7 Store-Bought Chai, Ranked Worst To Best

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For many years, my go-to coffee order was simple: an iced latte, no sweetener (unless, of course, the coffee house had coffee syrup). Then one day, when I had accidentally received the wrong order, I knew everything had changed. I became an iced chai fanatic. I love baking spices, and I use chai spice specifically as an add-in for everything from banana bread to spicy chocolate chip cookies. But I had never really enjoyed chai as a drink — until my barista's blunder. From that day on, I've been a staunch supporter of the expression, "An iced dirty chai a day keeps the stress at bay" (or something to that effect). 

But if you too are a fan of chai, you know that this drink can be expensive — especially if you're ordering it from your favorite local coffee shop. Although its recipe is simple — black tea and sweetener mixed with spices like cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and star anise — the stuff isn't cheap. If you're looking to curb your beverage spending, you might want to consider grabbing a box or bottle of chai concentrate from your local grocery store. Until this review, I just grabbed the cheapest one I could find, never venturing outside of my comfort zone to try a different brand to see whether it tasted any different. Lucky for you, my dearest reader, I prepared and tasted all of the store-bought chais I could find to see which one was the best tasting and had the most balanced sweetness. 

I was really excited to see that Bhakti chai tea was on the list for this one, not because I've tried it before, but because its label touts "fresh pressed ginger." I don't know how "fresh" something that comes in a box can be, especially when it had to be shipped from an Amazon warehouse because my local grocery store didn't carry it. This box lists a serving size as ½ cup, which is smaller than the others. It comes with 13 grams of sugar per serving. However, if you do the math out, you'd find that it has about the same amount of sugar as other brands like Yogi, Tazo, and Stash. 

Despite my early assumptions about Bhakti, I can assure you that there is indeed fresh ginger in this chai — and a lot of it. When I got a whiff of it on the nose, it almost smelled like I had peeled a whole fresh ginger root; this odor persisted even after I combined the milk. I made the mistake of taking a swig of the concentrate straight from the box and was overwhelmed by its gingery flavor. It was like someone had mixed together the world's strongest ginger beer with a glass of iced tea. This beverage would have been more compelling and versatile if the ginger were dialed back a bit and the tea were allowed to shine. 

The ginger flavor, often a backseat spice in chai, took the wheel and dominated every other spice. I felt like I was drinking a creamy, flat ginger beer and taking a shot of ginger juice as a chaser — not something I want to sip on before 10 a.m. Thus, this brand goes at the end of our ranking.

This concentrate has 21 grams of sugar for each 6-ounce serving, putting it on the lower end of the sweet spectrum. But it wasn't enough to save this Yogi classic organic chai latte from the bottom of the pile.

Overall, I was not impressed with this Yogi chai. When I took a sip of concentrate from the box, I noticed that there was a stronger tea flavor than in some of the other brands, which was refreshing, but I was missing out on the chai spices. On the nose, it's easy to pull out the gentle notes of clove, but there's very little cinnamon, ginger, or other spices to back it up. Unfortunately, this was also the case when I poured it into a glass with skim milk. It almost gave off spiced iced tea vibes, which, while refreshing, is not what I was looking for. I will say, though, that I appreciate not being blinded by and hit over the head with sweetness, making this a refreshing alternative to some of the other chais on this list. 

Yogi played into its strong suit here, as the brand is known for its high-quality selection of teas. With a little tweaking, and perhaps a lower price tag (as this box was $2 more expensive than Oregon Chai), I might consider buying it again — but it's hard to justify this purchase when there are much better chais out there. 

Stash was the only double spice chai concentrate I tried for this ranking, seeing as I couldn't find an original version from the brand. Like the other boxed concentrates I tried, it recommends mixing equal parts milk and concentrate together. One 6-ounce serving has 21 grams of sugar, putting it on par with Yogi's offering. 

I was honestly very hopeful when I saw this glass of chai poured out, as it had a very dark color — almost like an iced tea that has been made with three too many tea bags. It wasn't syrupy in texture, but it was clear that it had taken the "double spice" note seriously. There's an excellent medley of spices on the nose — cinnamon and what smells a whole lot like allspice took over. Since so many of the other brands on this list didn't deliver in terms of spice, I was excited to see what Stash brought to the table. 

If you don't like spice, you won't like this chai. The notes of cinnamon are so strong that it's almost medicinal. It eerily tastes like a Hot Tamales candy, though far less sweet. As expected, it wasn't nearly as sweet as Oregon Chai, and I think the use of spices really helped make the chai seem sweeter than it actually is. This is one you have to dilute it with twice the amount of milk as suggested, as its flavor is very powerful. The heavy-handed spices also eclipse the tea flavor too much for my liking. It would probably be good in a dirty chai or even a hot chocolate, but I can't foresee myself making a latte with it. 

I felt a little cheated when I opened the Amazon box to find this tiny container of Maya chai concentrate. Each bottle contains 6 ounces of syrup (not concentrate), and considering that the serving size is 1 ounce, it seems like you would get about the same amount out of it as you would from one of the boxed chai brands on this list. That 1-ounce serving contains 16 grams of sugar, which is one of the lowest per-serving added sugar contents we've seen thus far. 

