Preparation

Every tea in our range is made to be prepared.

This guide is for people who intend to keep drinking matcha — not once, but for many mornings.

Your first bowl will not be your best. Neither will your tenth. What matters is what you notice between them.

There is no correct way to drink this. Usucha, koicha, a latte, over ice — each is a different way of meeting the same tea, and none of them is a compromise. What follows is how to do each one well.

Tools

Three tools shape most bowls of matcha.

Chawan — the tea bowl. Wide enough to whisk in, deep enough to hold water without splashing. Ceramic with an unglazed base holds heat well.

Chasen — the whisk, carved from a single length of bamboo. A new chasen is stiff. It softens with use.

Chashaku — the small scoop, also carved from bamboo. A level scoop holds roughly 1 g; a generous one closer to 2 g. Two scoops make a bowl.

You can make matcha without these. A wide cup, a small metal whisk, and a measuring spoon will work. But the traditional tools last longer and treat the tea better.

On weighing

You do not need a scale. Most kitchen scales cannot register a gram of matcha anyway — the powder is too light, and by the time the display moves you have far too much in the bowl.

Two chashaku scoops, or one level teaspoon, is close enough to 2 g. Sift it, and if the powder forms a small heap on the sieve rather than a mound, you are in the right range.

If you would rather measure, a coffee or jeweller's scale reading to 0.1 g will do it. A standard kitchen scale will not. But tea has been made in Japan for four centuries without either.

Water

Filtered tap water is what most Japanese makers use. What kills matcha is heat.

For hot preparations, boil the water first, then wait about a minute before pouring. Boiling water directly on matcha burns the leaf and turns the taste bitter.

Within that range, temperature is a dial. Catechins and caffeine — the astringent, bitter side of the leaf — move into water faster the hotter it is. Theanine, which reads as umami and sweetness, is less fussy about temperature. Cooler water gives you a rounder bowl; hotter water gives you more edge.

The effect is smaller with matcha than with leaf tea. Sencha is an infusion — you steep the leaf and discard it, so what ends up in the cup is decided almost entirely by what the water pulls out. Matcha is a suspension: the whole leaf is in the bowl, and you drink it. Temperature still shifts the balance, but it does not control it the way it does with sencha.

Specific temperatures are given for each preparation below.

Usucha — Thin Tea

Warm the chawan first with hot water; discard.

Sift about 2 g (two chashaku scoops, or one level teaspoon) of matcha into the warm chawan. Sifting is not optional — undissolved clumps sink, so the first sips come out weak and the last ones bitter.

Add 60 ml of water at 80 °C (175 °F).

Whisk in an M-shape, from the wrist, not the elbow. The motion is short and quick — like brushing paint. When a fine, dense foam covers the surface and stops moving, stop.

Drink in three sips.

Our CEREMONIAL GRADE is made for this. STANDARD works well too. STARTER is unshaded, so it drinks brisker in a bowl than a shaded tea would — it can be made as usucha, but it is happier in milk.

Koicha — Thick Tea

Koicha uses about 4 g of matcha to 30–40 ml of water. The result is thicker than usucha — the consistency of loose honey.

Because there is more powder, the motion changes. Slow, smooth, kneading rather than beating. There is no foam; there should not be.

Water at 80–85 °C (175–185 °F).

Koicha needs a first-flush, well-shaded tea. In our range, that is the CEREMONIAL GRADE alone. Bitter or grassy notes that would hide in a thinner bowl are exposed here.

It is also strong on an empty stomach. If matcha sits heavily with you, eat something first, or stay with usucha.

Latte

Use more than you think. Two grams disappears into milk. Most people who make matcha lattes daily settle somewhere between 3 and 4.5 g for a standard cup — enough that you are drinking matcha rather than milk with a colour in it.

Sift 3–4 g of matcha into a cup.

Add 30 ml of water at 70–80 °C (160–175 °F) and whisk until smooth.

Pour in 150–200 ml of steamed milk of your choice, and stir it in with a spoon rather than the chasen. Oat and cow's milk both work well. Avoid milks that carry a strong flavour of their own — heavily sweetened almond, for example.

STARTER and STANDARD were chosen with milk in mind. STARTER is unshaded and brisk, which is exactly what holds its shape against milk and sweetener; STANDARD is lightly shaded and rounder. The CEREMONIAL GRADE is not wasted here either — it carries more depth through the milk — but its finer notes are the first thing milk covers, so many people keep it for the bowl.

If you sweeten, a small amount goes a long way. Honey, maple, a little condensed milk. Some add a pinch of salt, which flattens the astringency without adding sweetness.

Cold Matcha

For a quick cold bowl:

Add 2–3 g of matcha to a shaker with 200 ml of cold water and ice. Shake for fifteen seconds. Pour.

For a cleaner cold brew:

Add 2–3 g of matcha to 300 ml of cold water in a bottle. Refrigerate overnight. Shake before drinking.

Cold brew produces less foam but a smoother, less bitter drink. Cold water moves fewer catechins out of the powder, so more of the astringency stays where it is. It suits summer.

Usucha poured over ice sits between the two — the tea whisked hot, then cooled, keeps its aroma in a way cold brew does not.

Care

Chasen. Rinse in warm water immediately after use. No soap. Store on a chasen-naoshi (a small ceramic stand) if you have one; otherwise upside down on a clean cloth.

A new chasen sheds small pieces of bamboo over the first weeks. Rinse them away and continue. The whisk is opening.

Use it for matcha and water only. Milk and syrup soak into the bamboo and do not come out — whisk the tea first, then add milk and stir with a spoon.

A chasen is a consumable. Tines break, and bamboo eventually holds what has passed through it. A good one from Takayama, in Nara, lasts a year or two with daily use; a cheap one, considerably less. When it starts to smell, it is finished. This is expected, not a failure of care.

Chawan. Rinse with warm water. Dry with a clean cloth. Store away from direct sunlight.

Chashaku. Wipe with a dry cloth. Do not wash.

The tea itself. Once opened, oxidation is running.

For our STARTER, STANDARD, and Refill pouches: store in an airtight container and refrigerate. Consume within a month for the best flavour. Frozen matcha keeps longer — return the container to room temperature before opening, so no condensation forms on the powder.

For the CEREMONIAL GRADE tin: keep it at room temperature, in a cool, dry place away from light. Do not refrigerate or freeze the tin itself; moisture and temperature change can damage the handcrafted finish. When the tin is empty, refill it from a Refill pouch kept in the cold. See Caring for the tin for full instructions.

Brief warmth in transit does no harm. Matcha travels a long way to reach most of our customers, and an hour in a warm bag on the way home from the post office is not what spoils it. Sustained heat, light and open air are.

A Note on Practice

Your first bowl will not be your best. There will be a lump you did not catch, a temperature that was slightly off, a wrist that moved too slow.

The technique settles over weeks. What is worth attention is not the technique itself but what it teaches you to notice — the difference between two days' water, the difference between a bowl made in hurry and one made in stillness.

Draw your Kekkai.