Twinings Vanilla Chai: How to Make It Properly

Chai made in a full mug of water with a splash of cold milk is the most common way to get this box wrong. The blend is designed around a small, concentrated brew finished with hot milk, and made that way it becomes a different drink.

Chai first, vanilla second

Think of this as a chai first and a vanilla tea second. Black tea sits at the bottom doing the heavy work, brisk and tannic enough to stand up to milk. Warm spice runs through the middle, rounded rather than hot, and vanilla lies across the top, softening the edges and giving the cup its creamy, slightly dessert-like character.

Each of the 20 bags carries a full 2g, and that matters more in a chai than in most teas. With tea, spice and milk all competing for the same mug, a lighter bag would simply be drowned. If a particular spice matters to you, the current carton is the place to check the full ingredient list before you buy.

The small-water method

Put one bag in just 150ml of freshly boiled water, cover it and leave it four minutes. Press the bag against the mug to wring it out, remove it and add 100ml of milk heated separately. Spice is quick to come out and tannin slow and steady, so four minutes is the point where neither dominates: shorter tastes of spice, longer tastes of tea.

Go past five minutes and the tannin takes over for good, because milk only rounds tannin off; it never takes it away. Heat the milk first, as cold milk mutes the spice. Whole milk and oat both work. Oat is our pick, since its own sweetness sits alongside the vanilla, and oat froths well if you fancy a latte-style mug.

Sweetness, caffeine and the right moment

Taste before reaching for the sugar. Vanilla tricks the palate into reading sweetness, and many people end up adding less than usual, or none. Nothing in the spice is sharp, so anyone hoping for a fiery chai will be disappointed; this is warm and rounded, the kind of cup that fills the kitchen with a baking smell without a pan simmering on the hob.

It is built on black tea, so it is a caffeinated drink for the morning or afternoon, and not a spice infusion, however the word chai gets used in coffee shops. Keep the box closed between cups: the vanilla sits loosest in the bag and is the first thing to fade as a box gets older.

The packs we stock

• Twinings Vanilla Chai, 20 Tea Bags 40g (barcode 070177236731)

What to eat with it

• McVitie's Milk Chocolate Digestives Biscuits, 266g: milk chocolate and vanilla sit happily together, and a digestive is sturdy enough for a milky chai.
• McVitie's Rich Tea Biscuits, 300g: a light biscuit for dunking, so the spice and vanilla stay the main event.
• McVitie's Digestives Dark Chocolate Biscuits, 433g: the bitter edge of dark chocolate cuts across the vanilla and warm spice.

Elsewhere in the Twinings range

• Twinings Assam, 80 Tea Bags 200g
• Twinings Assam Loose Tea, 125g
• Twinings Black Tea Discovery Collection, 20 Tea Bags 40g
• Twinings Darjeeling, 40 Tea Bags 100g
• Twinings Decaffeinated Everyday, 80 Tea Bags 250g
• Twinings Earl Grey Discovery Collection, 20 Tea Bags 40g

The full range is on the Twinings brand page.

FAQ

Do I have to add milk to Twinings Vanilla Chai? No, but it is built for it. Made with water alone it is light, dry and spiced, and many people find it thin.

What is the best way to make it? One bag in 150ml of just-boiled water for four minutes, covered, then squeeze it out and add 100ml of hot milk.

Which milk works best? Whole milk and oat both suit it. We lean towards oat, whose sweetness sits well with the vanilla.

Does Vanilla Chai contain caffeine? Yes. There is black tea at its base, so it carries caffeine like any ordinary black tea rather than behaving like a herbal infusion.

Is it spicy hot? No. The spice is warm and rounded rather than sharp, so there is no real heat.

Curator's note: Do it the small-water way at least once: short brew, squeezed bag, hot oat milk on top. It turns a thin cup into a proper one. Lee, teas.co.uk, Tunbridge Wells.

In short: Twinings Vanilla Chai: How to Make It Properly

More from the tea wiki

• Twinings: Tea Range and Buying Guide
• How to Make Tea Properly: The Eight Step Method
• Caffeine in Tea
• Tea Pairing Principles: Reason, Don't Memorise
• Chai: Origins and Global Variations

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