The cap of the bottle says that this "super concentrate" must be diluted before drinking. When I poured the recommended amount in a glass with the skim milk, I was surprised to see that the color didn't change all that much. It looked like a very, very weak chocolate milk rather than a chai. The first notes I was able to pick up on the palate were sweetness, along with a little sting from the spice. However, those spice notes really didn't offer anything to round out the flavor of the drink. I could tell that the spices were there, based on the mouthfeel of the drink, but I couldn't really pinpoint what kind of spices they were. The tea flavor was also noticeably absent.

If you were to drink this as a chai latte, you would need to come in and help out with extra spices. Granted, I think this lack of spice is what makes it so approachable for someone who's used to "plain" coffee, so I could see this brand having a bigger appeal to the masses than the lower-ranked brands. 

If you're after a cheap cup of chai, your best bet is going to undoubtedly be Oregon Chai. It was several dollars cheaper than some of the more premium chais on this list and comes in a variety of forms. I opted for the original boxed concentrate, but you can also find spiced, sugar-free, slightly sweet, and flavored varieties as well as powdered mixes and "super concentrates" (which are not any stronger than the regular ones — they just come in a larger size, which might be the more affordable option if you're a daily drinker). 

The most important thing to note about Oregon Chai is that it is very sweet. It contains both organic cane sugar and organic honey, and a mere ¾ cup serving packs in 31 grams of sugar — which is more than a standard (1.5-ounce) Hershey's chocolate bar. While some of the chais on this list offer a more covert and subtle hint of sweetness, Oregon Chai's drink is unapologetically sweet. If you're after something with a heavier-hitting spice note or a more prominent tea flavor, you're better off looking somewhere else. As with Maya, I think that this lack of hard-hitting flavor could appeal to the masses. 

The main reason why I ranked Oregon Chai above Maya is because it had slightly more discernible spice notes, along with a better underlying milky tea flavor. It's a good gateway into chai, but I think that if you drink it too often, you'll forget that there are better versions out there.

DaVinci Gourmet's classic chai looks more like a coffee syrup than a chai, as it comes in a tall and slender plastic bottle. It's one of two syrups that I tried for this ranking, and unlike almost all of the other chais on this ranking, it doesn't explicitly give you a recommendation for how much to add to your drink. The serving size is 2 tablespoons, which has 19 grams of sugar in it — so that's what I added to my skim milk in this ranking. 

I didn't expect to like DaVinci Gourmet's syrup as much as I did, but I really took to it well. When I cracked the seal and took a whiff, my senses were brought back to that same medicinal flavor as in the Stash boxed chai concentrate. But the flavor on the palate was not nearly as overwhelming as Stash, nor some of the other brands on this list. The spiciness was very even keeled, and I appreciated that there was a balance between more powerful spices like cinnamon and allspice and the subtle notes of ginger peppered throughout the drink. Nothing really stood out on the flavor spectrum, and I appreciated that, especially after trying so many wholly unbalanced chais for this ranking. I finally stumbled upon one that was not too sweet and not too spicy. 

The concentrate format comes with benefits and drawbacks. You could add this syrup to a frosting, turn it into a dessert sauce, or even drizzle it on ice cream, which can't be said for many of the others on this list. However, I wished that its tea flavor was a little more prominent because it reads more as a syrup than a tea. 

If you've ordered a chai at Starbucks before, chances are you've tasted Tazo's chai. Some sources allege that the coffee giant uses a much more concentrated form of this brand — and based on my experience ordering chai at Starbucks, this is something I can at least anecdotally confirm. Tazo's concentrate is very spicy and has an almost savory edge, which sets it apart from some of the other concentrates on this list. Like Oregon Chai, it comes in several varieties, including low-sugar and heavily spiced boxes. Its original chai latte concentrate has slightly less sugar – 24 grams of sugar per ¾-cup serving – than Oregon Chai. 

I tried the Tazo classic chai latte last for this ranking because I had an inkling it would do quite well. And it would undoubtedly be my favorite on this list. It was the only store-bought chai I sampled that was able to balance high-quality tea flavor, subtle sweetness, and spice. As I sipped, I could pick up on those spicy notes, like black pepper, intertwined with sweet honey and an overall floral profile. It's one of those drinks that makes you sit back and sip slowly so that you can try to appreciate every component on its own as well as its overall flavor. Though it has more nuance than the lower-ranked, simpler chais on this list (like Oregon Chai and Yogi), I don't think it's too complex or flavorful to turn off a chai newbie. It's pleasant to drink and a carton worth adding to your grocery cart. 

Chai can be prepared hot or cold, but since I prefer it iced, that's how I sipped it for this ranking. Normally, I would taste all of the chais straight from the bottle or box, seeing as I wanted to get a basic understanding of each one's flavor. But because some of these were very concentrated, I opted to instead mix them with the suggested amount of skim milk before tasting. I chilled both the concentrates and the milk ahead of time so I wouldn't have to add ice and risk diluting the drink. 

The main thing I considered for this ranking was flavor and overall sweetness. Chai is supposed to be sweet, but sweetness shouldn't be the primary flavor. Rather, the spices and the black tea flavor should carry the beverage; the sweetness should merely be there as a supplement. Another important factor I considered in this ranking was overall value. None of these concentrates were cheap per se, so I ranked those with a better value above those that weren't tasty enough to justify their purchase price.