There is no best matcha for baking, because it depends on your preference. Some prefer strong bitter taste, some prefer strong Matcha sweetness, some focus more on color etc. Table below list down some of the matcha characteristics for our matcha products.
Recommendation :
Tips for better color : Add some white chocolate into your ingredient will enhance the matcha color.
Tips for stronger flavor : Add more than suggested matcha amount into your ingredient, this will gives you stronger matcha flavor.
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There are many scientific studies prove that Matcha green tea improves skin condition. We will list down some of the studies in this article to show that how Matcha helps. Below are some of the examples how Matcha green tea improves your skin:
If you are looking for good Matcha for skin improvement, please consider purchase from our store. As you will be drinking it as tea, we recommend you try our ceremonial grade Matcha such as Mori Matcha or Samidori Matcha. They are 100% Matcha from processed and packed in Japan.
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Some matcha products in the market added extra ingredients to maintain the green color, therefore you will notice that some matcha will still remain green when baked. But whether if you want these extra ingredients in your matcha, that's something you may want to consider.
We will add more information to this article after we do more experiments in our kitchen. If you are looking for matcha for baking, visit our culinary matcha section.
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Note : "Matcha" in this article means pure Matcha tea without sugar or milk, not Matcha latte or Matcha desserts etc.
Here is how Matcha helps:
If you are interested in drinking Matcha for weight loss, we have some good Matcha for drinking. Visit our store for product details.
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There are many Matcha selling in the market, even from famous brand, are not from Uji but claim to be from Uji. In fact, Matcha from different region has its own unique characteristics, it may or may not suitable for your food application. The best Matcha is the matcha that works well with your recipe, not the most famous Matcha or the highest grade Matcha.
Our Uji Matcha such as Meiko, Midori and Kazumi are purely from Uji region. We work directly with the tea manufacturer to get Tencha only from tea farms in Uji. Currently we supply to hundreds of customers from cafe, restaurants, bakeries, food seller and manufacturers across different region such as Klang Valley, KL , Penang, East Malaysia.
If you are looking for Uji Matcha for your business, please contact us at contact@matcha.my for more information.
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There are 2 different techniques in growing tea tree and produce different type of green tea.
Konacha is powder-like tea made from the specks and tiny tea leaves of Gyokuro or Sencha tea leaves. Konacha is byproduct from processing of Gyokuro or Sencha. Normally low grade Konacha will be used for low cost teabag production, and widely used in Japanese restaurants.
Bancha
After all the younger tea leaves are harvested for Gyokuro and Sencha production. The remaining tea leaves will be used to produce Bancha. Bancha has higher astringency and stronger grassy taste.
Kukicha, Karigane or Boucha
Kukicha, or known as Karigane in Kyoto, also known as Boucha. Kukicha is made from the stems and twigs. Karigane usually means higher grade of Kukicha beause it's made from stems or twigs from Gyokuro or high-grade Sencha.
Kukicha has higher sweetness because the L-Theanine is produced in the stems then spread to the tea leaves. It has a special flavour, different from the tea leaves.
Genmaicha is a blend between Genmai (roasted brown rice) and tea leaves. Low grade Genmaicha use Bancha, while higher grade use Sencha or Gyokuro to blend with Genmai. Genmaicha has a nutty roasted flavour, also a unique aroma of roasted brown rice.
Guricha or Tamaryokucha
Guricha (curly-tea) is a curved shape tea leaves which skip the final kneading process.
Houjicha
Houjicha is Sencha or Bancha being roasted at 200C to produce a smoky flavour. The roasting process also reduce the caffeine. That's why Houjicha has low caffeine which make it suitable as all-time tea drink.
Bouhoujicha
Similar to Houjicha, but it's made from the stems. Bouhoujicha is served as high grade tea because of its unique sweetness from the stem.
Asamushi Sencha
Asamushi Sencha is known as light-steamd Sencha. The steaming process will reduce the astringency of tea leaves, but over steaming will break the tea leaves. Asamushi is a short-steaming tea, which maintain most of the astringency, also maintain good shape of tea leaves.
Sencha is the most popular green tea in Japan. It has refreshing astringency with reasonable good sweetness because it's produced from younger tea leaves.
Fukamushi Sencha
Fukamushi Sencha is known as deep-steamed Sencha. The longer steaming process reduce the astringency of Sencha, but it also breaks the tea leaves, making it looks like low quality tea leaves but actually it's high quality tea.
