Tag Archives: chai

This Tea Machine Makes The Classic Indian Chai Easier To Prepare

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Chai, a beloved staple in Indian households, holds a special place in the hearts of many. It’s more than just a beverage; it’s a symbol of hospitality, warmth, and tradition. A group of three Indian friends living in London, who happened to be accounting and finance experts, recognized the significance of chai in their lives and sought to create a product that would make the preparation of this beloved drink easier and more convenient for working professionals. The result is the Dostea Tea Machine, a groundbreaking innovation that combines technology with tradition to deliver an authentic and hassle-free chai experience. Why not have tea machines just like those for coffee?

Designers: Arun KumarM, Vyasateja Rao, Anil Ramesh (Analogy Design)

Crafting a traditional chai can be a laborious endeavor, often involving the use of various utensils and resulting in a messy process. The Dostea Tea Machine, designed with the UK market in mind, aims to address these challenges. With a simple press of a button, it provides a fresh, home-brewed cup of chai, eliminating the usual hassle and mess associated with the traditional method.

Dostea’s collaboration with Analogy was driven by a shared goal: to capture the authentic experience of homemade chai, including its unique taste, aroma, flavor, and vibrant color. To achieve this, they embarked on an extensive exploration process, conducting multiple rounds of experimentation to uncover the ideal design.

Taking inspiration from both UK and Indian design excellence in industrial design, the team conceptualized a unique body and mechanism for the tea machine. The goal was to craft a visually appealing and functionally efficient device that not only brewed exceptional chai but also provided a delightful aesthetic experience for users.

The Dostea Tea Machine features patent-worthy engineering, blending British and Indian design elements seamlessly. Its sleek curves, elegant lines, and carefully selected materials evoke sophistication and cultural fusion. The machine’s form was meticulously crafted to emulate the warmth of a sunrise, infusing every cup of tea with a touch of magic and the promise of a new day.

The Dostea Tea Machine has reached its prototype stage, undergoing intensive testing to ensure ideal brewing conditions for perfect flavor extraction. Externally, it boasts a user-friendly design, sleek appearance, and strategically placed controls for ease of use. The machine also includes thoughtful accessories such as a removable kettle and milk frother to enhance the homemade chai experience. This prototype embodies the careful balance of art and science in chai brewing, demonstrating the commitment of the Dostea and Analogy teams to delivering an unmatched chai experience worldwide.

The Dostea Tea Machine prioritizes a simple and convenient user experience. From the product’s shape and form to the interface design, it aims to facilitate the creation of that perfect cup of chai, customized to each user’s liking. The intuitive interface empowers users to enjoy their chai just the way they prefer, without the fuss and mess associated with traditional methods.

The Dostea Tea Machine is more than just a kitchen appliance; it’s a testament to the fusion of tradition and technology and an embodiment of the love for chai that transcends borders. For busy professionals who cherish a quick cup of authentic chai, this innovative product is set to revolutionize their daily routines, offering an authentic chai experience without the usual hassles. With its elegant design and engineering, the Dostea Tea Machine ensures that the essence and emotion of a handmade cup of chai remain intact while making chai preparation as simple as the press of a button.

The post This Tea Machine Makes The Classic Indian Chai Easier To Prepare first appeared on Yanko Design.

This tiny tea café fits in a 1.5 sq. ft. fold-out box on the back of a Vespa

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Ask any Indian what their country runs on and the answer will inevitably come, “Chai”. Introduced to the country by the British and the Portuguese, Chai (or tea) is as much of a legacy to India as the New York Pizza Slice or the Chicago Deep Dish is to America. We’ve taken the drink and co-opted it, introducing our rich culture and complex flavors and spices to what’s otherwise a simple beverage of tea leaves, water, milk, and sugar. Today, chai can be found everywhere – At tiny roadside stalls in the city or on highways, and even in the up-market urban Chai cafés that are the “tea-quivalent” of Starbucks. However, possibly the most iconic form of Chai is found on the roads, sold by people on push-carts or even out of canteens on the back of scooters. The CHAIGAADI builds on that culture, modernizing it and turning it into even more of an icon.

ChaiGaadi is the world’s tiniest tea stall ever made. At just 1.5 sq. ft, the foldable tea stall fits right on the back of a Vespa, allowing the tea vendor to easily set up shop anywhere and sell tea along with select confectionery and snacks. Everything fits right into a 1.5 sq. ft. box that’s mounted on the back of a Vespa. Designed to work like a food truck, traveling from location to location (and often parking outside large offices in the evenings to businessmen can get their ‘chai break’), the ChaiGaadi can be set up anywhere in minutes. The box opens out into an elaborate setup comprising a copper tea boiler, a cup-warming tray fitted with signature ‘cutting chai’ drinking glasses, a tray for confectionery like buns and tea-cakes, and a fold-out counter for serving your wares and collecting cash. Once consumed, used tea glasses can even be docked in a special tray on the side, along with a small compartment for food waste.

