Chai-Ola

Iced Tea – it’s a jolly nice drink, if it’s not too sweet.

It occurred to us that a nice summery cooling version of our Spicy Chai might be just the ticket for a sticky steamy summer.

We started with lots of refreshing black tea and citrus notes from lemon juice, lime juice and organic lemon zest.

Then we made a special blend of spices; our signature fresh ginger of course, with lots of lemony coriander seed, a dash of fennel and clove, some fragrant cinnamon and cardamom, a spot of nutmeg. But this time there was a whole new process, which was immense fun to do.

When we make our Spicy Chai and Classic Chai concentrates, we grind our spices fresh to order, simmer them slowly in our special mixture of filtered water, organic sultanas and fresh crushed ginger, and and allow them to steep overnight. The result is flavourful and remains true to form when diluted with hot milk.  But we couldn’t use that method for our summer drink – Iced tea is lighted, fresher, and very thirst-quenching.

We’ve been inspired by amazing flavours coming from the likes of Seedlip and Ecology – and decided to make botanical extracts of each of our spices.

This time we cracked, or bruised, or bashed each spice, put it in a big glass jar and covered it in high grade organic ethanol. This is exactly how pure vanilla extract is made. When we put all the elements – tea, sugar, juice, and spice extracts – together, we heat the mixture to 85c to make it safe for bottling. All the ethanol evaporates at 78c, leaving behind just the pure fresh spice flavours. Alchemy, that’s what we felt this process was like.

We did put in sugar (organic raw fairly traded of course), but not too much.

Long and cool, that’s the way we like it.

• 30mls Chai-Ola Syrup + 220mls water is our recommended ratio
• 16 servings in 1 x 500ml bottle of Chai-Ola
• Still OR Sparkling Water
• 1 to 7 dilution ration, makes 4 litres in total – or a couple of centimetres added to your standard 750ml soda bottle 🙂