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This Thai Tea recipe, known in Thailand as cha yen, is the sweet, orange, arctic-cold beverage you need to survive the hot summers in Chiang Mai. But throw your passport in the gosh darned trash, because you can make this tea in just a few minutes in your own kitchen!
Recipe tips tailored to what matters most to you:
Tea, sugar and coconut milk are all gluten-free. If you go the oat milk route instead, grab one that's labeled gluten-free.
Brew the sweetened base ahead, it keeps 3 days in the fridge without the milk. Pour over ice and top with milk whenever you want one.
½ cup of loose-leaf Ceylon makes 6 servings, way cheaper than ordering Thai tea out. Unsweetened soy or oat milk works as well as coconut.
This recipe already uses less sugar than restaurant Thai tea. Add the sweetener gradually while it's hot and stop when it tastes right to you.
Can't find Ceylon? A strong, high-quality black tea blend will still be yummy, just less like the classic. Any unsweetened plant milk tops it.
Choose a high-quality Ceylon tea for your Thai tea mix. Opt for loose-leaf tea if possible, as it is easier to get an accurate measurement than with tea bags.
When simmering and steeping the tea, use a timer and be accurate about how long you let the leaves stay in the hot water.
Make sure the Thai tea cools to at least room temperature before serving. Rapidly cooling the tea helps lock in the flavors and prevents dilution when poured over ice.
Oodles more tips, step-by-step recipe photos, info on weird ingredients, and FAQs are all still here. I just tucked 'em out of the way so you can start cooking sooner.
Lemme guess, your favorite Thai restaurant makes this cloyingly sweet, and you are never really 100% sure if it's truly vegan, right? You're in for a treat because, with only a few ingredients, you are gonna have the perfect dining companion for your vegan drunken noodles, tom yum fried rice, and tom kha soup!
This requires so little equipment to make that you can legit make it in a tree house with a flame thrower, but honestly, that's probably not the safest way to do things. So grab a couple of your prettiest glasses, and let's get this divine nectar made right quick in, like a normal kitchen, maybe not in a tree.
It works so much better for me to steep but not simmer for the 4 minutes as otherwise it gets too bitter. The recipe works great other than that! Thank you for the recipe. 🙂
Jump to:
- Recipe tips tailored to what matters most to you:
- 🥰Why you'll love this Thai tea recipe
- 🫖 Ingredients for this Thai tea recipe
- 🤯Variations
- 📖 How to make Thai tea
- 💡What to serve with coconut milk Thai iced tea
- 👉Top tips
- 🤷♀️ Recipe FAQs
- ✌️My faves to serve with this Thai tea recipe:
- Cha Yen (Thai Iced Tea Recipe)
🥰Why you'll love this Thai tea recipe
✊ Vegan AF and GF: Like all of my vegan Thai recipes, this delightful little bevro' is not just delicious; it's made without any dairy or condensed milk. It also happens to be one of my completely gluten-free recipes too!
🌈 Infusion Harmony: The secret behind the perfect blend lies in the carefully timed simmering and steeping of Thai tea leaves, allowing their essence to infuse the water without becoming bitter from the release of tannins. Follow the simple instructions here, and you'll have a dialed-in taste of Thailand in every sip!
Tested and Approved Worldwide: Like all of my plant-based recipes, this Thai tea recipe isn't just something I made up in a dream and threw on the internet. After testing the tweaking the heck out of it, I shared it with a massive team of recipe testers I work with from all over the world. This great recipe works reliably, and people love it so much they are all gonna try to marry it!
🌎More Sustainable: Street vendors in Thailand often serve this refreshing drink in a plastic bag, so people can easily take it on the go. You will probably opt to serve it in tall glasses, which are prettier and don't trash the planet.
I'm on my knees staring weirdly into your eyes, asking you in a soothing voice to be my taste-testing partner in crime. Sign up for the recipe testing crew and get early access to new recipes before they're published.
🫖 Ingredients for this Thai tea recipe
Ceylon Tea
This distinctive blend from Sri Lanka is what just about everyone in Thailand uses for making Thai iced tea. Ceylon tea, which you can get loose at your local Asian market, appears bright orange due to the oxidation process during production. The exposure to air causes chemical changes, resulting in a distinctive color.