The copper construction on the tea boiler is a bit of creative fusion from the designer, Arun Prabhu. Inspired by the copper glasses used by Turkish baristas to brew their coffee, the ChaiGaadi’s copper boiler relies on the metal’s conductivity while hinting at that cultural inspiration from the Middle East. Vents on the top of the boiler serve two purposes. Not only do they help keep the chai-glasses above warm (the vendor or ‘chaiwallah could pre-pour 10-15 glasses to quickly serve hot to customers), but they even occasionally let out steam, spreading the familiar whiff of strong milky tea in the air.

“We spent months prototyping, itching to find the right balance between usability and the skeleton of the structure”, says Arun Prabhu, founder of cross-disciplinary design and research firm The BILLBOARDS® Collective, and the designer of the ChaiGaadi. Touted as the world’s tiniest tea café, the ChaiGaadi was designed for Hyderabad-based cafe chain, Chai Kahaani, and is currently going through testing and trials as it prepares for an eventual nationwide rollout.

Designer: Arun Prabhu NG

The Bariseur 2.0 wakes you up each morning with a fresh cup of coffee and a charged phone

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Aside from having a puppy lick my face, the Bariseur 2.0 gives me everything I need to begin my day the right way!

The Bariseur really made waves when the first edition debuted back in 2016. A great design experience always aims at being a multisensory one. We love motorbikes not just because they get us from A to B, they’re a thrill. Whether it’s the wind in your hair, the purr of the motor, or just the way the motorbike looks, it’s the overall multisensory experience that makes riding a bike so goddamn amazing. I’d say that the Bariseur does the same thing with waking up. Nobody really likes being jolted awake by a neurotic noise-making box, right? Bariseur’s ability to cross over into the multisensory realm makes waking up an absolute treat, because not only does it wake you up with sound, it tantalizes your nostrils with the smell of fresh coffee, getting you out of bed with something to look forward to, and probably a sunnier disposition too.

It’s 2020, the world is practically on fire, but the Bariseur 2.0 does a pretty good job of making mornings a little more pleasurable than they would have been. In its second edition, the beverage-brewing alarm clock comes with an updated design featuring a better brewing system using a one-of-a-kind immersion brewer that works equally well with tea or coffee. Rather than brewing your drink right into the cup, the immersion brewer keeps your beverage contained in a chamber, allowing you to pour yourself a cuppa whenever you need it. The smell, however, wafts out pretty effortlessly, allowing you to wake up to the aroma of coffee beans or aromatic tea. The Bariseur 2.0 even features a redesigned shower-head and smart induction heater that allows water to be scattered across your coffee grounds or tea leaves evenly, and at a precise temperature of 94° C – ideal for brewing.

Along with its subtle-but-effective improvements, the Bariseur even comes with a mini-fridge to keep a small glass of milk refrigerated for you to pour into your coffee or tea, and if you want to use the apparatus without the alarm feature, the immersion brewer is detachable, so you can brew multiple cups in a day. The Bariseur 2.0 even features an added wireless charging mat that helps replenish your phone, giving you just the sheer joy of beginning your day with a fresh hot cup of chai/coffee and a fresh 100% charged smartphone. It’s the little pleasures, really!

Designer: Joy Resolve (Joshua Renouf)

Meet Chime, the ‘Nespresso-for-Chai’ that lets you instantly brew tea with the milk of your choice

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Even for the fact that it’s literally the second-most popular beverage in the world after water, tea (or Chai as hipsters and Indians call it) is quite a hassle to make. It requires boiling, steeping, straining, and even one of those steps going slightly wrong can result in a cup that just doesn’t taste the same. It’s sort of a testament to how amazing tea is that people still go through these lengths to have their cup full of its goodness.

For people who don’t really go through the ritual of making their own tea, chai-lattes are often easily found at most baristas, but anyone will attest that a quick-grab version of the beverage is average at best… and relatively expensive. This provided Gaurav Chawla with the perfect opportunity to develop a machine that performed the tea-brewing ritual on behalf of its user, and was as simple to operate as a Nespresso… but for chai.

Meet Chime. Tea-drinking is a slow, elaborate, thoroughly enjoyed process, but tea-brewing often isn’t. Chime simplifies how you brew your tea by allowing you to simply load a tea-pod (or cap, as Chime likes to call it) into the machine, selecting your size, strength and milk ratio and letting the machine do the rest of the work. The brewer extracts the unique blend of tea-leaves and fresh spices from within the cap, steeps it in water for the right time at the right temperature, and then pours it into a carafe below, filled with the boiling milk of your choice. Once done, all you do is clean the strainer by throwing the leaf-residue into compost, and taking the pod/cap out of the Chime’s inlet and recycling it.

