Bags, loose leaf, concentrate or mix: which chai is actually best

A disclosure before anything else: we sell loose-leaf masala chai. You should weigh what follows accordingly. What we can do is be straight about where each format genuinely wins, including where ours does not.

Tea bags

Good for: speed, portability, the office.

Bagged chai is usually "dust and fannings" — the smallest grades of tea — with ground spice. Small particles extract fast, which is exactly what you want in a mug at a desk and exactly what you do not want in a pan.

The real limitation is not quality, it is method. A bag steeped in water for three minutes cannot make masala chai, because whole spices need sustained boiling. You can boil bags in milk and water and get something respectable — it is how a lot of people start.

Loose leaf

Good for: flavor, control, the actual method.

Whole or broken leaf with whole spices. It needs a pan, a strainer and eight minutes, and it rewards all three. Whole spices release across the boil rather than all at once, which is where the depth comes from.

Where it is the wrong answer: if you have three minutes in the morning and no patience for a strainer, loose leaf will sit in your cupboard. That is not a failure of the tea. Be honest with yourself about your mornings before you buy any of it.

Cost: ours is 150 g for $24.99 delivered, which at 5 g a cup is 30 cups — about 83¢.

Concentrate

Good for: weekday speed without giving up a real decoction.

A liquid concentrate is genuinely brewed, so unlike a powder there is real extraction behind it. Pour and add milk.

The thing to check is sweetened or unsweetened. Most supermarket concentrate is sweetened, often heavily, and once sugar is in the bottle you have lost the variable that matters most. An unsweetened concentrate with real spice is a good product. A sweetened one is a syrup with better manners.

Cost: more per cup than loose leaf when you buy it; considerably less if you make it yourself.

Powder mixes

Good for: cafes that need identical drinks at volume. Camping.

Spray-dried tea and spice, usually with sugar and milk solids already in. It has already been brewed and dried, so there is nothing left to extract — you are rehydrating a finished drink.

This is the format we would steer you away from if flavor is the point. It is also, in fairness, the most foolproof.

How to judge any of them

Four things, in order:

1. Is the tea named? "Black tea" tells you nothing. "Assam" tells you it can survive milk and a boil.
2. Are the spices whole or ground? Look at the bag. Whole cardamom pods and cinnamon bark are visible; ground spice is a brown powder.
3. Is sugar in the ingredients? If yes, sweetness has been decided for you.
4. What does it cost per cup? Not per package. Divide the weight by 5 g and include shipping.

The honest recommendation

If you want the drink at its best and you will actually stand at a stove: loose leaf. If you want it most mornings but not all: loose leaf for weekends, unsweetened concentrate for weekdays. If you want it at a desk in three minutes: buy good bags and stop feeling bad about it.

We would rather you drink chai you enjoy in a format that fits your life than buy a tube from us that goes stale.