A small steel saucepan of chai rising to a foamy boil, milky amber with whole cardamom pods and a cinnamon stick visible, a strainer resting over a glass cup beside it

Masala Chai from Loose Leaf, Whole Spices and a Real Simmer

September 25, 2026

Chai means tea, a word that traveled into English through several languages and traces back to the Chinese chá, which is why "chai tea" says the same thing twice. What an American cafe means by chai is masala chai, tea cooked with spices, milk and sugar. The operative word is cooked. Chai is simmered in a saucepan, spices first, tea second, milk last, and brought up to one dramatic foaming rise before it is strained. That order is the whole recipe. The spices need the longest extraction, so they go in first. The tea needs a hard, brief one, so it goes in late. The small, pellet-like CTC leaf is cut into particles that brew quickly to a strong, dark infusion, which is why it stands up to milk where a delicate whole leaf, per the loose-leaf versus tea bags guide, would be lost. And the milk goes in last because its proteins bind the tea's tannins and round off their astringency, which is part of why chai can be brewed far stronger than tea meant to be drunk black.

Ingredients

For four small cups or two serious mugs.

2 cups (480 ml) water
2 cups (480 ml) whole milk
4 teaspoons (about 8 g) loose black tea; Assam CTC if you can get it, any brisk broken-leaf black tea otherwise
8 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
4 whole cloves
1 cinnamon stick (about 3 inches), broken into pieces
4 black peppercorns, cracked
1 inch of fresh ginger, sliced thin, no need to peel
2 to 4 teaspoons sugar, jaggery or panela

Method

Crack the spices. Crush the cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and peppercorns coarsely in a mortar, or under the flat of a knife. Cracking a whole spice exposes its aromatic oils to the water; a pod dropped in intact releases its aroma far more slowly. Slice the ginger thin.
Simmer the spices in water. Put the water, spices and ginger in a small saucepan, bring to a simmer, and hold it there, uncovered, for 5 minutes. The water will take on color from the cinnamon and smell like the finished cup.
Add the tea. Stir in the tea and simmer 2 to 3 minutes more, until the liquid is a deep mahogany, darker than anyone would brew tea to drink black. It is supposed to look overdone. The milk is coming.
Add the milk and sugar, then watch the pot. Pour in the milk, add the sugar, and raise the heat. Do not walk away. When the chai foams and climbs the sides of the pan, lift the pot off the burner or kill the heat, let it fall back, and return it to a gentle simmer for 2 minutes. For a heavier cup, bring it up to the rise a second time.
Strain and serve. Pour through a fine-mesh strainer into cups, pressing the solids with the back of a spoon. Drink it hot; chai does not hold well on the stove, because a skin of coagulated protein and fat forms on standing milk.

Why it went wrong

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Weak, milky, beige	Too little tea, or a large-leaf orthodox tea that infuses slowly	A full teaspoon of tea per cup of liquid, and a CTC or broken-leaf Assam; the small particle infuses fast and strong, which is the point of the style
Bitter, drying	The tea simmered alone in the water too long before the milk arrived	Keep the tea's solo simmer to 2 or 3 minutes; long, hard extraction pulls tannins, and the milk can only soften so much
Spice barely there	Whole spices went in uncrushed, or ground spice was old	Crack everything just before it goes in the pot. Whole spices keep their aroma far longer than ground, a year or two for cardamom and longer for cloves and cinnamon sticks, and give it up when broken open, per the guide to storing whole and ground spices
Boiled over	The milk rise came while the cook was doing something else	The rise takes seconds; stand at the stove from the moment the milk goes in, and use a pan with headroom
Skin on top	The chai sat in the pan or the cup while hot	Strain and drink immediately; the skin is protein and fat setting at the surface, harmless and inevitable on standing
Thin at altitude	Water simmers cooler at altitude, so extraction runs slow	In Denver, add 1 to 2 minutes to both simmers (see the Denver minute, below)

Notes and variations

The Denver minute. At 5,000 feet water boils at about 203°F instead of 212°F, and a simmer runs correspondingly cooler, so everything in this recipe extracts a little slower than it would at sea level. Give the spices and the tea an extra minute or two each and taste before the milk goes in. The rest of the arithmetic is in the Denver altitude cooking guide.

The spices are a starting point. Cardamom is the spice this recipe leans on hardest, and a cardamom-only chai is worth making on its own. Fennel seed, star anise or a scrape of nutmeg are all good additions. The cinnamon question, cassia or true Ceylon, changes the cup: cassia, including the Saigon type, is the louder, hotter of the two, while Ceylon is gentler and more perfumed, so pick by whether the cinnamon should sit up front or in the background. The complete cinnamon guide takes the two apart stick by stick. Burlap & Barrel's Royal Cinnamon (shop Royal Cinnamon) and Cloud Forest cardamom pods (shop Cloud Forest cardamom pods) are both single origin, and the case for buying spices that way is in the single-origin spice guide.

Other cups. For a stronger, thicker cup, use half again as much tea, let the pot rise twice, and simmer a minute longer after each rise. Iced chai is the same recipe at double the tea, cooled and poured over ice, since the melt eats a weak brew alive. Oat or almond milk works, with a thinner body, so cut the tea's solo simmer by a minute and taste. On the days there is no time for a pot at all, a bottled concentrate such as Boulder Tea Company's Teahouse Chai (shop Teahouse Chai concentrate) is the quick route: the producer pairs it with steamed milk for a chai latte, and the cup is ready as soon as the milk is hot.