Similar to Gyokuro, Kabusecha went through the shade-grown process which will increase the sweetness and reduce the astrigency. But Kabusecha is only shade-grown for half of the period compare to Gyokuro. Kabusecha has flavour between Sencha and Gyokuro, for those who wish to have lower refreshing astringency of Sencha, and higher umami, Kabusecha is something you may like.
Gyokuro
20 days before harvest, tea leaves are shade-grown to get highest level of L-Theanine (umami) and low level of astringency (bitterness). Gyokuro is the highest grade tea in Japanese green tea. The highest grade of Gyokuro is produced from hanpicked tea leaves, which is very limited and very good in term of taste, aroma and colour.
Matcha is similar to Gyokuro, but the post processing is different than Gyokuro. Therefore Matcha also has high umami flavour and mellow aroma.
Mecha
Mecha is also known as bud tea. It's made from the bud of tea plants. Mecha has strong flavour and aroma because of the extract of the plant is stored in the bud. For Sencha, the bud contains high Catechins. While for Gyokuro, you can expect high L-Thenine too.
]]>Matcha is high quality powder which produced from grinding Tencha into fine powder. Tencha is grown in similar way as Gyokuro (Highest grade green tea), it has high level of sweetness and lower level of astringency. Therefore real matcha has low level of astringency (bitterness) and high level of Umami (sweetness).
Green tea powder, most of the time is produced from low grade tea leaf such as bancha. Lower grade tea leaves are not grown in shaded farm, therefore it has high astringency (bitterness).
There are many green tea powder in the market are sold as matcha, and many of them are come from China, Korea and Thailand, which sold at very low price. Customers need to be aware of these products.
In Matcha Malaysia, we sell only quality true matcha products from Japan only.
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Plants need energy to grow. Tencha plants are not able to get energy from sunlight because of shade-grown process. Therefore, Tencha can only get energy from the fertilizers.
Because of the strict standard in organic regulation, organic fertilizers are not able to deliver enough energy to produce high level of L-theanine in the tea leaf. As a result, organic matcha has a lighter color and bitter taste as compared to conventional matcha from same grade.
Conventional non-organic matcha uses non-organic fertilizers, but it doesn't mean it's bad or harmful. All fertilizers being used in conventional matcha production are premium natural fertilizers, but they are not certified organic.
All our matcha is produced under very strict regulation and certified safe for consumption in Japan. Both organic and non-organic are safe for consumption.
In Matcha.my, we have organic matcha from different grade
Visit our Organic Matcha section for more info.]]>
Gyokuro is steamed, dried and rolled. Matcha is going through a refining process to remove the stems and veins, then dried to produce Tencha. Tencha is then ground into powder to create matcha.
Both Gyokuro and Matcha has good umami and low astringency. The shade grown process suppress the astringency and increate the L-theanine of the tea leaves. Gyokuro and matcha are similar in several ways, but they are different product.
Sencha, is not shade grown. Therefore, Sencha has higher astringency and lower L-theanine. The astringency of Sencha actually gives it the refreshing flavor. Powder made from Sencha can't be labelled as Matcha, it's only green tea powder but not matcha. Many shops sell green tea powder as matcha, it's important for customer to understand the differences.
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1. I want to make matcha cake / Ice-cream / Jam etc, which is the most suitable matcha ?
There is no absolute answer for this. Normally for making matcha food, we should use culinary or kitchen grade matcha because it has stronger bitter flavor, all of them can be used to make matcha food.
In general Matcha has high matcha fragrance and strong flavor is best for food preparation. our Meiko Uji Matcha has good matcha fragrance and strong flavor, it's good for all kind of food application.
In order to know which kitchen grade matcha is the most suitable, you need to try on your own recipe, every recipe has its best matcha. Besides, it also greatly depend on your personal taste, some prefer more bitterness, while some prefer less bitterness.
2. Which is best matcha ?
Before answering this question, we need to know what is your application.
In general, highest grade Matcha is the best Matcha because it has great color, aroma and taste. But it also low in bitterness which is not ideal for certain application especially food preparation.
Below are general recommendation from us :
3. I want to reduce weight, which matcha is suitable?
All matcha has the benefit of helping in weight loss. For weight loss, we recommend drinking matcha tea without adding sugar, therefore ceremonial grade matcha is suitable for this purpose. If you don't mind the stronger bitter taste of kitchen grade matcha, you can use them for making matcha tea too.
