How to make a chai latte

Ingredients. You will need:

• 1 tablespoon loose leaf Chai tea
• Milk / soya milk / oat milk (almond also works well) to fill 3/4 of a mug
• Honey / brown sugar / agave to taste
• Cinnamon for dusting – you could also grate over a little nutmeg
• 1/4 mug of water just off boiling
• Tea infuser or filter

Method

Spoon the chai tea into your infuser, place into your mug and pour over the hot water until the mug is around 1/4 full. Leave to infuse for around 5 minutes to allow the tea to develop a full, deep flavour.

1. Meanwhile, heat the milk in a saucepan until steaming, and use a balloon whisk to create some texture. You could also use a milk steamer if you have one hiding in the cupboard.
2. Notes: If using a frothing wand from a home espresso machine hold the milk in the jug at an angle so the milk moves in a circular motion. Keep heating the jug becomes just a little too hot to touch. If bubbles have formed, tab the jug strongly on a board and swirl the jug until the milk becomes smooth and silky.
3. Remove the infuser of Chai from the mug and stir in your honey or sugar.
4. Slowly pour in the heated milk, stirring as you go.
5. Finish with a dusting of cinnamon. Relax, and enjoy.

And that’s all there is to it.

If you’re feeling adventurous you could add a little vanilla extract or vanilla pod to the milk for a Vanilla Chai infusion… Or perhaps a sprinkling of turmeric?

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What is cold brew tea?

Brewing tea in cold water – or ice – can yield fantastic results. First popularised in Asia, most notably Japan and Taiwan, cold brew teas are served up and down the country as a refreshing remedy during the muggy, humid summers. One of the many interesting things about cold brew tea is that a very different chemical process takes place to that of hot water. Higher temperatures encourage the leaves to release their many compounds and potentially bitter characters and tannins at speed – however, the cold brew process reveals an entire new world of soft, sweet, grassy flavours with a velvety touch to the palate.

Ice brew Japanese Hojicha and Sencha teas

Learn more about how temperature affects tea here in our Tea & Temperature Guide

One of our favorite teas here at The Gilded Teapot to use for cold brew Japanese organic Sencha Superior and is beautifully simple to make. The first method is to add 2 tsp of Sencha to your teapot and fill it with ice cubes – once enough of the cubes have melted to fill your cup you can strain the infusion and enjoy (and return to the rest when the rest of the cubes have melted). You can also add a little cold water to encourage the infusion if you’d like your tea a little faster. The other method is to add the tea leaves to cold water and infuse for 5-8 minutes. You can also re-infuse these leaves several times, so you can enjoy your cold brew throughout the day.

Evening cold brew Sencha Superior

Another tea that works particularly well is Hojicha – a blend of lower leaves and tea stalks that have been toasted over charcoal in porcelain pots by a family of growers in Mie, Japan. Rather than a typically ‘green’ and grassy character, the Hojicha gives a fantastic light, coffee/cocoa sweetness. You can brew this in exactly the same way as the Sencha above. It tastes rather similar to the famed Boucha tea from Kanazawa on Japan’s western coast – there is nothing better than diving into a small, shady tea room in Kanazawa’s Chaya district on a hot day and being greeted with a cooling glass of iced Boucha.

And why not experiment? You can even look towards herbal infusions… Peppermint cold brew with slices of fresh lemon and cucumber is a thorough delight first thing in the morning. Or a cold brew Earl Grey (with a little gin) over ice might tickle your fancy?

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‘English Breakfast’ is synonymous with something full bodied and malty, with good tannins, a relatively friendly amount of caffeine, and can sit well with a little milk. If you fancy changing things up a little, or would just like to try something new, here are three teas I’d like to recommend which will help you on your way.

From left to right: Ceylon Kenilworth, Kenya Kaimosi, and Yunnan Gold

Ceylon Kenilworth

This long, wiry beauty comes from the famed Kenilworth tea garden near Ginigathena in Sri Lanka’s central highland Nuwara Eliya region, planted at around 4,000 ft. This tea, when brewed, gives a stunning deep amber coloured cup, with a smooth character and hints of honey on the aftertaste. I love this without milk and some hot buttered toast. Sri Lankan black teas can sometimes be overlooked for heavier, malty Assams, but I’d like to shine a light on this brilliant tea producing region. To get a little nerdy, it tastes more like a tea from the Kandy region, and is certainly worth trying if you haven’t tasted single estate Sri Lankan teas before.

Kenya Kaimosi

Your traditional English Breakfast tea will almost certainly have some element of Kenyan tea in its blend. Why? Well, there are very good reasons. For one, the assamica tea plant thrives in the Kenyan climate, and does a great job of producing deep, malty, well structured black teas. Also, being so close to the equator, the area isn’t all that seasonal, which means that the tea crops tend to be very consistent – and blenders like this very much. I’d like to give a special mention to this TGFOP from the Kaimosi tea garden. Grown at around 6,000 ft, this tea has a moreish thickness to it, and pairs very well with milk. It has great strength, but without being too overpowering. A real classic that makes a great start to the day.

