chai myths, debunked

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Chai is the Hindi word for tea. So "chai tea" literally translates to "tea tea". You would not order a "naan bread" or a "soup of soup". The phrase is a marketing artefact, popularised by American coffee chains in the early 2000s.

What people usually mean by "chai tea" is masala chai, spiced milk tea. Just call it chai or masala chai. It's shorter and accurate.

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Chai is older than tea in India. The spice-and-water tradition (called kadha) predates the arrival of tea by thousands of years. Ayurvedic texts describe brewing ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and pepper in water as a digestive and immune tonic.

When the British planted tea in Assam in the 1830s and tried to sell it to Indians, vendors added the cheap leaves to the existing kadha tradition. Masala chai is not tea-plus-spices. It is the spice tradition that adopted tea.

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A proper masala chai takes about 12 to 15 minutes from cold start to glass. Crushing the spices is 30 seconds. Boiling the water with spices is 2 minutes. Adding tea is 90 seconds. Adding milk and the boil-and-reduce is 4 to 6 minutes. Final sweeten and strain is 1 minute.

The chai walas of India serve a glass in under 10 minutes from cold start. Shantanu can do it in about eight, and he's brewing while talking to two customers and washing a third glass. The recipe is fast. It is on this site.

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Most chai walas in India don't keep a pre-made spice blend. They crush whole spices fresh into each pot. Pre-ground spice mixes lose their oils within weeks of being ground, which is why store-bought "chai masala" is a shadow of fresh.

If you want to make a batch blend, by all means. But the gold-standard chai uses whole cardamom pods, whole cloves, fresh ginger, and a cinnamon stick, crushed lightly in a mortar moments before brewing.

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The cafe-chain "chai latte" is typically made from a sweetened syrup concentrate poured over steamed milk. It is not brewed. It contains pre-extracted flavour and a lot of sugar (a 16oz cafe chai latte often contains 40g of sugar, more than a can of cola).

Real chai is brewed on a stove with whole spices and loose tea. It typically contains 4 to 8g of sugar per cup. The flavours are sharper, the texture is lighter, the cost is about 90% lower.

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The default street chai in India is, yes, fairly strong and fairly sweet. But there are hundreds of regional and household variations: kahwa in Kashmir is green tea with saffron, no milk, no sugar. Sulaimani in Kerala is black tea with lemon. Sada chai in Bengal is plain, lightly sweetened tea with milk and no spices at all.

Even within "regular" masala chai, you can order kam meetha (less sweet) at any stall. The chai wala will not be offended.

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The five most common masala chai spices are ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and black pepper. But almost no two households use all five, and the proportions vary wildly.

Gujarati households favour fennel (saunf). Punjabi households go heavy on ginger. South Indian variations sometimes include cardamom and lemongrass. The Kashmiri version uses saffron. Every household's masala is a fingerprint.

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Black tea contains caffeine, so chai does have caffeine, but less than coffee per cup. A typical 8oz cup of brewed coffee has around 95mg of caffeine. The same cup of chai has roughly 50 to 70mg, depending on brew strength and tea-to-milk ratio.

Also, the L-theanine in tea slows the absorption of caffeine, which is why chai's energy boost feels smoother and lasts longer than coffee's spike.

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Sugar in homemade chai is fully under your control. A typical 200ml home cup uses 1 teaspoon of sugar (around 4g), which is in line with general dietary guidelines. Order "kam meetha" at a stall or skip the sugar entirely at home and chai becomes one of the most spice-rich, antioxidant-dense drinks available.

What is unhealthy is the cafe-chain version: 30 to 50g of sugar per drink, mostly from the syrup base, before you add anything else. That is the version that earned chai its bad reputation in nutrition circles.

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Whole spices need time in boiling liquid to release their oils. They should go in at the start, with the water, before the tea. This is the kadha tradition: spices first, brewed in water, then everything else added.

The "add spices at the end" myth comes from confusion with ground spice powder, which does burn off if added too early. Use whole spices and add them first. Use ground spices and you'll get a fraction of the flavour either way.

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CTC stands for Crush, Tear, Curl, a manufacturing process developed in Assam in the 1930s. It produces small dark granules that brew dark, fast, and strong. CTC is not delicate, which makes it unsuited for solo brewing in porcelain cups, but it is the ideal tea for chai.

If you want to brew a delicate Darjeeling or an Assam orthodox, do that on its own with no milk. For chai, use CTC. Every street chai wala does, and they have spent more time perfecting chai than any cafe has.

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It is showy, yes. But it also does something functional. The pour from a height (six inches to a foot above the glass) aerates the chai, creating a thin layer of foam on top and slightly cooling the liquid to a drinkable temperature without watering it down.

This is the same principle as a Spanish bartender pouring sherry from a height (the "venencia"), or the Singaporean teh tarik (pulled tea). The motion makes the drink, not just the photo.