4. I want to add matcha into my protein shake
Similar rule applies here. If your protein shake has strong taste ( chocolate flavor etc), you should pick something with stronger flavor (Sizuoka Matcha or Meiko). If your protein shake has milder flavor (Vanilla etc), pick something with milder flavor (Daily Matcha or Okumidori ).
5. When is the expired date?
Matcha doesn't expired, you can still drink it after years. But matcha has its "best before" date.
Read how to store matcha .
6. Which matcha is good for making mask ?
Because it's not for consumption, therefore the lowest grade is good for making Mask. Our Fuji Matcha has strong flavor which is good for making Mask. Also, Kazumi is certified Halal by Japan Muslim Association.
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You may not have heard of Shizuoka, but most of us should've heard of Mount Fuji. Mount Fuji actually reside in Shizuoka region.
Shizuoka is located in central region of Japan. Shizuoka produce 40% of overall green tea production in Japan. Shizuoka is the number one tea production region in Japan.
Tea production in Japan in Shizuoka dated back to 1241, Japanese monk Shoichi Kokushi introduce tea to Japanese when he brought tea leaf back from China. Shizuoka is an ideal place for tea production because its climate, quality water and easy access to major ports.
Both our Shizuoka Matcha and Fuji Matcha are from Shizuoka region.
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Some of our customers ask about the radiation concern of Japanese matcha. Actually there is nothing to worry about, let us tell you why.
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When you first try preparing your own matcha tea or matcha latte, you may notice that there are some lumps that not able to dissolve in water. Besides, when you leave the matcha tea for sometime, there is still some matcha powder fall to the bottom of the cup no matter how hard you whisked.
This happen to all matcha powder in the world, even for the top grade matcha powder. You are not seeing in some branded matcha latte drinks because either they are not prepared using pure matcha powder (but with sugared-powder) or they've prepared the matcha tea in a separate cup.
Matcha powder doesn't truly 100% dissolve in water like sugar or milk powder does. It's because matcha powder is actually very tiny bit of tea leaf, matcha powder is made from tea leaf ground into powder form. You will always find matcha powder fall to the bottom of the cup if you leave your matcha tea for too long. When you whisk the matcha, you actually create suspension of the tea leaf powder in the water, not dissolving it.
Matcha powder has slight electrostatic energy, making it clump and form lumps. Sifting it will definitely break the lumps.
Here are some tips:
Matcha earns its great name because of the way it's grown, processed, ground and the great taste. Matcha is produced from Tencha green tea, but not all powdered green teas are matcha powder.
Green tea (sencha) powder (left) vs matcha powder (right)
Green Tea Powder
Green tea powder basically is powdered tea that produced from any green tea ground into powder. The price and quality of green tea powder can be very low and not suitable for direct consumption.
Normally green tea powders can be found in the market are sencha powder, it has no umami and taste very bitter, and suitable to be used in cooking and baking only. Many of them are sold as matcha powder with expensive price tag.
Matcha Powder
Matcha powder, must meet certain criterias in order to be labelled as matcha
Matcha powder has umami taste and vibrant green color. The lower grade matcha not only suitable for cooking and baking, it's also suitable for matcha sweet beverage such as matcha latte or matcha smoothies.
Read our purchase guide to know how to pick matcha for your application.
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For most of us, by default we assume matcha = Japanese matcha. But actually there are countries such as China and Taiwan producing matcha too. It's always our mission to find good matcha with lower price for our customers, so we decided to buy some matcha from China and compare with our Matcha.
Matcha actually originate from China, it's being brought to Japan by Zen Buddhist Monk and then became a popular beverage among Japanese. Matcha production and processing methods have been improved for close to 1000 years in Japan in order to create a green and high umami matcha.
In China, somehow matcha is not very popular and then lost favor in China during Tang Dynasty. China started to produce matcha about 20 years ago after matcha become popular worldwide. Its production and processing method still far less mature as compared to Japan. However, in term of green teas, China still has a wonderful and complex history.
Other than the processing method, the soil in China is very different then in Japan, the matcha produced also taste very different.
For fair comparison, we select matcha with similar price range. (About RM37 selling on shopping website in Malaysia).
(We took down the picture as some local sellers raised their concern because they are selling this Matcha).
