Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Batches’

With much fanfare, Rishi Tea has reintroduced its Chai concentrate – it is now available with new packaging, a high profile association with Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots program, and a change in the recipe. The ingredients listed are filtered water, black tea, cinnamon, cardamon, black pepper, cloves, ginger, dried cane syrup, blackstrap molasses, vanilla extract and lemon juice – all organic, and the tea is also organic as well as fair trade certified. The concentrate is described by Rishi as “a microbrewed blend of energizing spices and rich vanilla infused with a full-bodied single origin forest grown black tea. Unlike other companies that use soluble tea and flavor extracts, we use traditional Indian spices that are slow brewed for more than 20 hours and ethically sourced, wild-grown black tea leaves from an ancient tea tree forest.”

Straight out of the box the concentrate was dark and slightly murky, but redeemed itself with the rich aroma of traditional Indian masala spices which according to Rishi are slowly brewed in small batches before the addition of the tea leaves – a process which takes almost a full day.

Mixed with an equal amount of milk and heated to the point of steaming, the result was a mild, pleasantly flavored latte although I did find that the molasses smell and taste was quite noticeable and took away from the “chai-ness” of it. I appreciated that the concentrate wasn’t overly sweet and the taste of the black tea wasn’t lost in the mix.

Formerly only available in recyclable glass quart bottles, Rishi Masala Chai Tea Concentrate is now packaged in a carton and can be conveniently purchased online and shipped to you. Rishi as a company has a commendable reputation for its green initiatives and it’s nice to know that proceeds from each sale support a good environmental and humanitarian cause through the Jane Goodall Institute.

You can purchase the Masala Chai Tea Concentrate directly from the Rishi Tea website.