One of the things I love about meandering in my local Whole Foods
at dinner time is that no one is there!
At my store, they just moved the tea section to a larger and more visible spot.
Unless I go to Happy Lucky’s Tea House, there isn’t any other place in town with a big variety of loose leaf tea.
A good number of the tea’s are from Colorado which is another feature that I love. The Tea Spot from Boulder is represented, and at least 6 or more companies as well as large bins of loose tea and lots of better National brands (including Matcha).
I was looking around and noticed this Chai Concentrate.
For just under $4.00 I could make 64 ounces of Chai…which I thought was pretty good considering all the ingredients were high quality. All I needed to add was milk. There were several flavors available but I picked Vanilla Chai.
First I tried unflavored vanilla almond milk and mixed half Chai, half milk.
I heated a cup in the microwave and …uh…it didn’t turn out well. The flavor was sour and the milk looked curdled.
I scratched my head trying to figure out what went wrong.
Too much Chai perhaps, or wrong milk?
Next I tried less Chai, more milk and the two still didn’t mix well.
I’m not a chemist so I have no idea why this didn’t work out.
I said, “Forget the almond milk.”
I switched to cow’s milk, heated it up (not overly hot per the label instructions) then added 1/3 Chai to 2/3 milk (not half and half)
which worked out tasting the BEST. NO curdling!
The spices do overpower the vanilla taste.
(it’s the clove that’s the culprit and I’d tone it down or take
it out if I was the tea master).
The taste reminds me of Christmas-time with the scent of a clove
studded potpourri and vanilla frosted gingerbread men.
This is another tea that would be fun to play with in recipes.
A little added to pumpkin puree? Now I want to try the other
flavors too!
I’ll keep hunting for these Colorado tea companies. They seem
to be brewing up around Boulder. I hope the trend continues.
In the meantime. I’ll keep hunting for more local brews.
