This recipe for chai spice syrup can be used in coffee, latte, tea, and cocktails. It’s easy to make and it’s dairy-free, so it’s vegan and fine for people with dairy allergies. I use it to make my daily DIY chai tea latte, and it’s a nice flavor year-round, not just in the fall.
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What’s different about this recipe.
I’ve messed around with a few recipes that I found online for chai spice syrup because they all had something that I didn’t like about them. This is the version that I came up with that’s less sweet and more spicy, so it doesn’t taste like liquid candy.
If you want your syrup to be sweeter, just add more sugar, up to a true 1:1 sugar and water simple syrup recipe. (Read this article about simple syrup for the basics on that.)
Supplies you’ll need.
To make this syrup you’ll need some basic supplies:
- Saucepan
- Rubber spatula
- Measuring cup
- Measuring spoon
- A fine-mesh strainer
- A bottle to keep the finished syrup in
Ingredients.
This is a very easy recipe, and the ingredients are easy to find, no specialty food shopping needed!
- 3 cups water
- 1 cup granulated sugar or brown sugar (add more if you want it to be sweeter)
- 1 1/2 Tbsp ground ginger
- 1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
- 2 tsp ground allspice
- 1 1/2 tsp ground cloves
- 1 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
- 1 1/2 tsp ground black papper
- 1 tsp ground nutmeg
One I was done cooking and straining this amount of water and sugar it ended up being a little more than 2 cups of syrup.
How to make the syrup.
This is a variation on a basic simple syrup, which is usually a 1:1 combination of water and sugar. For this variation I used less sugar in the syrup so that it would be less sweet overall. I use both brown sugar or white granulated sugar depending on what I have on hand, either will work.
Add the sugar and the other ingredients to the water and stir over high heat until you get the mixture to a boil. Don’t stop stirring it since you want to prevent any burning from the spice sediment on the bottom of the pan.
When it comes to a boil, keep stirring it and let it boil for about ten seconds, then remove it from the heat. Let it cool off in the pan.
When it’s cooled, pour the syrup into a storage bottle. You can either strain it when you do this, or pour it into the bottle without straining it, then strain it when you put it in your drink later. I find it easier to strain it when I put it in the storage container since that means you won’t have to do it every time you use the syrup.
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When to strain the syrup.
You probably want to strain the syrup, or you might get what I call “spice sludge” in your drink. The good thing is that you can stir it up and drink the solids with your drink, if you don’t mind doing that, since it’s all fine to eat. I strain mine after it cools down and before it goes into the storage bottle.
If you don’t want to deal with the solids, you can strain the syrup into a glass measuring cup, then pour it into the storage bottle after you remove a lot of the solids. That makes it easier to pour into your drinks without getting any of the spice solids in your cup.
If you leave everything in the storage bottle, the spices that are still in it can add some extra flavor to the syrup as it sits, but you’ll probably want to strain the syrup when you put it into your drink. It will also take up more room in the storage bottle, so it will look like you have more syrup than you do.
How much syrup to use.
For this chai syrup, I use about 3 Tbsp in a 16-ounce cup of tea latte. You can add more or less depending on how strong a flavor you want. The more that you add, the sweeter your drink will be, so keep that in mind. Since this has black pepper in it, a lot of it will give you a very spicy flavor, so start with a couple of Tablespoons and add more if you want a stronger flavor.
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