Yunnan Gold

Just look at it. Those leaves! A personal favorite of mine, Yunnan Gold will often appear in my mornings. The rich soils of China’s southern Yunnan province can produce some absolute wonders, and this tea is no exception. It has an incredible deep richness to it, with notes of sweet raisin, caramel and a hint of smokiness with a delicious almost buttery quality. Sometimes known as Dian Hong, there is no mistaking this majestic tea. Best enjoyed without milk, but it will take a splash if you are so inclined. And for those who need a little help waking up in the morning, the high proportion of golden tips in this tea gives it a higher caffeine content than those with a lower amount. And fortunately for tea, it naturally contains theanine, which ensures a slow, steady caffeine release through the morning. Delicious.

The post Three Alternatives to English Breakfast first appeared on The Gilded Teapot.

Sen no Rikyu’s Tsukubai at his residence in Sakai, Japan.

For instance, Japan is incredibly fortunate to have outstanding quality water straight from the tap, and it suits their teas perfectly. (As an aside, when we visited the family in Miyazaki last year and sat down with Shigeru, he leaned across the table and the very first thing he said was “what is your water like in England?!” He is fascinated by the chemical make up of water and the effect is has on tea). Whereas our water here in Dorset is at the completely other end of the spectrum to theirs.

Good quality water can elevate your tea into something truly great, revealing the complexities and nuances contained within your infusions. In China, it was said that great tea in ordinary water would become ordinary, and ordinary tea in great water would become better. So we can see how essential water can be in our enjoyment of tea.

Hard Water Here in Dorset we have the pleasure of some incredibly hard water packed full of minerals like calcium and magnesium (where we are is particularly chalky). It is also has a habit of scaling up kettles with limescale. Lovely. Boiling water removes any bacteria etc. but the minerals remain, and can have a large impact on the flavour of your tea. It can be nightmarish battling with calcified hard water while enjoying tea, especially when it comes to lighter infusions. White teas and Japanese green teas especially can suffer terribly as a result.

Soft Water The picture is a little more rosy here. There are fewer minerals to interfere with the flavour of your tea, although it should be noted that higher sodium levels can sometimes be troublesome. The main bit of good news is that you won’t have to de-scale your kettle anywhere near as much as us folks in Dorset, and we’re all secretly very jealous.

Pure water Pure distilled water, contrary to how it may appear, isn’t all that much good either. The complete lack of any minerals at all can leave your tea tasting quite ‘dull’ and flat. We want a little personality, but nothing too overbearing.

So what kind of water is best?

The renowned tea scholar Yu Lu said that water drawn from the centre of a flowing mountain stream is best. Seeing as many of us don’t have some useful mountains nearby, what other options do we have at our daily disposal?

Tap Water If you have hard tap water, an easy fix is to use a regular high street filter (various different kinds on the market). These typically charcoal filters will help remove some of the minerals that have a detrimental effect to the flavour of tea. We’ve had some success with the well known high street brand filter jugs.

If you want to take things to the next level, there is an array of very impressive filtration systems on the market. Reverse osmosis systems are quite amazing. Ideally, the pH you’re looking for with tea is something neutral – around 7 – and typically RO will sit somewhere between 5 and 6, but it is a world better than hard mains water scaling up your kettle and tainting your tea.

Bottled Water As the water in our Dorset area is very badly behaved, whenever we have a tasting session, or are trying a new tea for the first time, we look to bottled water. Mineral water is best avoided (the clue is in the name) so we opt for spring water instead. Just promise to use water from a responsible source and recycle the bottles when you’re finished.

Let’s finish with a good Chinese Proverb:

Water is the mother of tea, teapot its father, and fire the teacher.

More tea guides:

Tea and Temperature

How to Store Tea

The post Tea and Water first appeared on The Gilded Teapot.

Kamairi Cha Tea

High on the steep mountain sides near the coast, the Miyazaki family’s tea garden benefits from excellent soil and lower temperatures than lower-lying tea gardens. These other gardens begin their first harvest of the year around the middle of April, whereas the higher altitude garden begins six weeks later towards the end of May.

The Miyazaki family specialise in a particular kind of tea – they produce Kamairi-Cha (dry heated tea) – a tradition that is almost lost in modern tea making. In the early 20th century, Kamairi-cha as fairly popular, and steamed tea – the most popular method today – was made only in small quantities. By the mid-20th century, the split for Japanese tea was around 50/50, but today Kamairi-cha makes up just 1% of Japanese tea production.

The Miyazaki family have preserved this tradition with what could very well be the best Kamairi-Cha in the country, drying the leaves either by hand or using their old tea machine made in the 1950s (now the last of its kind). Usually, dry heated leaves ‘Kama’ loose much of their intense green colour after heating and develop a most roasted flavour compared with steamed tea. However, thanks to this family’s years of expertise and experience, they have produced a Kamairi-Cha that keeps the beautiful vibrant colour with bright green notes and soft, rounded character.

Inside the garden itself, the family grow a diverse range of eighteen different types of tea plants. For their stand-out Kamairi-Cha they use a varietal called the Sae Midori, a relatively rare member of the tea family known for its deep green colouring, sweetness and overall softness of flavour. (You’ll sometimes find it used for Gyokuro production).

I’m thrilled to say that we have procured a small amount of 500g from the family. On the first tasting it absolutely blew me away. I can only summarise its flavour as being a very well rounded, sweet grassy ‘hit’, tasting very much like a shade-grown Japanese green, followed by a sweet, bakey finish synonymous with Oolongs or pan-fried Chinese green teas. Its complexity reveals the astounding skill behind its production, and it gives me great pleasure to welcome it to our tea shop.

http://www.thegildedteapot.com/shop-product/kamairi-cha/

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