Sticky chai is a perfect tea to enjoy when you want the real chai experience, but don't have the time to make it from a scratch. Honey Spice Sticky Chai from Tea Drop not only smells great, but tastes delicious too.
What is sticky chai?
Sticky chai is a pre-made chai blend with black tea, spices and a “sticky” ingredient such as honey, agave or maple syrup. Because of the sticky ingredient, spices and tea leaves stick together and have a unique appearance. Sticky chai is usually served with milk, rather than water. It's the best blend for making a homemade chai or chai latte when you don't want to make it from a scratch. However, to make a cup of sticky chai, you'll need to use a lot more tea leaves than for making a cup or regular tea.
What's in Honey Spice Sticky Chai?
This sticky chai is blended with Australian red gum honey, ginger, black tea, cardamom, clove, cinnamon, star anise, nutmeg, and black pepper. This tea looks really interesting, with all the whole spices and leaves covered in honey. It has a beautiful, intense, and really inviting scent.
If you ever made chai from a scratch, you probably noticed that you'd typically use very little spices. However, when making a cup of sticky chai, the amount of spices per cup is very high. That's because spices for chai are usually crushed and simmered together with tea leaves until they release lots of flavour. When steeping whole spices for a couple of minutes, you'd need to use more to achieve richer flavour.
What does Honey Spice Sticky Chai taste like?
This chai is best prepared as latte. Steep 15 grams of sticky chai in 50 to 70 ml of water for 3-5 minutes and top up with steamed and frothed milk. Steam the milk, because the tea will have a nicer texture, and feel more authentic. Although milk for a traditional chai is not steamed, it still has a beautiful texture and tiny bubbles because of the pulling method. There's no need to add any sweeteners as it's already sweet enough.
It brews into a lightly coloured tea with a beautiful scent. It's less deep and complex than traditional chai, but the flavour is amazing. A slightly lighter flavour is a result of steeping, rather than simmering. Black tea flavour is lighter than in an ordinary cup of chai tea blend, but it's perfectly sweet and spiced. Cloves are dominant, there are light notes of cinnamon and cardamom, and then a light spicy touch from ginger and pepper and softness from nutmeg. There's a lot of flavour coming from such a light-coloured tea.
Honey Spice Sticky Chai is a beautiful blend. The only downside would be you'd need to use a lot of tea leaves. However, it's the closest you'll get to the traditional chai without making it from a scratch.
This tea tastes good when made with hot water only too. It's sweet and well-rounded. If you like to add sugar or honey to tea, you will like it prepared with water only. However, for the full experience, drink it will milk. It's great for tea drinkers that prefer lighter teas, but very aromatic at the same time. It's great for daily sipping when you want a cup of chai latte in a matter of minutes, and it tastes closer to traditional chai than most regular chai blends.
Tea Recap
Water or milk? Milk.
Day or night? Day.
Hot or iced? Hot.
Sweetened or pure? Pure.
Caffeine? Yes.
What's the price? Starting from 9.00 AUD
Where to buy? Get it from Tea Drop Australia.