Iced Chai 1

If you Google "iced chai", a surprising dearth of recipes turn up. But seeing as how it's been approximately 451 degrees (yes, Fahrenheit) in Philly this summer, iced chai at this time of year is especially desirable. Therefore, I'll be experimenting with iced chai over the next couple weeks and hope to converge, with your help, on a good recipe.

Imagining that ice cubes would dilute the iced chai and screw up the all-important water/milk ratio, I slightly modified my basic masala chai recipe to use less water. My first pass at making iced chai, described below, is thus super-easy.


Iced chai (one 12 oz serving)

Ingredients

• 3/8 cup water
• ~ 1/2 tsp Chai masala (equal parts of: coarsely ground black pepper, green cardamom seeds and cinnamon, and an equal part ginger powder)
• ~ 1 tsp Lipton Yellow Label loose tea
• 3/4 cup milk
• 3 tsp sugar
• 6 ice cubes
  

Technique

The day before drinking

1. Bring water to a boil
2. Add masala and tea to boiling water, reduce heat to a simmer, and steep 2-3 min
   
3. Add milk, raise heat, and return to a boil, stirring occasionally
   
4. Add sugar to a glass container
5. Strain tea into container (discard tea and masala), and stir to dissolve sugar
   
6. Chill chai in the fridge overnight

The day of drinking

1. Pour chai over a mug full of ice cubes
2. Enjoy!
   

This iced chai turns out quite well, but I'll make a couple modifications next time:

• Add more masala (step 2). This time, I put as much masala (~1/2 tsp) as I'd put for conventional hot chai. Something about the cold is covering up the spices I think.
• Chill the mug overnight and/or add less ice. Here, it was a little too creamy when I first started drinking though as the ice cubes melted it became a little too dilute. Mildly related: why do some drinks - many cocktails, for instance - escape the dilution-by-ice factor while others - milk, wine and beer, for instance - are never mixed with ice (except by some crazy Indian parents... did you ever have iced milk as a child?)

Over the next couple weeks I'll be trying out the above and other variations of iced chai. Help me out by sharing your own trials and sharing them with us (comment to this blogemail: chaientist@gmail.com). I'll post results of these variations over the next couple weeks and (hopefully) a consensus recipe afterward.