I love to start my day with a chai tea, iced in the summer and hot in the winter. It’s cheaper to make your own Instant Pot chai tea concentrate than it is to buy just one serving at your local coffee shop.
Plus you can make yours with black tea, green tea, decaf tea, or roobios. Oh yeah, you get to decide if you sweeten your concentrate or not and what you sweeten it with!
You Can Make Drinks In Your Electric Pressure Cooker?
Yeah you can! In addition to this chai you can make a regular iced tea, infused fruit and herb spa water, homemade almond milk, and even syrups for coffee and cocktails.
Why Make Homemade Chai in Your Electric Pressure Cooker?
Instant Pot Chai Tea Concentrate is cheap, easy, and you can make some in about 20 minutes start to finish. The time includes the Instant Pot coming up to pressure and cooking for 10 minutes.
Why not just make it on your stovetop? Well, in the summer it heats your house up to cook on the stove, so that’s enough reason for me. And in the winter you still get to have hands off time while your tea is brewing.
If you are looking for a way to make iced tea that doesn’t heat up your house, you have to try The Best Summer Instant Pot Iced Tea.
Customize Your Own Chai Blend
If that’s not enough reasons for you to try making chai at home, then think about all the little tweaks you can make.
You can use decaf black tea, green tea, or even leave the tea out altogether if you want.
I’ve found the exact balance of spices I like and you can adjust my recipe to fit your tastes.
Add more cinnamon sticks or fresh ginger, leave out the peppercorns, or even add in some star anise.
What is Chai Tea Concentrate?
Chai is the word tea, so the way we Americans call it is actually tea tea. It’s actually known as masala chai, which is a spiced tea with milk.
Concentrate just means that we’re making the tea double-strength. This works to our advantage in two ways. First, it takes up less room in your refrigerator and second it’s just right once you add nondairy milk to it.
How Do You Make a Chai Tea Latte?
It’s so easy! Basically, you just dilute the Instant Pot Chai Tea Concentrate with your favorite nondairy milk.
You can make it iced or heat the mixture up to make a hot chai latte.
Doesn’t Cooking my Tea Bags Make the Tea Bitter?
Boiling tea bags is a no-no for sure. But when you cook on high pressure in the Instant Pot even though the temperature gets high, it actually doesn’t boil.
Of course if you are super picky about your tea, you can add your tea bags after you release the pressure and let them steep for 5 minutes.
Instant Pot Chai Recipe Variations
- Go plain and just brew a tea with cardamom only or just make a ginger tea
- Add in one or more of these: nutmeg, star anise, or mace
- Double the fresh ginger for a spicier brew
- Make it unsweet, lightly sweet, or as sweet as you want
- You can sweeten with date syrup, maple syrup, agave nectar, stevia, or your favorite sweetener
More Instant Pot Drink Recipes to Try
- Hibiscus Tea
- Instant Pot Lemonade
- Instant Pot Mango Mocktail
The Best Instant Pot Chai Tea Concentrate
Equipment
- Fine Mesh Stainless Steel Strainer Set of 3 with Silicone Handles – Large, Medium & Small Size – Ideal to Strain Pasta Noodles, Quinoa, Cocktails, Tea, Sift & Sieve Flour & Powdered Sugar – Free EBook
Ingredients
- 6 cups water
- 1/2 inch knob fresh ginger chopped
- 4 whole cinnamon sticks
- 6 whole cloves
- 6 whole peppercorns
- 10 whole allspice berries
- 8 cardamom pods
- 10 regular teabags black, green, or roobios or 5 pitcher sized tea bags
- sweetener of your choice to taste – optional
Instructions
- Add the water, ginger, spices, and teabags with tags removed to your Instant Pot.
- Cook on high pressure for 5 minutes.
- Let the pressure release naturally for 10 minutes, then carefully manually release the pressure. Remove tea bags and add sweetener to taste, if using.
- I like to leave the spices in until it cools to infuse more. Then strain and refrigerate.