To accentuate the bright orange color, many brands make Thai tea mixes with orange food coloring, or with darker tea and yellow food coloring. To make this drink more naturally, I recommend just sticking to natural loose leaves that do not contain artificial additives. FD&C Yellow 5, get the heck outta here!
Coconut Milk
Coconut milk adds a luscious, creamy texture to our Vegan Thai Tea. It is one of the best fatty vegan milks you can find, which is why I use it in everything from sweets like Vietnamese Banh Flan and Indonesian Kolak Biji Salak to savory dishes like Filipino Ginataang Kalabasa, and the Vegan Tikka masala that I make with homemade seitan. Its subtle sweetness complements the boldness of Ceylon tea, and the fattiness helps to really carry its flavors. Unsweetened soy, almond milk or oat milk are great alternatives.
Sweetener
Sweeten your tea with traditional cane sugar, earthy coconut sugar, or the unique sweetness of palm sugar, which is pure magic for making Asian desserts like klepon and bubur cha cha with. Adjust the sweetness to your liking, and feel free to experiment with other plant-based sweeteners like agave or maple syrup. I think I hit the nail on the head with the amount in the recipe, but you do you, as they say.
*See the recipe card at the bottom of the page for exact quantities, nutritional info, and detailed cooking directions.
🤯Variations
🌺 Thai Tea with Condensed Coconut or Oat Milk:
For a classic Thai twist, try the traditional Thai tea served with sweetened condensed oat or coconut milk. Because the milk is sweetened in this version, I'd recommend cutting the amount of sweetener you add to the tea in half. You can always add more if it's not sweet enough for you.
🧋 Thai Boba Tea:
To make Thai tea with boba pearls, brew a strong batch of Thai tea, let it cool, and then pour it over ice. Add prepared boba pearls, and any other fun stuff, stir gently, and enjoy the delightful combination of flavors and textures.
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📖 How to make Thai tea
Nail this on your first shot by following these step-by-step instructions with helpful tips. Or you can follow along with the easy-to-print recipe card towards the bottom of this page.
Step One
Sim simmer, who's got the Teas to my bimmer?
In a saucepan, mix ½ cup of Thai tea mix with 4 cups of water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
Step Two
Steep with Lid:
Once boiling, cover the pot and turn off the heat. Allow the tea to steep for exactly 4 minutes.
Step Three
It's Straining Men:
Pour the tea mixture through a strainer into a pitcher. Discard the tea leaves.
Step Four
Sweeten While Hot:
While still hot, infuse your preferred sweetener, stirring until fully dissolved. Adjust sweetness to your liking.
Step Five
Chill and Serve:
Allow the brewed tea to cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until chilled. When serving, pour over ice-filled glasses, leaving space at the top. If you are adding boba tea pearls (cooked, large tapioca pearls), add them to the glass first. I like the ratio of filling the glass about ¾ with tea, and then adding milk to the top of the glass.
If you can, use crushed ice which helps to make the tea absolutely frigid as can be, dilutes the sweet tea just the right amount, and also helps make pretty patterns when the swirling milk is added to the tea.
Step Six
Top with Unsweetened Milk:
Top off each glass with your chosen unsweetened milk, and serve with Thai food, or even just a really good vegan blueberry muffin or something like that.
💡What to serve with coconut milk Thai iced tea
This refreshing vegan Thai Tea recipe goes amazingly well with a spread of Vietnamese, Indonesian, or Thai food.
Begin with crispy rice dumplings or the light and vibrant Banh Trang Cuon (Vegan Vietnamese Goi Cuon Spring Rolls).
For a full meal to build around your Thai iced tea, whip up Vietnamese stir-fried noodles. Khao pad (Thai fried rice) drizzled with nam prik pao, or nam jim jaew makes for a super easy Thai meal to enjoy with this cold tea.
If you legit just want to serve this tea for tea-time, and want some nice sweet things to go along with it, Bubur sumsum from Malaysia, pandan scented Che Khoai Mon (Taro rice pudding), and martabak are just a few of the lovely Asian sweets you can choose from.
👉Top tips
- Tea Quality Matters: Choose a high-quality Ceylon tea for your Thai tea mix. The flavor foundation of your Thai tea hinges on the tea leaves. Opt for loose-leaf tea if possible, as it is easier to get an accurate measurement than with tea bags, and provides a more robust and authentic taste.
