Tea Lattes & Smoothies

[Richard Kilgore]

During this summer heat, I became curious about matcha and chai iced lattes and smoothies. I ordered iced chai lattes at three places and liked some quite a bit better than others, and a matcha latte at one place that I liked much more than I expected to.

It turns out that they make these cold drinks from commercial powdered mixes or liquid concentrates. I liked the ones made from the powdered mixes better, so I prevailed up one place to sell me some of their matcha latte mix and another is looking into selling me some of their chai latte mix.

Has anyone else tried making these drinks at home from mixes or concentrates?

Anyone made them from scratch instead?

[Beebs]

I find that from-scratch is much more superior than mixes & concentrates, mainly because I find the packaged stuff is much too sweet for my taste. At least for chai - I haven't tried packaged matcha latte. It's not much more time consuming to do scratch iced chai as hot chai. Here's my quick-and-dirty-at-the-office iced chai latte: In a mug, steep a chai teabag, using either 2 teabags or half the amount of water. Add sugar or honey. Fill a glass approx 3/4 full of ice cubes. When hot chai is ready, pour it right over the ice cubes, till you get about 1/2 glass of chai. Top with cold milk. That's it!

[andiesenji]

I'm not terribly fond of iced drinks in general but I do often prepare chai "latte" for friends.

I prepare the chai in the traditional way, simmering the tea and spices in a little water, then adding the milk (whole milk, sometimes half and half) and continuing to simmer it until well infused.

I then strain it and store it in the fridge until ready to serve.

I place at least a pint of the chai in a blender, add crushed ice and blend until frothy and the ice is very fine.

I top it with plain (unsweetened) frothed milk as that is the way my friends like it.

I tried the chai mix from Trader Joes but found it to be too grainy when hot and even more so when cold.

The flavor is okay but the mouth feel was not to my liking.

My spice mix for chai is very simple, I use Republic of Tea's Cardamom Cinnamon blended with a malty Assam or one of the Nilgiri teas. The CC has a very nice balance of spices.