Dragonfly Chai

I spent the weekend in Hood River, OR for a fresh hop beer festival.
This beer festival takes place the last weekend of September every year and my birthday is early October so I pretty much consider it my birthday party every year. This year it was a near monsoon, but the beer was still amazing and we had an awesome time. I love the floral/citrusy sweet hop flavor of fresh hops in beer. Yum.

Anyway, heading back to reality this morning so I stopped at my favorite HR coffee shop for my regular breakfast burrito and spicy chai to go. This chai is so spicy delicious. And not just ‘spicy’ as in full of spice, but burny spicy. And just a tad sweet. Pretty much perfect. The burrito is pretty tasty too. Breakfast of champions.

This a tea company out of Portland that makes a chai concentrate that you can buy at the nicer grocery stores and get lattes at the local coffee shops. I love this chai. So spicy. Minimally sweet. The polar opposite of that awful “Oregon chai” which I totally can’t stand. This is one of my absolute favorite chais. I try and recreate it with my own loose leaf and can never replicate the spicyness. I don’t know how far their distribution goes, but if you ever see it offered, don’t miss the chance!

I picked up a bottle of this while shopping at New Seasons the other day. As Dragonfly Chai is a local company, I’ve tried some of their chai when it has been served to me at restaurants or coffee shops, but, I’m glad to experiment a little with it on my own. For this first cup, I made it according to instructions, using 1 part milk to 2 parts chai concentrate. Next time, I think I’ll substitute some of my coconut milk for the milk to see how it turns out.

This cup is amazingly good. SPICY! Ahchicha! And even though the pepper and and ginger are prominent to make this a spicy chai, the other flavors are tasted as well, and I like that. I don’t tend to go for chai concentrates, as I usually find them to be either too sweet, but I have managed to find a few that I like, and this is one of them. And I like that it’s local too!