We compare it with our Organic Shizuoka Matcha because it has the lightest color in our product ranges (Organic matcha has higher price but usually has lighter color due to the natural characteristic of organic matcha).
Below picture shows the color comparison between China matcha with our Organic Shizuoka Matcha.
Matcha on the left is the China Matcha, on the right is our Organic Shizuoka Matcha.
Comparison:
We decide NOT to souce this matcha since it does not meet our standard.
In Matcha.my, we strictly sell high quality matcha from Japan only. We souce our matcha directly from tea farm, therefore our price is very reasonable as compared to other Japanese Matcha shop.
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Matcha is Green Tea Powder, Green Tea Powder is Matcha
Only powder produced from Tencha can be called matcha. Tencha is green tea leaf that grown in shaded-farm 20 days before harvest to produce high natural sweetness and low bitterness tea leaf. It is true that matcha is green tea powder, but not all green tea powders are matcha. Same goes for black tea powder, white tea powder etc. They are all not matcha.
Many shops are selling Sencha powder as matcha, but they can only be called as "Green Tea Powder", beware and beware.
Matcha is bitter
Many tried matcha before and never want to try it again because they found it too bitter. The fact is what they had is low grade or culinary matcha or sencha powder. Good matcha has a natural sweetness and low or none bitterness. The feel of matcha is very smooth and easy to drink.
Strong Matcha Taste = Good Matcha
Most consumers have this misconception that strong matcha taste is high quality matcha. Most famous branded food chain produce matcha food with low quality matcha which has high bitterness. They taste great because a lot of sugar are used to balance the bitterness. That's why they have strong matcha taste and still taste great.
High quality matcha do not require high sugar level to balance the bitterness.
Only Japan Produce Matcha
China and Taiwan produce matcha too, but the highest quality matcha still comes from Japan. Nowadays, due to high demand, many less honest farmers in Japan start to produce matcha from low quality tea leaves to meet market demand, don't always believe in so called "Uji matcha", "Japan Matcha" etc, even Uji has low quality matcha. Always purchase from trusted seller only.
Uji Matcha = Best Matcha
Uji is considered the most popular region in matcha production. However, it does not mean it produce the best matcha, quality of matcha is depending on many other factors rather than just the growing region.
Other regions which produce great matcha are Nishio, Shizuoka, Yame, Kagoshima etc. Uji produce low quality matcha too, but most of the time the price is higher because of the word "Uji".
My Matcha is Low Quality Because it Turn Yellow In Short Time
Matcha is very sensitive to air, light and heat. It start to degrade the time you open your matcha package and the air goes in. Always store your matcha in an air-tight container, dark with room temperature place. If you do not store it properly, even the best matcha in the world will turn yellow in short time.
I Need Bamboo Whisk to Make Good Matcha Tea
Bamboo whisk is just a tool, you can use your own whisk, blender or frother. You can use any way to brew matcha tea as long as you are happy with the final result.
Comment below if you have any question about matcha, we will be more than happy to answer your question.
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The main reason why first flush is better:
During winter, tea buds hibernate for months waiting Spring to come. During this few months, all the nourishment and nutrients are stored inside the tea buds.
There is a saying "Quality stuff takes longer time to produce". First flush tea leaf grows much slower during winter or cold season, therefore it collect all the good stuff from the nature for longer time.
In what way first flush tea is better?
L-theanine is the main source of umami (plant sweetness that define the quality and grade of matcha). First flush matcha has 3x more L-theanine compare to second flush. Third and fourth flush has even much lower L-theanine. Besides, first flush has the highest amount of nutrients.
If you once tasted a very bitter matcha drink or powder, probably you are not drinking first flush matcha tea. Bitterness is not same as matcha flavor, high grade matcha has good matcha taste but low bitterness, that is the taste which you need lowest amount of sugar to balance the bitterness. therefore you get strong matcha taste but in a delicious way.
For both taste and health reason, you should pick only first flush matcha. In fact, only first flush matcha can be considered as true matcha. But in order to meet market demand, many farmers start to produce matcha with second flush, third or even fouth flush.
Why waste money purchase second or third flush, end up you hate the taste and get minimum health benefits ?
