we subscribe to the philosophy that if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. A lot of cafes make their chai with a concentrated syrup or powder mix. This version fuses our own signature chai spices into the tea like the first chaiwalas. Those real ingredients add a richness and depth of flavor you can’t emulate with an artificial mix alone. You wouldn’t build a house with particle board. You have to go for the good stuff!

If you want the traditional Dirty Chai experience, brew up 2 shots of espresso – we love Godfather’s Italian Espresso for this drink. You can also strong brew any coffee of your choice. Typically, espresso drinks use a dark roast, but the beauty of doing it at home is that you get to choose. Your home will be filled with that sweet, spicy aroma in no time! Whether you’re brewing it by the cup or the pitcher, this decadent treat is as simple as it is tasty.

Give this recipe a try and let us know what you think in the comments below!

 

Ingredients

1-2 tbsp Spiced Chai tea

1/2 cup of water

1/3 cup of milk of your choice

1/2 cup of strong coffee or 2 shots espresso

2-3 tsp honey

1 drop vanilla extract

A dash of cinnamon

Directions:

1.) Prepare coffee or espresso

2.) Prepare chai by bringing water to boil, then pouring it over loose leaf tea in a tea strainer.  Let steep for 5-10 minutes. Remove tea bag/tea container from tea.

3.) Add honey and a drop of vanilla to chai tea, stir in well

4.) Prepare milk by either heating it up in a pot on the stove or use a wand to steam

5.) Add milk to chai

6.) Add strong brewed coffee or espresso and a dash of cinnamon

Jasmine Sour Cocktail Recipe

Friday, March 18th, 2016 by

Jasmine Sour Filter

We love this spring-y cocktail for its secret ingredient: green tea flavored syrup. Don’t have any on hand? Substitute a cup of brewed Jasmine 1st Grade green tea for water when making simple syrup (instructions below). Try the leftover syrup as a sweetener in iced tea or homemade lemonade.

Ingredients

For the syrup:

1 cup brewed Jasmine 1st Grade green tea

2 cups sugar

For the cocktail (per serving):

2 oz vodka

1/2 oz lemon juice

1 1/2 oz jasmine simple syrup

Instructions

To make the syrup, combine the sugar and tea in a small saucepan over medium heat. Simmer, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved and the syrup is clear. Let cool.

Add the syrup, vodka, and lemon juice to a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a glass. Garnish with lemon zest if you like, or a jasmine flower if you can find one. Cheers!

Cider Hot Toddy Recipe

Friday, October 9th, 2015 by

This recipe is the best thing to happen to apple cider in a long time. Yes, it’s great with cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, with or without whipped cream. But it’s also so, so good with our Lemon Ginger Green Tea (shot of bourbon optional). The tartness of the lemon balances the sweetness of the cider and the ginger adds just the right amount of heat.

Cider Toddy Tall

Ingredients per serving

1 cup apple cider (we used the unspiced kind)

1 teaspoon Lemon Ginger Green Tea

1 1/2 ounces bourbon or whiskey

Directions

Heat the cider on the stove in a small pan until simmering. Remove from heat and stir in the bourbon or whiskey. Pour the mixture into a mug and steep the tea using an infuser or T-sac pouch for about a minute and a half. Strain and serve.

Variation

If straight cider is a little too sweet for you, a more traditional hot toddy might be more your thing. Steep the tea in a cup of hot water instead of cider, leaving a little room at the top of your mug. Once the tea is steeped, add the bourbon or whiskey, a shot of cider, and a tablespoon of honey (or sweeten to taste).

Jasmine Honey Tea Granita

Thursday, August 27th, 2015 by

If you’ve followed our recipes lately, you know we’re fans of fancy looking frozen desserts that require no machine and little effort. Continuing in that tradition, we present the refreshing tea granita! If you’ve never had a granita, it is usually made with water, sugar, and flavor, sometimes fresh fruit, and has a unique texture somewhere between sorbet and shaved ice. It’s exactly what you want on a hot day and a refreshing way to enjoy the sweet, floral flavor of our Jasmine First Grade green tea.

Granita

Ingredients

3 cups near-boiling water

2 teaspoons Jasmine First Grade loose leaf green tea (or two tea bags)

¼ cup honey

Instructions

  1. Steep tea for 2.5 minutes. Green tea has a tendency to become bitter with over-steeping, so be sure to strain the leaves out at this point.
  2. Add honey and stir well.
  3. Pour the sweetened tea into a freezer safe container. The deeper  the liquid, the longer the “granitafying” takes. We used a shallow 8×8 pan.
  4. Freeze for one hour, or until ice crystals begin to form around the edges.
  5. Remove and stir the crystals into the liquid. Return to the freezer for 20 minutes and repeat. Continue this process as the mixture hardens, scraping the surface with a fork as it solidifies, until fully frozen and fluffy.
  6. Store in the freezer until ready to serve. If it solidifies too much, let it thaw a little in the fridge and re-fluff with a fork.

Earl Grey Goose: Infusing Vodka with Loose Leaf Tea

Thursday, July 2nd, 2015 by

1S0A1323

Infusing alcohol is a creative way to put a personal stamp on your favorite cocktail recipes and preserve the flavor of the season’s glorious fruits, herbs, and flowers. Enjoy your infusions all summer long or reward your shoveling in February with the taste of sunshine.

While fresh ingredients take days or even weeks to fully infuse, tea and spice infusions reach their best flavor fairly quickly and make a great place to start. Vodka’s neutral flavor makes it pretty foolproof as far adding ingredients goes. When choosing a base for your infusion, keep in mind that a higher alcohol content will increase the extraction power. High proof spirits (100 proof or higher) are diluted with water to a drinkable level once the infusion is complete. If you’re sticking to tea, which infuses easily, a lower alcohol (80 proof) content is perfectly fine, no dilution required.

What you’ll need

Vodka, 80 proof. We use Grey Goose, because we like to be fancy, it’s very drinkable infused, and because of the word Grey.

Loose leaf Earl Grey black tea. We also offer an organic version, but conducted our experiment with our standard Earl Grey. Both use 100% real oil of bergamot, extracted from the rind of bergamot oranges.

A tea strainer. We used the Hook Handle Tea Infuser, a simple metal strainer. If you’re using a finer cut of tea, you may want to strain the infusion through a coffee filter.

The Ratio

For every 1 cup of vodka, we added 1 teaspoon of loose leaf tea.

The Method

Add your desired amount of vodka and tea, in the ratio above, to a mason jar or other sealable container. Add the lid and shake to combine. Let it sit in a cool place, away from light. The flavor should be just right at 12 hours, but you can definitely drink it much earlier. After just a few hours the vodka will be tasty, but the bergamot flavor dominates. It takes a longer time for the black tea flavor to emerge, and it’s worth waiting a few more hours for. Enjoy  it cold, strained over ice, make yourself a martini, or try it with grapefruit soda (the earl greyhound).