The Countdown Starts Now

People have been asking us for an unsweetened, lightweight chai for years. We wanted to make it, but we didn't want to cut corners to get there. 

Our concentrates have to be shelf stable, which means adding citric acid. Brown sugar balances out that tartness so you never taste it. Take the sugar out and the chai tastes a little sour.

An unsweetened concentrate has real upsides: you add your own sweetener, and all the aromatics are locked in. But it's heavy, and it's nowhere near as portable as a dry blend. So we tabled the idea. For years.

Lately we've been seeing microground tea blends that are lightweight and essentially instant. We've tried quite a few. Some are pretty good. Others are kind of a gritty mess, to be honest. They might have great marketing and look pretty on a shelf but it you want the best out there grit isn't it. And there are serious quality drawbacks that we would never compromise on. 

The biggest problem with microground and preground spices and tea is how fast they degrade. The moment a spice is ground, it starts releasing the volatile compounds that make fresh spices so aromatic and compelling. Within minutes, the piney, citrusy, floral notes of green cardamom begin to evaporate, and within hours it's a ghost of what it was. Every spice does this to some degree. (For those of you who love a nerdy deep dive, I'll write another post on the specifics of the flavor molecules in chai spices.) Ground tea has its own problem: all that extra surface area means it oxidizes quickly and goes stale.

Honestly, some degradation is fine when you're making a dish with lots of elements. We all reach for the jar of ground cumin or cinnamon sometimes. The dog needs walking. The baby just threw their sippy cup across the kitchen ... again. So we make compromises to claw back some of our time. The calculation gets more complicated when the whole thing you're drinking is the compromise.

That's where most dry chai gets stuck. If you want to save time, you get convenience and give up flavor. If you want the best flavor, you have to spend the time to crush, blend, and simmer, which is hard to do when life is making other demands of you.

We think we've cracked it. We started where we always start: whole spices, ground fresh, the same way we've made every pot of chai since 2013. Then we figured out how to keep them that way. It's light enough to toss in your bag, you sweeten it however you like, and when you open it, the cardamom still smells like cardamom. (It's the little things.)

We want it to be perfect, so we're keeping it under wraps for a few more weeks. Stay tuned! Get on the list and you'll be the first to know.

Convenience and taste. Soon, you can have it all.