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1. Matcha has better energy profile
The caffeine in both matcha and coffee do boost our energy level. However, caffeine in coffee will cause an adrenaline glucose spike that will turn to some uncomfortable event such as jitter, nervous especially for non-frequenct drinkers. Caffeine in matcha, is being released slowly to the body, which will results in increase alertness, increase concentration. There is no spike in adrelanine glucose level, no jitteriness and nervous.
2. Health Benefits.
Coffee has health benefits too. But compare to matcha, there is no comparison here, matcha is much more nutricious compare to coffee. Matcha has many nutrients that coffee does not has, such as L-theanine which help in promoting good mood.
3. Anti-oxidants.
Matcha has much higher anti-oxidants which make matcha much more useful in anti-aging, skincare and other beauty impact.
4. Good matcha tea is easier to prepare
To prepare a good matcha tea (not instant coffee or matcha), you don't need any machine or complicated step. Just simple matcha accessories like described in our matcha tea preparation articles. But for good coffee, you need much more complicated tool or machinery tools.
5. Matcha has no bad breath.
Coffee has bad coffee breath, enough said.
6. Matcha is proven help in weight loss, boost metabolism
Maybe you should slowly replacing your coffee with matcha tea, try 2-3 days per week as starter, we believe you will feel the different. Take a look at our premium daily matcha, it's for everyday matcha tea.
If you love black coffee without sugar, you can try brew sugarless matcha tea with our ceremonial grade matcha.
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Umami is the fifth taste besides sweet, salty, sour and bitter. It's always being described as the mysterious fifth taste because if blends very well with other tastes, and people won't recognize when they taste it, but umami is an important element in making food delicious.
Umami always there, but no word can decribe that until 19th century, Kikunae Ikeda tried to descrie that. Umami taste comes from a type of amino acid that reacts to the receptors in our tongue, causing chemical process that results in umai taste. It can't be produced by mixing any of the other primary tastes (sweet, sour, salt, bitter).
Human Tastes
So, what does umami taste like?
Umami is literally Japanese term which carries the meaning of "pleasant taste", it's not sweet, not sour, not salty nor bitter. It's just a pleasant taste that you can't really describe.
All our matcha has umami taste, ceremony grade matcha has highest umami taste. If you want to taste what is umami, try our highest grade and try to describe that.
Our Imperial Ceremonial Matcha has highest level of umami.
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There are 5 enemies of matcha : Heat, Humidity, Air, Light, and Smell. Store your matcha in a place that away from these 5 elements.
Picture below shows comparison between Shizuoka matcha expose to air for 3 days (right) and fresh Shizuoka matcha (left).
Matcha expose to air will get oxidized pretty quick, make sure you store your matcha in air tight container.
For unopened matcha packaging, matcha can be stored for a year to 1.5 year at lower temperature. If you don't plan to use it for quite a long time, keep it in the freezer.
For opened package/can, consume it within 3 months for it's best taste. If you plan to keep it for long time, keep it in the freezer with air tight container, advised to open the package/can only after it warm up to room temperature.
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Matcha is made from Tencha leaf. The growing method of Tencha, is similar to Gyokuro (the finest tea in Japanese green tea).
When close to harvest time, Tencha is shaded from sunshine to decrease the direct sun-light. The intensity of the shade increase until near darkness by the time of harvest.
The decrease of sun-light causes tea leaves to produce more chlorophyll and amino acid L-theanine, and this increase the umami (sweetness) taste of the tea leaf. Perfect matcha is full with umami sweetness, with no bitterness because of this high amino acid content. Our ceremony grade matcha is produced with top quality tea leaf.
For organic matcha, only organic fertilizer is used to grow Tencha tea leaf.
Tea leaves are picked by hand or by machine. For high quality matcha, tea leaves are hand-picked and for low quality matcha, tea leveas are machine picked. First flush tea leaves are picked at the 88th day of spring (early-May), this is refered as "Hachijuhachiya" in Japan.
After picking, tea leaves are sent to steaming process in order to stop the oxidation process to preserve the nutrients, color, aroma and flavour of tea leaf.
Tencha is then sent for drying process to reduce the water content in the tea leaf. Different than Sencha, Gyokuro or other green teas, Tencha does not go through the rolling process because Tencha will be sent for grinding in the next stage.
Lastly, tea leaves are sent to stone mill and ground into fine powder.
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During our products selection process, we tasted many matcha from different region. This post is about the selection process and the comparison among few matcha.
Before we go further, can you guess which matcha in the picture above is the highest grade?
