this matcha life

The Life

Ninety seconds, most mornings

There is a version of matcha that requires a tearoom, a kimono and thirty years of study. This is not that one. This is the bowl you make standing at the kitchen counter.

A matcha latte on a wooden table

How to make a bowl

2 g powder. 60 ml water. 70°C. That is the whole recipe.

  1. Soak the whisk. Tines in warm water, one minute. Dry bamboo snaps.
  2. Sift the powder. Through a fine strainer into the bowl. This is the step everyone skips, and it is exactly why their tea is gritty.
  3. Add the water. 60 ml at about 70°C — hot, not boiling. Boiling water scorches the leaf and turns it bitter.
  4. Whisk in a W. From the wrist, fast, tines just off the bottom. Fifteen to twenty seconds. Not a circle, and never press.
  5. Drink it now. Lift the whisk out through the middle. Foam collapses; matcha does not wait.

Bitter? Three culprits, in order: water too hot, too much powder, or old matcha. It is almost never the whisking.

The iced latte, in three minutes

Whisk 2 g of matcha with 40 ml of cool water until smooth. Fill a glass with ice, pour in 150 ml of milk, then pour the matcha over the back of a spoon so it sits in a layer on top. Stir before drinking, or do not, and enjoy it looking like the photograph for eleven seconds.

And no — a latte is not cheating. Sweetness has been served alongside matcha in Japan for centuries; the wagashi exists precisely because good tea has an edge that sugar answers. Anyone who tells you that milk disqualifies you has skipped that part of the history.

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