Custom Blend

• Chai tea does not require a specific amount of each ingredient -- adjust the amounts to suit your taste, even omitting ingredients as desired. Common ingredients for chai tea include loose black tea, star anise, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, ginger, black peppercorns, red peppercorns, coriander and fennel. Ingredients can be in whole or ground form, but whole peppercorns, cloves, allspice and cardamom pods, for example, look especially attractive in gift jars. As a general guideline, you might add 1 teaspoon of each ingredient for every 1 cup of loose black tea. The exception to this is for cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods -- use roughly 24 cardamom pods and 2 sticks of cinnamon per 1 cup of black tea. These ratios result in a balanced tea flavor. Increase the amount of each ingredient you wish to feature more heavily.

Perfect Packaging

• Clear jars allow the different ingredients to show. Instead of purchasing new jars, save small jars for gift packaging. Jam jars, for example, are compact in size and tend to have interesting patterns or shapes to make the presentation especially attractive. The Chai tea mix looks perfectly acceptable with the ingredients all mixed together and filled to the top of the jar. Another option is to add each ingredient in layers to show the different colors and textures. Decorate the closed jar with a piece of ribbon tied just below the lid. Include a card with instructions tied onto the ribbon. Chai tea is steeped at a boil, then simmered for up to an hour with milk to achieve the desired strength. List honey as an option for sweetening the drink.