Tea Review: Chai Spice by STASH

STASH is one of my trusty, go-to, easy to find, off the shelf brands.

So you can see in the ingredient list that instead of whole cloves in the mix, this blend uses clove oil. So yes, that makes the flavor come out stronger without the astringency that whole clove can add- HOWEVER, it makes cleaning up after a cup of this more like cleaning up after a cup of Earl Grey. What I mean by that is that the oil leaves a residue on your cup/ pot that can be hard to get off if you don’t wash it while fresh AND the oil can make the tea staining worse on your ceramics if you don’t clean it promptly. A water soak won’t fully help as it will just draw the oil to the surface and create a ring/line of the stain.

With the flash here, you can somewhat see the oil on the surface of the tea that makes it more difficult to clean up.

All that having been said, this IS one of my favorite easy to find everyday bagged chai blends. It can take sugar and cream well, but is also quite tasty on its own. I do like the allspice addition which isn’t in all chai blends. If you want even more of an Indian flavor (say if you’re drinking this in the afternoon with food and not as a morning starter) this blend takes the addition of garam masala REALLY well- coconut too. So basically, it’s good on its own but also morphs really well depending on what you add and what you’re in the mood for.

As you can see, it gets nice and dark.