Matcha has been surging in popularity over the last couple of years. It’s started appearing in everything from smoothies, to ice cream, to chocolate. But what exactly is Matcha and how is it made?
Brew a cuppa and buckle in as we cover all things Matcha, and debunk some myths around the matcha quality grading system and common phrases such as 'ceremonial grade'!
What is Matcha?
Matcha is considered a quintessentially Japanese type of tea, but that’s not where it started. The ancestor of modern matcha actually came from China. The Song Dynasty (960 – 1279CE) invented the process of grinding tea leaves to powder, a type of tea called “Mo Cha”. This travelled to Japan with Buddhist monks. Mo Cha more or less died out in China by the end of the Song Dynasty, with the Chinese moving more and more into the consumption of leaf tea as we know it today.
But in Japan, the tradition lived on, gaining a revered place in ceremonies and rituals. Today, it’s blossoming out of those rituals back into increasing popularity and an ever-widening set of uses.
What teas can Matcha be made from?
With the word “Matcha” just meaning “ground tea”, can any tea be matcha? The simple answer is no. To classify as Matcha, the tea needs to fulfil certain requirements. The first of these is about how the tea is grown.
Matcha has to be made from tea bushes that are at least 5-8 years old. This gives time for the plant to develop some vigor, and it’s going to need it for what comes next! The best leaves for making Matcha are picked in May, but there’s some prep-work that needs to take place before harvest time. This involves shading the tea bushes.
What is Shading?
Shading, or Hifuku Saibai, is a process of restricting the amount of light available to the tea bushes. The idea here is to stress the tea bushes in certain, specific ways. By reducing the amount of light the tea plants receive, they compensate by packing the leaves with increased amounts of chlorophyl, amino acids and L-theanine. This increases the depth of flavour and also helps to reduce bitterness.
Shading takes a minimum of 22 days, but can be done over the course of 6 weeks or so. The normal process is to start by reducing the available light by roughly half and gradually increasing the amount of light blocked. If too much light is blocked in one go, the tea plant will throw energy into growing longer stems to search for the light, rather than packing the leaves with all those extra compounds.
How is Matcha processed?
The best leaves are hand-picked and usually include the top bud plus 1 or 2 small, immature leaves. You don’t want older leaves as they are both more bitter and more difficult to process. All tea for making Matcha is then steamed to prevent enzymes in the leaves from turning the harvest into black tea. At this point, tea that is going to be used as normal leave tea gets rolled around to break down cell walls and allow flavour to be released when you add hot water. Not so with matcha.
The leaves get broken unto smaller pieces and then the stems and leaf veins are removed. This broken up tea is called “Tencha” or “tea for grinding”. All of the regulations about quality and processing are actually applied to Tencha, under Japanese law, not to Matcha itself. Basically, if you want great Matcha, you need high grade Tencha. Traditionally, the very best Tencha was stored in little paper packets and placed in clay jars that was packed with lower grade Tencha. These jars were then sealed and even moved under armed guard by Samurai from place to place. Yes, the tea was just that valuable.
If you tried to drink Tencha like other green teas, it would have basically no flavour. That’s because the rolling step mentioned before was skipped. So how do you get the flavour out? Easy: Grind it to powder.
Milling the Matcha Powder
Traditional matcha is still made using granite milling stones, kind of like the old stone mills that were once used to grind wheat into flour. The granite is relatively soft, so removing those stems from the Tencha is essential for extending the lifespan of the stones and getting a finer powder.
The stones are rotated relatively slowly so that they don’t heat up and degrade the tea. Even the larger commercial stones only produce 30g an hour or so. That’s just enough Matcha for a small tin. Compare that to leaf tea where a machine can process multiple kilograms per hour, and you can quickly see why Matcha ends up becoming so expensive.
The very best matcha is freshly milled just before use, but that’s a bit impractical for everyday life.
Instead, it’s best to get matcha in small quantities and use it relatively quickly to preserve freshness. Good quality Matcha should have a vibrant green colour. If it’s yellowed or dull-looking, it’s past its prime.
What is 'Ceremonial Grade' Matcha?
It’s often said that the best Matcha is “Ceremonial Grade”, but that is actually a Western invention. Japanese law does not have legal categories or standards for ceremonial or culinary grade Matcha. The term “Ceremonial” is only really useful in saying that the producer intends you to drink it, rather than use it in your cooking. So how do you tell what is good quality or lower quality Matcha? It seems a bit like the Wild West, but there are clues you can use.
Japanese Tea Masters actually make 2 different kinds of Matcha preparations. These are called Koicha and Usucha. Koicha means “thick tea” and uses twice the amount of tea per serving than used for Usucha, which means “thin tea”.
Koicha is the more prestigious form of Matcha and requires higher quality tea. So, if you see tea recommended for Koicha, it’s top quality.
Usucha is thinner and often foamy. This foam helps to reduce bitterness, but also reduced
complexity. Because of this, you can use more bitter Matcha and still get a good result. This isn’t to say that Matcha for making Usucha is bad quality, per sé. But it won’t be quite so well produced as the tea reserved for Koicha.
Really though, it’s about personal taste. Some people look for a more umami cup, others go for something sweeter or more creamy. Reputable suppliers will often list some of the flavour notes you can expect to find in their tea. It’s best if they can also show you what the tea looks like, so that you can check the vibrancy of the colour.
At the end of the day, let your eyes and taste buds tell you if something is “good quality” - Don’t just rely on the labels of Ceremonial or Culinary Grade.
Written by Moriah Hunter, Toowoomba store manager.