If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you might know that I actually posted a Copy-cat Starbucks Chai Tea Latte recipe last summer. In that post, I mentioned how 1) expensive and 2) much sugar a single chai tea latte from Starbucks can be/have. Well, since then, I’ve consumed lots of chai, and have been working on improving that recipe, and I think I’ve done it.
One thing I don’t enjoy about chai purchased from cafes is that there isn’t a decaf option. Although I know tea doesn’t contain nearly as much caffeine as coffee, I’m super sensitive to caffeine, and have found that I can really only drink chai before noon, otherwise I cannot sleep. So this time around when I was testing chai concentrate recipes, I used decaf black tea, and now I can drink it all the time and anytime. Which you can bet I do!
Here’s the recipe:

Yields: 5-6 servings
Ingredients
- 4 cups water, divided
- 6 black tea bags (I used decaf)
- ~ 1/3 cup fresh ginger, peeled
- 13 cardamom pods
- 13 whole cloves
- 1 tbsp black peppercorns
- 3 star anise
- 1 cinnamon stick
- *Optional* 1 tsp vanilla extract
Directions
- Blend together 1 cup of water with 1/3 cup of fresh ginger and set aside.
- Combine the cardamom, cloves, peppercorns, and star anise in a bag and crush with a rolling pin. Alternatively, use a mortar and pestle.
- In a medium sized pot combine the remaining water, tea bags, crushed spices, cinnamon stick and blended ginger and bring to a boil. Simmer uncovered for 20 minutes.
- Remove from the heat and add the vanilla extract. Strain with a fine mesh sieve and transfer into a mason jar for storage.
- Serve with equal parts chai concentrate and non-dairy milk of choice (I prefer oat), and sweetened to your preference.
- Transfer to a jar and refrigerate the remaining concentrate for future use.
I love chai lattes. Great to have a homemade recipe to try! Thank you for this post 😊☕
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Thanks so much for your feedback! I hope you try it out and enjoy 🙂
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