Chime’s design ‘boils down’ to its single-button interface that makes it incredibly easy to brew tea without worrying about over-boiling, under-boiling, over-steeping or under-steeping. The machine cleanly ejects the contents of the pods out into its top boiler, where the tea brews in hot water for 3 to 5 minutes based on the setting. At the bottom is Chime’s induction heater and frother that prepares your milk as your tea boils.

You can use any milk you choose, opting for anything from full-fat milk to plant-based alternatives. The milk gets automatically heated to the right temperature and creamy consistency, and when your chai is ready, all you need to do is pour the tea-brew into your milk and savor your perfectly brewed cup!

Chime’s tea-pod system utilizes the highest quality tea-leaves from plantations in Darjeeling and Assam in north-east India, and spices from Kerala, India’s southern spice hub. Each chai-pod is nitrogen-flushed to ensure the tea-leaves and spices remain fresh for long periods of time while inside the pod because there’s really no room for compromise when it comes to your daily dose of chai!

My only personal pain-point would be the use of plastic pods, something that’s proven to be a problem for the environment in the past. Chime says they use single-layer PET plastic in their pods that are known for being both food-grade and easy-to-recycle, but replacing the pod system for something akin to a tea-bag would be pretty easy for the company to do in the long-run. Here’s to a future where enjoying your daily cup of tea is fast, sustainable, incredibly tasty, and rewarding!

Designers: Gaurav Chawla & Samip Bhavsar

Click Here to Buy Now: $199 $399 (50% off). Hurry, only 12 left!

Chime: Fresh, Authentic Chai in 3 Minutes

The only device in the world designed to brew authentic chai from real tea leaves at the push of a button without compromising ingredients or taste.

Chime combines the traditional, hand-crafted process of making chai with their passion for product design and technology. They made chai preparation made easy and quick and with the Chime smart app, you can customize, store and share your very own chai recipes.

Just 3 Minutes to Brew and 20 Seconds to Clean

Chime’s unique brewing chamber carefully extracts tea and spices and simmers them in milk to create the harmony of aromas only found in authentic, homemade chai.

How It Works

Step 1: Add Chai Cap and Choice of Milk
Step 2: Choose Size, Strength, Milk Ratio and Frothiness
Step 3: Press Go

Pour and Enjoy

Count on Chime for a fully customizable cup of chai, tailored to your liking in the comfort of your home or office.

Details

Origins are everything, which is why the team has selectively sourced the tea from the best tea gardens of upper Assam and Darjeeling. 10 Chime Caps come in each box, with two caps each of Assam, Cardamom, Ginger, Masala and Cardamom-Ginger. The team has used single layer food-grade PET in our Chime Caps for recyclability and to ensure freshness. The Chime process extracts ingredients, leaving no waste or residue in the container. No added steps need to be taken to recycle the cap.

Use the app to brew your perfect cup of tea.

Click Here to Buy Now: $199 $399 (50% off). Hurry, only 12 left!

You think you know how to Chai?

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For a massive percentage of Indians, chai (what we call tea) is just an absolute necessity. Some people are coffee people, me personally, I like my Assam tea with the tea masala and some ginger. Driven by flavor and intensity, we usually prepare our tea by constant boiling of the milk with the tea leaves (as opposed to the brewing of it) to extract every ounce of flavor in it. Our tea is also governed by what we put into it apart from the milk water and sugar. Cardamom, Ginger, Tea Masala, and sometimes even Tulsi (Indian Basil) among others, find their way into our ‘chai’. The Chai set isn’t for Indians though. But it aims at bringing the Indian way of tea consumption to a broader audience. The tea set has everything you’ll ever need to make tea just the way you want it. Even the smallest details all the way to a mortar-pestle and a recipe book can be found in this tea set along with the the tea infusing electric kettle and of course, the drinking cups. To make this set even more comprehensive, the Chai kit comes along with its own selection of tea leaves from the world’s finest.

This one’s literally the Holy Grail for tea drinkers!

Designer: Richard Price

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Perfect Portable Tea

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Mychai is a personal, portable tea maker that helps you get your fix anytime, anywhere! Simply open and load the device with your favorite leaves and select one of four tea categories displayed on top. Then, drop it in 1-2 cups of water and it will automatically start heating to the ideal brewing temperature before dispensing the leaves. When brewing is complete, it scoops up the wet leaves for disposal, leaving you with the perfect cup each time!

Designer: Uttara Ghodke

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(Perfect Portable Tea was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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