This, my first journey into matcha tea — Japanese green tea leaves that are ground into powder — was a bust. I’m not exactly sure where I went wrong, but I have some ideas. It began a few weeks ago when I ordered a relatively inexpensive matcha tea set from Amazon.com. Was that my first mistake? No, I don’t think so.
In addition to the matcha set, which included a bowl, bamboo whisk, bamboo scoop, and ceramic whisk stand, I ordered ceremonial-grade matcha — Encha Premium First Harvest Pure Organic Matcha. You have to get ceremonial grade, the internet tea experts said.
First Attempt
With my matcha preparation internet research complete, I got busy. The steps included warming the bowl, drying the bowl, placing 2 scoops of matcha powder in the bowl, boiling the water, allowing the water to sit for a minute to cool down, pouring a bit of water over the power, whisking the powder, pouring the remainder of the water in and whisking the hell out of it until frothy.
Skipped was the step where the powder is siphoned through a strainer to achieve a finer powder. This surely explains the lumpiness of the final result. The tea was unpleasantly bitter too, which I first attributed to too much tea powder.
Second Attempt
The second time around is better than the first time; that’s how the song goes, at least. But it wasn’t. I used the same steps as above, plus the strainer and minus the second scoop of matcha powder. No more clumps in my tea, but still bitter.
After more research, I discovered I wasn’t allowing the boiling water to set for long enough to get to the desired temperature of 175°F. Could that be the reason for the bitterness?
Third and Final Attempt
Third time’s a charm, right? No. Third’s a turd. Using all my knowledge from the first two attempts, plus the correct water temperature (and a return to 2 scoops of powder like the experts recommended), the tea was still bitter.
Perhaps the water still wasn’t cool enough. I left it off boil for 3 minutes which should be around 170°F according to multiple sources. Maybe I need to go cooler. Or maybe I just don’t like matcha. Or maybe I bought bad matcha powder (although the kind I got was well reviewed on Amazon.com). One thing I know for sure is I’ll be taking a break from matcha to regroup.
What will the fourth attempt bring? Fruition or fiasco.
This sounds a lot like my own experiments with matcha. I had a friend who swore by it, but I never got to see why by my.own attempts.