Chai Collins – A Drink for Diwali

Diwali was on Wednesday, and my wife and I went to a party with friends to celebrate. I don’t think I’d ever even heard of Diwali before college, and Indian food isn’t really my wheelhouse (I make pasta…), but I wanted to bring something.

I found a drink that I thought had the right flavors and got to work. Mary made some Indian-spiced stuffed mushrooms that were amazing, so she won the potluck from our house, but the drink turned out well too.

Context

Diwali is a Hindu festival of lights with a rich and complicated history that I’m not going to butcher here. Likely a combination of a lot of other folk festivals that occurred after harvest, it’s a 5-day festival that rivals Christmas in gift purchases and Independence Day for fireworks. A celebration will be filled with beautiful clothes, tons of candles, lots of great food, and an impossible amount of small sweets and pastries.

I wanted to make a drink that would work well with Indian spices, be easy to batch, and be easy to serve and drink. There was also a request to have it be based on anything but whiskey, which was what my mind initially went to, so I created my own spicy base instead.

I based my drink on a recipe I found from Where You Wander.

Making the Drink

The first order of business is to infuse some vodka with chai. I used some standard chai tea bags, but I would recommend using fresh full spices if you can. The goal is to get the oils from cardamom, cinnamon, clove, ginger, and black tea into the spirit. It doesn’t take long – you only need to steep the spices for about 2 hours before you’re ready to strain. 

Once you have your vodka infused, get some sugar, lemon juice, and bitters. Add everything to a shaker with ice, get the drink cold and diluted, and strain it out to serve. Top it with some soda to give it a little pop. You can also batch without the soda, which I did, and then top with soda when you do serve.

I like the agave here because it gives a little more character than a simple syrup, but any liquid sugar will work here. I used Peychaud’s bitters because I thought the anise notes would compliment the chai spice well, but good aromatic bitters will work.

Tasting Notes

The nose here is all chai spice. The drink starts sweet and a little sour, but the spices come through on the palate. It finishes dry and tanic because of the tea.

It tastes enough like the chai that chai-lovers really enjoyed it, but not so much that the skeptics had to pass of their drink. It’s a good crowd pleaser.

Riffs

The drink is already a variation on a collins, using infused vodka instead of gin and adding in some bitters. You could do the same with basically any infused vodka, and adjust the bitters to pair well with that infusion. 

I think this would be awesome using some good green tea and orange bitters or a fruity herbal tea and black walnut bitters. Vodka infusions are easy to start with, and using tea bags make it even easier.