Matcha A is the highest grade among 6 matcha above.
Matcha details:
From one of our blog post, we understand that higher grade matcha has more vibrant and greener colour. By looking at the picture above, we can know that A is the highest grade, followed by matcha D, then matcha B, C, E and F.
After we tasted all of them, we found that matcha A has almost no bitterness or atringency, it's the best matcha we've ever tasted. Unfortunately the price for this matcha is extremely high, not suitable for ordinary consumer market especially in Malaysia. Followed by matcha D, it has very low level of astringency, almost no bitterness. Matcha B, C, D and E has quite obvious bitterness and astringency, with B has lowest and E has the most bitterness.
After comparison on several aspects, we decided to source Matcha D as our ceremony grade matcha. Matcha D has very high level of sweetness, low level of astringency which make it suitable for matcha tea. Besides, its aroma is one of the best from many matcha we've tasted.
On the other hand, matcha D has very good price to quality ratio, therefore we are able to provide very good matcha at very reasonable price. Although matcha A and D has similar quality (A is slighly better), but matcha A is 3 times more expensive.
If you want to try our ceremony matcha, please visit our store.
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From our Matcha Buying Guide, we understand that different grade of matcha is made from different quality of Tencha green tea leaves. For making matcha tea, we know only high grade matcha should be used. The question is, how to differentiate high grade matcha from low grade matcha?
There are few ways to know whether the matcha you bought is high grade ceremony matcha, or low grade matcha.
Tea buds hibernate during winter, and store plenty of nourishment for months waiting Spring season to arrive. The first harvest has all those nourishment, therefore first harvest matcha (Ichibancha) has unbeatable aroma and quality. Besides, first harvest tea leaves grow slower because of cold season, growing slower means it collect more "good stuff" from the nature. First harvest tea leaves contain 3 times more L-theanine (umami) than second harvest.
Even Japan has low grade matcha. Bear in mind that high grade matcha produced only from first flush (harvest) tea leaves (Ichibancha). Matcha from second or third harvest (nibancha or sanbancha) are low grade green tea powder. Matcha is considered a very fine beverage, therefore low grade tea leaves are not supposed to be used in producing matcha. However, in order to meet the market demand, many farmers in Japan start to produce matcha from second harvest or third harvest tea leaves. How to get these information? Normally if not mentioned in the product description, it's not from first harvest tea leaves.
The simplest way is to see the colour (but not always true, explain below). Matcha is made from shaded-grown tea leaf. Shaded-grown tea leaf is high in chlorophyll which give matcha the vibrant green colour. Older tea leaf has lower density of chlorophyll which give matcha yellowish colour. High grade matcha has a vibrant green colour, while low grade matcha has yellowish or brownish colour.
Our kitchen grade matcha is in "Good quality" range, Cafe grade is "High Quality" and Ceremonial grade is "Superior quality" range. Most of matcha from the marketplace are mainly from "Low quality" range, but sell at high price. It's very important for consumers to have the knowledge to differentiate good from bad matcha.
Most of the time, color is a good indicator whether the matcha we bought is a good or bad matcha. But this may not be always the case, some second or third flush matcha may have higher content of chlorophyll (therefore greener color) because it's produced with younger leaves, but the content of L-theanine is very low in second or third flush matcha, and they have very low umami. First flush matcha is always better than second flush because of high content of umami and low bitterness, even the color of second flush may be greener. This is the reason we sell only first flush matcha.
There are mainly 3 countries that produce matcha: Japan, China and Taiwan. Higher quality matcha produced in Japan.
Matcha Malaysia sell matcha from Nishio and Uji.
Try take some matcha and rubbed between your fingers, high grade matcha is very fine and silky, just like baby powder. While low grade matcha has a coarser feel. High grade matcha has very fine particle size, normally more than 1000 mesh (< 10 microns), and lower grade matcha has larger particle size.
(This often become less reliable because many dishonest seller sell terrible low grade matcha at high grade price).
High grade Japanese ceremony matcha price range from RM50 to RM150 for 30g package size. Low grade Japanese kitchen grade matcha cost around RM10 for 30g package size. Matcha from China has even lower price.
There are many Sencha green tea powder sold as matcha powder in the market. Green tea powder or Sencha powder is made from low quality tea leaf, only powder made from high grade Tencha can be called matcha. Becareful when you purchase matcha powder, make sure you purchase only from credible source.
