Matcha for Beginners: Where to Start
The first decision is not what matcha to buy, but how you are going to drink it. Everything else stems from that: equipment, grade, budget.
L'essentiel
Matcha suffers from a reception problem. Between the Japanese vocabulary,
grades without official definitions, and prices ranging from €8 to €80 for thirty
grams, people often give up before even tasting it.
Here's the essential information, in the order of what truly matters.
Start by deciding how you're going to drink it
This is the only question that determines everything else, and it's the one people ask
last.
You want a latte. This is the most common and most forgiving entry point:
milk smooths out the edges and forgives preparation errors. A first-harvest matcha
without extreme selection is more than sufficient—that's the role of
our Matcha Latte. The complete method is in the matcha latte recipe.
You want to drink it plain, with water. This requires a ceremonial grade. A
low-grade matcha drunk plain will be bitter no matter what you do, and you'll
conclude that you don't like matcha—when in fact you just don't like that
particular matcha. Our Ceremonial Matcha is made
for this.
You want to bake with it. A culinary grade is sufficient, and ours would be a
waste.
The equipment: what's truly useful
You can start tonight, with what you have: a bowl, a small
sieve, hot water, and a jar with a lid for shaking. It works, and it
saves you from investing before you know if you like it.
If you get hooked, two items truly make a difference:
The sifter, first. It's what eliminates clumps, not the whisk.
Unbeatable effectiveness-to-price ratio.
The chasen, next. The bamboo whisk is the only tool that creates a true
emulsion and prevents the powder from settling. Its exact role is detailed in
Chasen: what it's really for.
Our Matcha Kit brings together all five items if you prefer
to get everything at once.
Quantities to remember
Two numbers, no more.
Plain bowl: 2 g matcha, 70 ml water at 80 °C.
Latte: 3 g matcha, 40 ml water at 80 °C, then 180 ml milk.
And one rule: matcha always meets water before milk. Pouring the
powder into milk creates irretrievable clumps.
The three mistakes of the first few weeks
Boiling water. Number one cause of bitterness. 80 °C, or two minutes
wait after boiling.
Skipping the sifter. Thirty seconds that make all the difference between smooth and
gritty.
The wrong grade for the use. A culinary grade drunk plain will be unforgiving.
What it should look like when successful
The color first: a vivid, almost saturated green, with a fine, dense foam
on the surface.
The taste next: a vegetal and round, almost sweet attack, a bitterness
present but in the background, and a lingering finish after the sip.
What we don't want: a rough sensation that dries out the mouth. That's
astringency, and it's always correctable.
A gentle entry point: cold matcha
If bitterness puts you off, try mizudashi before giving up.
2 g matcha, 200 ml cold water, in a sealed container. Shake for twenty
seconds. That's it.
Cold water extracts very few bitter compounds: the result is smooth, fresh,
frankly easy. Many people who thought they didn't like matcha
change their minds with this preparation.
A realistic budget to start
A first-harvest 30g matcha covers about a month of daily use.
This is the right format to start with: enough to get an idea, not enough for it
to oxidize before it's finished.
Beware of large, low-priced formats. An opened matcha loses its qualities in
a few weeks: 200g of cheap matcha will become dull long before it's finished. To test all three grades without committing to a full format, our Discovery Trio is designed for this.
The topic of price and what it hides is covered in
Ceremonial or culinary matcha.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I really need a Japanese bowl?
No. A wide, shallow cereal bowl works perfectly.
Can you make matcha with a milk frother?
Yes, it's the best alternative to a chasen. The foam is a little coarser,
but the result is perfectly acceptable.
How much matcha per day?
It naturally contains caffeine, like all tea. Adjust according to your
sensitivity, as you would with coffee. Its consumption is not recommended
for pregnant and breastfeeding women.
Organic or not organic?
Certification concerns the cultivation method, not the taste quality. These
are two independent criteria—see
Organic matcha: how to verify.
Three matchas, three uses. See the range.
