Chime is like a Keurig for home-brewed chai
Fresh chai tea can be a bit of a pain to make -- the whole multi-brewing process can take even seasoned chai veterans more than 10 minutes to complete. And if you aren't watching it the whole time, you could end up with over-cooked dairy and need to start all over.
To make chai-lovers' lives easier, a new smartphone-connected chai-brewing device called Chime cuts the process down to three minutes, and you don't have to keep an eye on it. There are many home-brew options available for coffee, but this is among the first available specifically for chai.
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While the chai-obsessed demographic may not be huge in the U.S., in places like India where chai is more common than coffee, Chime especially shows a lot of promise.
Mashable got an early look at the device, which is available for pre-order now starting at $249, and we were impressed with how good the chai tasted in just a few minutes (and little effort). After making a selection of a large or small cup, throwing in a chai pod and putting in your desired amount of milk, Chime takes it from there.
How it works
The Chime has three major parts that stick up like little towers: the control console, the water reservoir and the brewers. The top tea brewer consists of a sieve and a slot to put in Chime's Keurig-like pods of chai tea, which is all encased in glass so you can watch the tea brew.
"There's nothing hidden"
"It's not like a black box where you put a cap in and something goes on inside and you get your beverage," founder Gaurav Chawla told Mashable.
"We wanted to show its real process. There's nothing hidden."
The tea itself ships from India and has a variety of flavors, and the pods are recyclable so you don't have to worry about contributing to the world's garbage problem.
When the processes is done, the tea drips down into the removable mug where your milk brewed, and from there you can pour it right into your mug.
After the chai is brewed, Chime has self-cleaning rinse cycles for the tea brewer, in which it will shoot water around the chamber for a quick and easy clean. Every 60 brewing cycles, it will tell you to do a deep clean via your smartphone, which is a longer rinse cycle that you can add dish detergent to. The sieve in the tea brewing chamber is removable, and you can compost all the tea ingredients.
Because the entire process of brewing chai is pretty complex -- coupled with the cleanup process -- it took the four-person engineering and design team three years to get to the current design, co-founder Samip Bhavsar said.
Although it does require the use of its tea pods (at $1 a pop, it's not cheap), you can add in whatever kind of extra flavors or teas you want along with it. The control console also allows you to select what size chai you want, a small six-ounce cup or a large 12-ounce cup.
Staying true to the chai process
A lot of people in the U.S. only know chai in the form of Starbucks chai lattes. But Chawla emphasized that isn't authentic chai.
"The people who know chai know Starbucks chai isn't real chai," he said.
"The people who know chai know Starbucks chai isn't real chai," he said. "It's basically pre-mixed tea liqueur which has a lot of spices and sugar and not enough tea, and they just steam the milk and mix it."
Meanwhile, other shops and home-brewers boil the tea and the milk together, a process Bhavsar said will extract too much flavor from the tea and make it very bitter. To get a true chai taste, those must be done separately.
While my chai palette may not be as refined as some experts, I can confirm the cup I had was delicious and different than the chai lattes I've had at Starbucks -- if anything, the flavors felt more balanced.
Considering home-brewers typically don't let you customize the water-to-milk ratio, which people can be pretty picky about -- imagine if you didn't get to decide how much cream or milk was in your coffee? -- this is a solid step forward to getting a real cup of chai brewed in the comforts of your own home.
The Chime is expected to ship in March 2017.
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