Learn how to make your own fresh chai, step by step. We’ll show you how we make ours in the Somage factory, and how you can make your own at home or in a café.

What is fresh chai?

Masala chai traditionally comes from India: black tea, spices, milk and sugar brewed together in big pots. Over the past 20 years, café culture globally has produced many new interpretations.

In Australia, the main adaptation is fresh (sticky) chai. Rather than being boiled together in a pot, fresh chai is designed for café service. It's a pre-prepared mix of honey (or any sweet syrup) infused with tea and spices to create a sticky mix. At service it's portioned and infused into latte milk for texture and creaminess. A 'spice chai latte'.

At 20 g per serve, a 1 kg batch gives you around 50 cups.

Now let’s break it down. We’ll work through the five stages we use to build a fresh chai:

1. Spices → 2. Tea → 3. Honey → 4. Mix it together → 5. Preparing the perfect cup


1. Spices

Design a spice mix

First, decide the flavour profile and sensation. Also think about where your spices come from.

If you’re looking for a more traditional style, lean towards India’s earthy, warming and aniseed-forward spices. Sri Lankan spices can be brighter, more citrusy and sharp. Café chais are often more cinnamon and ginger dominant. Why not use local spices - Tassie pepperberry or wattleseed from the Grampians? Essentially just stick to the framework!

Another design decision is whether to dry-toast or keep as they are before milling. There is no right or wrong answer here.

To dry-toast, use a pan over low heat. Usually less than 30 seconds is enough. Let your nose guide you. Once the aromatics open up, you’re there. The aim isn’t to cook or heavily toast the spices, but to gently develop their aroma.

Just remember: balance matters more than the number of spices. Complexity without balance is not a pleasant experience.

To mill or grind?

A mill is the gold standard because it gives you much better control over particle size. But milling creates heat, and heat is the enemy of delicate aromatic oils, so keeping the spices cool matters. Particle size then controls how quickly those flavours extract: smaller particles extract faster, larger particles more slowly.

Buy whole spices rather than pre-ground. If possible, go to a good spice merchant rather than a major supermarket. Most spices on Australian supermarket shelves are extremely old and of low quality.

In our factory, we have a purpose-built milling line. We mill within 2–4 hours of production to preserve aroma compounds. Our pin and hammer mills run at 8,000–14,000 RPM, while we keep the spices below 40°C to help protect volatile aromatic oils.

At home or in a café, use a pin or hammer mill if you have one. Otherwise, a $40 spice or coffee grinder can do a solid job too. Work in small batches and don’t let the grinder or spices get excessively hot.

Fresh ginger, however, needs to be treated separately.


Fresh ginger

Fresh ginger gives warmth, brightness and lift, while dried ginger gives a more concentrated burn and lingering heat.

Fresh ginger is typically avoided by many commercial chai companies because it introduces moisture and increases shelf-life complexity, meaning the finished chai needs more careful processing and refrigerated storage. But the complexity it brings is unrivalled. If you choose to use it, go for mature fresh ginger for greater depth and longer heat.

At the Somage factory, we process fresh ginger separately using a Robot Coupe food processor.

At home or in a café, a good food processor will do the same. You want a coarse mince, not a purée or juice. Wash the ginger first and cut off any dark or spoiled parts.

2. Tea selection

Choosing the right tea isn’t just about flavour. You also need the right tannin structure so the start, middle and finish of the drink hold together. Structure is important and is where most drinks fall flat.

Chai is spicy, sweet and served in milk, so the tea needs to extract quickly and cut through. Tea dust extracts fast but can lack complexity, while long, delicate leaf can be too subtle and slow. You want the middle: enough leaf for character, with enough broken leaf for faster extraction and the tannin and astringency to carry through milk.

We use a Ceylon FBOP (Flowery Broken Orange Pekoe), which gives us the brighter, more aromatic style we prefer in Australia.

For a more traditional, malty and earthy chai, try a CTC (Cut, Tear, Curl). It’s also much easier to find, particularly in the USA.

3. Choose a honey

Australian honey is incredible. But big flavour doesn’t necessarily translate to a good chai mix.

Big bush honeys can overpower and skew your spice mix. We prefer floral Victorian honeys with a clean and neutral profile. This gives a more united blend. Save the big honeys for your toast or drizzling over figs.

In our factory, we gently warm the honey to a very low temperature (under 30 degrees), just enough to reduce its viscosity so we can evenly mix through the other ingredients. This preserves its character and natural antimicrobial qualities. Honey also brings some natural preservative qualities to the mix, although it doesn’t make a fresh chai shelf-stable.

At home or in a café, do the same: gently warm it just enough to make it easier to work with.

4. Mixing it all together

Now we have our four parts: tea, honey, fresh ginger and milled spices. Time to mix them together to infuse and integrate.

Start with your gently warmed honey. Thoroughly mix through the fresh ginger mince, then gradually incorporate the milled spices. Add the tea last.

Then give it some time.

At Somage, we wait at least five days before sending it to cafés. For us, 7–21 days is the sweet spot. Very similar to coffee.

At home, let it sit for at least 24 hours. If you can, hold off for 3–5 days. Store your chai in the fridge in a clean, airtight container.

5. Make a cup: How to prepare the perfect chai

Now we leave the factory and move to the café. The same method works at home.

A typical cup uses 20 g chai with 200 ml milk, which is a 1:10 ratio. The same recipe and method work with dairy or plant-based milk.

1. Add the cold milk directly to the chai mix.
2. Whisk for 5–10 seconds to evenly suspend the tea and spices.
3. Steam to around 65°C, in a whirlpool until you have perfectly textured milk.
   

If you want an iced chai, prepare it using the same method, then pour over large ice cubes and stir.

Important: Don’t add hot water at any stage for this method.

Starting with cold milk gives the tea and different spice particle sizes time to extract as the temperature gradually rises. Temperature has a major effect on extraction rate: starting immediately with hot water accelerates extraction, particularly from the tea and finer particles, and can push the drink towards greater tannin, astringency and bitterness.

We’re looking for one integrated extraction where the tea, spices, ginger, sweetness and milk develop together, rather than extracting one part aggressively before the others have caught up.

All great food and beverage is about creating unity.