US versus Germany I

Chai is delicious. It is also universal. So the challenge is: how can I approximate the chai I know and love from the US, using ingredients, tools and techniques in Germany? Luckily, it's not that hard. It just requires a little flexibility.

Here, I'll compare and contrast a few ingredients (pot, heat and water) for making chai in the US versus Germany. In the subsequent post, I'll touch on the other ingredients (milk, tea and masala). Lastly, I'll compare and contrast how the techniques differ.

Pot
As many folks who put up with me on a daily basis could tell you, I'm pretty particular about the pot I use to make chai. My favorite 'chai pot' for the past couple years has been a 3L, hard-anodized, non-stick stock pot with spouts and a filtered lid.

These features make it easy to handle large volumes, distribute the heat nicely, a cinch to clean, amenable to pouring and easy to filter out large objects like bags of tea, respectively. So I'm kind of in love with this pot. I insisted reasoned to Shruti's chagrin delight that we not only ship the pot from the US to Germany, but that we don't use oils or aromatics in it other than those in chai. Luckily, she agreed.

Heat source
Glass top ranges are far inferior to gas ranges. You can't control heat with glass top stoves, they stay hot for too long and crap easily burns on them (these things are all linked). But, a glass top range is what I used in our kitchen in Philadelphia and in Germany. So I play by its rules - more on that in a later post.

Water
I start with tap water both in the US and in Germany. I reason (which means I'm probably wrong) that you boil the water and change its taste so much by brewing chai that the starting water probably doesn't much matter. That said, there are questions about the tap water quality in Philadelphia thanks to 'fracking' around the area (eep!). In contrast, Dresden's tap water is awesome. Someone knowledgable in water quality would probably argue  that this has to do with the water's origin in nearby, elevated Sächsische Schweiz and the high quality of Dresden's water mains. This make sense to me, but I lack the knowledge to elaborate so talk to your local water quality expert for details.


Summary

• pot: is identical in US versus Germany
• heat source: identical in US versus Germany.
• water: tap water is OK in both US and Germany, for chai. I much prefer Germany's tap water for routine drinking straight from the tap, though.

So, no huge differences between the US and Germany… yet. Stay tuned!

Update: check out this recent piece on water quality in beer making over at NPR for some surprises! I especially like that they highlight the term "craft beer" and as opposed to "art beer".  h/t Julian