Dirty Chai Latte: How to Make Spiced Chai With a Shot of Espresso

A dirty chai is a chai latte — black tea brewed with spices and milk, usually sweetened — with a shot of espresso added. To make one from scratch, simmer crushed cardamom, cinnamon and ginger in a little water for five minutes, add a heaped teaspoon of strong black tea for two minutes, then the milk and sugar until it just boils, strain it into a mug and pour in a shot of espresso.

"Dirty" is café slang for the coffee. Everything else is masala chai, the spiced milk tea of India, and the better the chai, the better the drink.

The recipe

1. Simmer the spices. Put the water, lightly crushed cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and any cloves or peppercorns in a small pan and simmer for five minutes.
2. Add the tea and simmer for two minutes more.
3. Add the milk and sugar and bring just to the boil, stirring. Take it off the heat as soon as it starts to rise.
4. Strain into a warmed mug.
5. Add the espresso, stir, and spoon a little frothed milk on top if you like.

The method follows the traditional order. Wikipedia describes a common Maharashtrian way of making one cup: half a cup of water and half a cup of milk, sugar, grated ginger and a tea masala of crushed ginger, cardamom, lemongrass, cloves and cinnamon, brought to the boil before a teaspoon of loose black tea goes in.

Why spices first, tea second

The order exists because the ingredients give up their flavour at very different speeds. Whole spices — cinnamon bark, cardamom seeds inside their pods, cloves — are dense and woody, and need several minutes of simmering to release their flavour. Crushing the cardamom pods and slicing the ginger thinly helps.

Black tea is the opposite. A 2024 review of milk-tea chemistry in Foods notes that black tea has a high dissolution rate: its compounds come out quickly. During processing, the tea's catechins are converted into theaflavins, thearubigins and theabrownins, the compounds behind black tea's characteristic bitterness and astringency. Boil it as long as the spices and those come out in force. Giving the spices a head start lets you extract them fully without stewing the tea.

The most common base, according to Wikipedia's account of the drink, is Assam tea, with Darjeeling and Nilgiri also widely used in India. A strong, malty Assam stands up best to milk, spice and espresso.

Why the milk goes in the pot

In a chai, the milk is part of the brew. The same 2024 review explains what it does: milk proteins bind tea polyphenols through hydrogen bonding, and the binding of β-casein to catechins in particular reduces the astringency of tea, giving milk tea its smoother taste. In a chai, with tea and milk simmered together, that smoothing happens in the pot.

Traditionally in India, chai is made with water buffalo milk. The USDA lists Indian buffalo milk at 6.9 g of fat per 100 g, against 3.25 g for whole cow's milk, so whole milk is the closest common substitute.

Adding the espresso

The espresso goes in last, once the chai is strained. A single shot gives a chai that tastes of spice with coffee in the background; a double makes the coffee an equal partner. Both work, but the shot should be good: the espresso dial-in guide explains how to get there. Without a machine, 40–60 ml of strong moka pot coffee does the same job.

How much caffeine

Tea and coffee both contain caffeine, so a dirty chai is stronger than it tastes. Using USDA figures:

• Black tea: 20 mg per 100 g brewed, so a cup's worth of chai made with about a teaspoon of tea carries roughly 45 mg.
• Espresso: 212 mg per 100 g, so a single 30 g shot adds about 64 mg and a 36 g double about 76 mg.

That puts a homemade dirty chai at about 110–120 mg, a little more than a 240 ml mug of brewed coffee at about 95 mg. Chai simmered with more tea, or a large café size with extra shots, can carry considerably more. The European Food Safety Authority considers single doses up to 200 mg, and up to 400 mg spread through the day, safe for healthy adults other than pregnant women. The caffeine guide has more comparisons.

With 150 ml of whole milk at the USDA's 61 kcal per 100 g and two teaspoons of sugar, the homemade version comes to about 125 kcal. Café chai concentrates are often heavily sweetened, so a café dirty chai can carry a good deal more sugar.

Concentrate, iced and café versions

• With chai concentrate. Mix roughly equal parts concentrate and milk, heat or steam it, then add the espresso. Most concentrates are already sweet.
• Café style. Steam the milk separately, as for a latte, and pour it over strained spiced tea made without milk, then add the shot. The texture is lighter and closer to a latte.
• Iced dirty chai. Brew the chai stronger with less milk, chill it, and pour it over ice with cold milk and the espresso. Cold drinks taste less sweet and less aromatic, as the iced latte guide explains, so expect to adjust the sugar.

Where chai came from

Chai is the word for tea in most Indian languages, from the Chinese cha. Tea plants grew wild in Assam for centuries, but Indians mostly regarded tea as a medicine until the British began cultivating it there in the 19th century. By 1900, India and Ceylon supplied most of Britain's tea, yet tea drinking within India stayed low until the Indian Tea Association's promotional campaigns in the early 20th century, which encouraged tea breaks at factories, mines and mills and supported tea sellers along the railways.

The association promoted tea with a little milk and sugar. Independent vendors, the chaiwalas, had other ideas: they added spices and much more milk and sugar, using less tea per cup — which the association initially disapproved of. Their version won.

In the United States, Starbucks introduced a chai tea latte in 1998, and chai drinks made from syrups and concentrates spread through coffee shops. Adding a shot of espresso to one is what is now commonly called a dirty chai. For other drinks that mix coffee into something else, see the types of coffee drinks guide.