I recently ran across a recipe for Thai tea, a from-scratch version of the iced milk tea. Here in Thailand, that’s often made from a powdered mix, artificially flavored and colored orange. I researched the original ingredients once (here), and that flavored tea may have been made with orange blossoms and crushed tamarind seeds, but the modern version isn’t clearly one thing. Most variations seem to include star anise; beyond that, they seem to vary.
I usually don’t address health claims related to teas, but it was interesting to notice that a compound extracted from star anise is used as the basis for making Tamiflu, per WebMD:
“It [star anise] is a good source of shikimic acid, which is used in the manufacture of oseltamivir (Tamiflu), a flu treatment.”
I can’t imagine the few stars I used making much difference to my health, but it’s quite rare to see a tea or herb component trace so directly to a derived medicine, so it’s interesting in that regard.
That recipe was based on star anise, clove, and cardamom. I have those at home, but the last two only as spice-jar ground versions, not whole fresh spices. I also added a little cinnamon and vanilla bean and used two types of loose black tea. I’ll mention that original recipe here for reference, although not much of what I used was a close match:
The recipe had called for black tea bags; best to just ignore that and anything it might imply about where that source stands related to loose tea. A friend had passed on some CTC Assam not so long ago (which I’ve not yet tried alone, but it smells earthy and smoky), and I used a Wild Boar black from Hatvala, a Vietnamese black tea.
Wild Boar black tea
That Vietnamese black tea is a better version than one would usually blend with, sweet and soft, complex, with some fruit and a little earthiness. I used palm sugar instead of white sugar, which tastes about the same, though less refined. The recipe called for half and half, which would have been nice and creamy, but since I only had whole milk handy I went with that.
For brewing technique I boiled the tea and spices for about three minutes, let it sit ten minutes, and re-boiled it briefly and let it sit another ten minutes. All that is really borrowed from a standard approach for masala chai (with earlier posts on making that here and here), although their instructions were similar, one boil and a thirty-minute steep.
The sweetness level wasn’t right after trying the tea with milk and ice, so I strained the tea and re-added a little water, re-boiling with more palm sugar. After a long steep, the black tea aspect was a bit lighter in that second batch compared to the clove and anise, so I mixed the two infusions.
Review
It’s probably the best Thai iced tea I’ve tried, not that I drink it very often. Of course, it wasn’t orange. That color is from food coloring in commercial versions. The recipe pictures bring out more orange by leaving the black tea and white milk in separate layers, and where it mixes at one point it looks orangish, but the blend just looks like black tea with milk.
It tastes like those ingredients, with a good balance in terms of choices and relative levels. The smokiness of the black tea added a very subtle aspect that combined well with the others. I’ve made a masala chai before with Lapsang Souchong that had a similar effect (mixed with another black tea, to moderate the smoke level).
Adding cinnamon and vanilla did pull it towards masala chai; it was just missing ginger, and maybe black pepper, which is used in most versions. It was quite light on cinnamon by design as it was not really intended as the main aspect. It would still work well without vanilla beans, although those do add lots of complexity, not to mention a cool thick feel to the tea. It would also be fine with twice as much star anise or clove, pulling the flavor in either direction. I do like a little salt in masala chai, which doesn’t show up in every recipe, but that doesn’t seem to make sense for this blend, so I would agree with that recipe version in leaving it out. Any version with sugar and milk, as both Thai tea or masala chai typically include, takes away some concern over astringency and spice flavor balance, since those tend to compensate.
Two of the other relatively fresh versions of Thai tea I’ve tried were from commercial blends, one made in a cappuccino machine (apparently not so uncommon here) and one in a capsule format coffee maker. They were better than they sound. A twenty-second brew process really shouldn’t work well, but apparently, they had tweaked the spice blend and grind to work out, or at least to work out as passable.
From experimenting with a Christmas tea blend version last year (here) I think a bit of dried orange rind might work in this Thai tea. That’s easy to make, using a peeler to strip off a thin outer skin layer from an orange, then drying that in a warm oven for a half hour. Or any number of adjustments might work well, different fruits or spices, which is the nice part of making naturally flavored tea blends, it’s easy to make variations according to preference.
Aside from mixing interests in cooking and tea I really don’t love flavored teas, or drink many, but they’re worth making since I do like the process of experimenting as much as I do the tea itself. It seemed a lot of messing around just to make a flavored iced tea but it would last a few days refrigerated, and it is something different.
John – what an interesting mix of ingredients. I do worry about the amount of sugar used. My conversion table said 150g is = to 1 cup so I suspect that can be reduced some. I would urge people to use a healthy sugar substitute like stevia or agave. People in the U.S. have horrible health consequences from adding too much sugar throughout the day – to just about everything. If one reads any package label, the vast majority of products will contain sugar. It’s hidden in most everything packaged.
When you add a cup of half and half or sweetened condensed milk, this will surely become an infrequent guilty pleasure. For me, tea is the healthiest beverage on the planet. When we add unhealthy things to the tea, it takes the health benefits off the table. I’d love to see a variation that is healthy AND delicious. Coconut milk and stevia would be such a variation. Might be worth a try.
I do love your creativity in finding something unique to enjoy. I’d like to see crushed tamarind seeds as well in this brew, keeping it as close to the original as possible. Thanks John.
Thanks for the feedback. That is too much sugar; I adjusted the recipe and used about a third of that, and made more tea. I probably should have pointed that out, but it was less clear since I used a disc of palm sugar and didn’t even refer to it. Related to decreasing sugar in general it seems easy to just gradually go off it altogether with most teas, based on drinking better tea, and brewing correctly, and shifting expectations. I only add it to masala chai and now to this but I hardly ever make those.
I know this was posted years ago but I just came across it! I love Thai tea but I don’t like the restaurant unhealthy version so I was looking for another option. Thank you for sharing this! I just make a batch and it’s in the fridge for this afternoon. I didn’t add any sweetener to the tea itself because I have fresh made coconut condensed milk that I made with unrefined sugar so it should be plenty flavorful. Thanks again for sharing!