Matcha, properly

Matcha is powdered green tea, which means you are not brewing an infusion and discarding leaves — you are drinking the whole leaf in suspension. Everything that follows comes from that one fact.

Choosing the powder

Ceremonial grade is made from the youngest first-harvest leaves, stone-ground slowly. It is sweet, thick and meant to be drunk with water alone.

Culinary grade is later harvest, more astringent, and designed to survive milk and sugar. It is not inferior — it is a different tool. Using ceremonial matcha in a latte wastes what you paid for.

Look for: a stated harvest date, a named region (Uji, Nishio, Yame, Kagoshima), and a vivid, almost electric green. Dull olive powder is oxidised and will taste flat and bitter no matter what you do.

Store it sealed, cold and dark. Matcha degrades in weeks once opened, not months.

Water

Water temperature is the single biggest lever.

• 70–80 °C for ceremonial grade. Boiling water scalds the amino acids that carry the sweetness and pulls out harsh catechins.
• Boil, then rest the water three to four minutes, or pour it between two cups twice.
• Soft, low-mineral water. Hard water flattens matcha into something chalky.

Method

1. Sieve 2 g (about one heaped chashaku scoop, or a teaspoon) into a warmed bowl. Matcha clumps in the tin and a clump will never whisk out. This step is not optional.
2. Add a splash of the hot water — 20 ml or so — and work it into a smooth paste against the side of the bowl.
3. Add the rest, 60–70 ml for usucha (thin tea).
4. Whisk with a chasen in a brisk W or M motion from the wrist, not a circular stir. Ten to fifteen seconds. You are aerating, not mixing.
5. Finish by lifting the whisk slowly through the centre to break the largest bubbles. A fine, even foam should sit on the surface.

Drink it within a minute or two. Matcha separates, and the suspension is the point.

Koicha, if you want to understand the tea

Thick tea uses roughly double the powder to half the water — 4 g to 30 ml — and is kneaded rather than whisked, into something like warm paint. It is intense and slightly alarming the first time. It is also the most honest test of a powder's quality: there is nowhere for a bad one to hide.

Common faults

What you taste	Usually because
Bitter, drying	Water too hot, or too much powder
Thin, watery	Under-whisked, or too much water
Gritty	Not sieved
Flat, hay-like	Old or badly stored powder

What the ritual is for

The sieving, the warmed bowl, the wrist motion — none of it is superstition, and none of it is mystical. Each step removes a specific defect. What the sequence also does is take four unhurried minutes out of a day, which is arguably the more useful ingredient.