- I add half concentrate and half nondairy milk to make my iced or hot chai. You can adjust that to suit your taste.
Amy S. says
Thanks for the recipe! Just curious, when you choose to add sweetener, what do you use and how much do you use?
Kathy Hester says
You add the sweetener after you remove the tea bags, while the tea it’s still hot. I use about 1/4 cup sugar, agave nectar, or maple syrup, but I encourage you to sweeten to taste.
Danielle says
How long will this last 🙂
Kathy Hester says
Up to 10 days in the fridge.
Jenn says
I wonder if I could sweeten this with a bit of sweetened condensed milk?
Kathy Hester says
That sounds more like Thai iced tea which is awesome with sweetened condensed coconut milk, but you can sweeten it with anything you want.
Debra says
I have a silly question – to make hot chai from the concentrate, do you just pop the mug of 1/2 concentrate and 1/2 milk into the microwave or do you reheat it on the stove?
Debra says
Silly question, for hot chai, do you mix milk and concentrate then pop in the microwave or do you reheat on the stove?
Kathy Hester says
Yes. But you can use as little or as much nondairy milk as you like. I usually do 2/3 tea and 1/3 milk.
Diane Neary says
Hi there! Nice to see you. You have such good ideas for us. I love that dragon 😉
Pam Stark says
I’ve made this and the smell is wonderful and spicy, but the taste is very bland, almost no taste at all. What could be the reason?
Kathy Hester says
It could have to do with the spices, but an easy fix is to double or triple the spices next time or to even add to the concentrate you have and cook again.
Petra says
The spices could be older. Over time, spices lose their intensity.
janet says
I have a big bag of cardamom pods that I’d like to use for this. I find that cinnamon sticks, cloves, and allspice berries are rather expensive. Do you think that cardamom + ginger would be good? Any other spice to accompany cardamom? Also, turmeric is such a healthy spice….would the powder (or grated root) be good? Thank you!
Kathy Hester says
You could certainly make a cardamom ginger tea and even add in some turmeric if you want. I would use fresh turmeric if you can get it.
Melanie says
I doubled the spices added to the water based on a previous review. The resulting chai is delish and perfect for fall days here in Missouri. I will definitely make this again tweaking the spices to achieve my own favorite chai. Thank you!
susan says
How much loose tea instead of using tea bags?
Kathy Hester says
About 2 teaspoons of tea per teabag called for.
Anne says
Love this idea! We both love chai tea but hate buying the sugary ones from the store. Trying this recipe next week and sharing it on our blog tomorrow! Thank you for contributing on the Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop!
Kathy Hester says
I’m so glad you like it and thank you so much for the share!
Britany says
If I don’t have a pressure cooker,
Could I do this on the stove top or in a crock pot?
Kathy Hester says
Here’s the slow cooker recipe on my other site: https://healthyslowcooking.com/homemade-chai-concentrate/
Ann says
Hi Kathy, I have been using this recipe for a year or so now, and I love it. Thanks so much! I wanted to share with you some of the things I do with it. First, I tweak the spice balance to my own preference, and I do not use any sweetener in the concentrate itself, so that I can have more control later over the sweetness of the different things I’ll make with it. Not only do I have delicious Chai lattes, but I use this recipe to flavor:
1) Chai Latte Popcicles—made with oat milk yogurt, almond or soy milk, and monk fruit sweetener. These are pretty lo-cal, and so refreshing!
2) Chai Overnight Oats—for these I use a bit of maple syrup or brown rice syrup to sweeten. Really yummy for breakfast.
3) Chai Grape Kombucha—I brew my own kombucha and add a tbsp. of the concentrate and 2 tbsp crushed grapes (green or red) to the 2nd ferment. It’s my new favorite flavor! No sweetener necessary, the grapes have enough natural sugar to do the job.
I’m sure I will find other things to flavor with the Chai concentrate in the future. Just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the recipe!