- Accurate Simmering and Steeping: When simmering and steeping the tea, use a timer and be accurate about how long you let the leaves stay in the hot water. I have tried it at a bunch of different steep times, and have blind taste tested all of the various outcomes already, so you don't have to. The four minutes might seem like a brief interlude, but it's the magic window that transforms the mix into perfect Thai milk tea without the bitter notes of the tannins.
- Use Metal: Because of the strong color of Thai tea, you will stain your tea sock if that's what you use to strain it. Opt for a fine wire mesh strainer.
- The Chilling Effect: Ensure the Thai tea cools to at least room temperature before serving. If possible, do this in the refrigerator or freezer. Rapidly cooling the tea helps lock in the flavors and prevents dilution when poured over ice.
🤷♀️ Recipe FAQs
Store the sweetened Thai tea base without milk or ice in a sealed container in the refrigerator for up to three days. Make sure it's well-chilled before serving with ice and the milk of your choice.
Ceylon tea is traditional, and it's essential for getting that slightly citrusy aroma and distinct orange color that Thai tea is known for. You can experiment with other high-quality strong black tea blends, or even green tea, and it will probably be yummy, but will not be much like traditional Thai tea.
Absolutely! Add your preferred sweetener gradually while the tea is hot, tasting along the way. You can even mess with using coconut sugar, palm sugar, maple syrup or agave nectar if granulated white sugar ain't your thing. If you prefer to use a less processed cane sugar, a great option is evaporated cane juice.
My recipe uses less sugar than Thai tea served in restaurants, because, to me, the normal level of sweetness is kinda awful. But make it how YOU like it!
Thai tea, popular in both Thailand and the United States, has some subtle differences between the traditional Thai style and the American adaptation. In Thailand, Thai tea is often made using strongly brewed black tea, mixed with sweetened condensed milk, and sometimes flavored with spices like star anise and cardamom pods. The resulting drink has a robust flavor with a sweet and creamy profile.
On the other hand, the American Thai restaurants tend to make it sweeter and more vibrant in color. They often use pre-made Thai tea mixes, which include tea leaves, sometimes food coloring, and various flavorings. This mix is typically combined with sugar and served over ice, sometimes with whole milk, half and half, or non-dairy milk.
✌️My faves to serve with this Thai tea recipe:
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Cha Yen (Thai Iced Tea Recipe)
Equipment
- Pitcher
Ingredients
- ½ cup Ceylon tea loose leaf
- 4 cups water
- ⅔ cup sugar coconut sugar, or palm sugar (or to taste)
- 1 cup coconut milk unsweetened soy milk, or unsweetened oat milk
Instructions
- In a saucepan, combine ½ cup of Thai tea mix with 4 cups of water. You can optionally add a cardamom pod and a small piece of star anise here. Bring to a boil.
- As soon as the pot starts to boil, place a lid on it and let the tea simmer for 4 minutes.
- Strain the tea mixture into a pitcher through a fine mesh strainer, discarding the tea leaves.
- While the tea is still hot, add your preferred sweetener and stir until completely dissolved. Feel free to adjust the sweetness to your taste.
- Let the Thai tea cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until chilled. When ready to serve, fill glasses with ice, pour the chilled Thai tea over the ice, leaving some space at the top.
- Top each glass with your preferred unsweetened milk.
Notes
- Prepare boba pearls according to the package instructions. Typically, this involves boiling the pearls and then allowing them to soak in a sweet syrup.
- Once your Thai tea is chilled and ready to serve, scoop a desired amount of prepared boba pearls into each glass. A few pieces of grass jelly are nice here, too.
- Carefully pour the chilled Thai tea over the boba-filled glasses, leaving some space at the top.
- Top each glass with 1 cup of your preferred unsweetened milk - coconut milk, soy milk, or oat milk. Stir gently to combine, allowing the boba to mix with the Thai tea.
- Serve with a large straw, big enough for the boba pearls to go up.
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Hiroshi says
It works so much better for me to steep but not simmer for the 4 minutes as otherwise it gets too bitter. The recipe works great other than that! Thank you for the recipe. 🙂