A New Year + Chai Concentrate

 The second 2014 started I was gladly bidding 2013 farewell.  Or rather, hoping the door hit its ass on the way out.  I accomplished a lot of great things in 2013, but the last couple of weeks of the year were full of not so great things.  It's hard sometimes not to let the bad outweigh the good.  The bad things are overwhelming, making it easy to focus on them instead of all the positive in your life.  I going to attempt to focus on the positive in the new year and keep moving forward no matter what happens.  Hopefully that didn't sound too cheesey and you aren't rolling your eyes at me right about now...

I've grown to love the start of the year.  It fosters a lot of inspiriation, planning, and list-making.  All I want to do lately is make lists of goals and ideas for the blog, my shop, and my life in general.  I realize I sort of let my focus lag from this space the last month of the year, but I was able to bake some large granola orders and spend a lot of time with family instead.  So, I guess it's all about finding balance within what I consider priorities.  What I'm getting at is that I'll try my darndest to post here once or twice a week, but I won't beat myself up if I don't post as much as I think I should be when things start to pick up.

I started the new year off by making one of my favorite things: CHAI!  I love a good spicy chai so it felt natural to mix up my own concentrate to have on hand. Some of the best chai I've had was from the Bru coffee truck in Austin so I used it as a bit of inspiration.  Making chai is as simple as boiling water and then dumping a bunch of tea and spices in the pot to steep.  Strain them out, add a bit of sweetener, and you've got a jar of liquid gold.  Well, maybe not liquid gold, but certainly something really damn delicious.

This isn't so much a recipe as it is a guideline.  Feel free to increase or decrease the spices depending on how you like your chai.  I like to go a little heavier with the ginger and use a whole vanilla bean in mine, but it's completely up to you.  I think it's about time for a chai break!

Chai Concentrate
Try to use fresh spices or else the flavors won't be as pronounced. You could try subbing in ground version of the whole spices but I don't think they would blend well into the mixture.  Recipe slightly adapted from here. 

4 cups filtered water
3" piece of ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
2-3 large cinnamon sticks
2 star anise
1/4 tsp whole cloves
8 cardamom pods, crushed
1/4 tsp whole pink peppercorns
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 small vanilla bean, split and contents scraped (or, 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract stirred in at the end)
heaped 1/4 cup assam tea, or other black tea of your choice
1/3 cup grade B maple syrup (or other sweetener of choice)

Put the water in a pot over high heat and bring it to a boil.  Once it boils, remove it from the heat and add all of the remaining ingredients except for the maple syrup.  Cover the pot with a lid or a plate and let it steep for 15 to 30 minutes, depending on how strong you want the mixture.  Once the concentrate has steeped, strain out the tea and spices into a clean pitcher or mason jar, then stir in the maple syrup.  Allow to cool before putting in the fridge.  Makes about 4 cups or enough for 8 drinks.  Shake well before using.

You can use the concentrate in a 1:1 ratio in both hot and cold applications.  My favorite way to drink it is to combine equal parts concentrate and coconut milk, then warm them gently on the stove.  If I'm feeling fancy or have the time, I'll froth the tea mixture as it's warming to create a chai latte.