High grade matcha has high level of L-theanine which give matcha sweetness. A real good ceremony matcha has almost no bitterness even made in Koicha (thick tea) form. Low grade matcha has strong astringency and bitterness which make it suitable only for kitchen uses.
High grade matcha has a mellow and smooth aroma, lower grade tends to have refreshing astringent aroma.
Matcha comes in different grades and origins, know how to choose a good matcha is very critical in your matcha tasting journey.
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For regular drinking, we recommend ~1g (about half tea spoon) for 150ml water. Water temperature around 80-90C. Traditional way of matcha preparation uses lot more matcha which some may finds too heavy.
There is no strict rule on which matcha should be used to make Koicha, or Usucha. The general rule of thumb is that the higher grade matcha (more greenish vibrant colour, high level of sweetness) should be used to make thicker tea, and the lower grade should be used to make thinner tea.
Thin tea is a popular way in Japanese Matcha tasting.
Thick tea has double amount of matcha powder, and half amount of water compare to thin tea. Therefore, thick tea is 4 times thicker than thin tea.
Below table shows the comparison between preparation of Usu-cha and Koi-cha
Usu-Cha (Thin tea) | Koi-Cha (Thick tea) | |
Matcha Amount | 2g (about 2 scoops) | 4g (About 4 scoops) |
Water Volume | 60ml | 30ml |
Water Temperature | 70 Degree Celcius | 70 Degree Celcius |
Whisk Type | 50-120 prongs whisk | 32-50 prongs whisk |
Whisk Movement | Rapid "W" or "M" Movement | Slow 360 degree rotating |
Results | Thin tea covered with foam | Shiny thick tea with no foam |
There is no strict rule that you must prepare your matcha in either Usu-Cha or Koi-Cha form. You may add a gram of matcha into your cup of hot water, if you prefer stronger taste, add 2 gram. If you want to have less intense matcha tea, add more hot water. You can always personalized your own matcha to suit your own taste. The only and most important rule is, use only good matcha.
For Koicha, we recommend Samidori Premium Ceremonial grade matcha.
For Usucha, we recommend Mori ceremony matcha , Okumidori Yame Ceremonial Matcha , Saemidori Organic Ceremonial Matcha or premium grade matcha.
For best result, it's highly recommended to use matcha accessories such as bamboo whisk, matcha scoop and matcha bowl to prepare matcha. Visit our matcha accessies section.
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Health Benefits of Matcha Tea
This beverage has survived this long because of the many health benefits it has to offer. Given that it is loaded with vitamin A, E, C and B-complex amongst many other crucial nutrients, its health benefits are almost limitless and include some those discussed below.
Anti-oxidants level of Matcha compare to other anti-oxidants rich foods.
Matcha tea has superior potential health benefits compared to any form of green tea. Given that the entire leaf is dissolved in water, this tea offers maximum benefits. Whether you are after your overall well-being or want to fight some infection, then look no further than Matcha tea.
Our Store offer different grades of Matcha
Our Matcha are all 100% pure matcha imported from Japan.
Other References:
http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/tea-drink-to-your-health-201312186947
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/305289.php
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19735169
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/70/6/1040.long
http://www.doctoroz.com/article/3-surprising-ways-break-through-your-weight-loss-plateau
]]>Japanese green tea in general has higher L-theanine due to non-fermented process. Out of all Japanese green teas, Gyokuro and Matcha (Tencha) has higher L-theanine due to the shaded-grown (in Ooshita-en) method. Direct sun-light is blocked 20 days before harvested, this process increase the L-theanine content in the tea leaves.
There is no limit for consumption of L-theanine in Japan
Try out our ceremony grade Matcha, it has good taste and lot of health benefits.
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International standard do not allow the use of the word "Matcha" if it's not made from Tencha. For green tea powder made with tea leaves other than Tencha, it should be labelled as "Green Tea Powder" instead of "Matcha".
On the other hand, matcha has much tighter quality requirement compare to normal green tea powder. Only green tea powder meeting criteria below can be called matcha
In most cases, there are 4 ways to differentiate between high grade and low grade matcha.
Matcha has already became part of Japanese daily life. Japanese consume average 1.1KG matcha per person per year. Japanese is known to have the longest life expectancy in the world, it's credited to matcha because of its health benefits.
Read about Matcha Misconceptions.
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