Let's Enjoy Maccha (抹茶)

Often simply called, "Japanese Green Tea" by both foreigners and Japanese themselves, maccha actually refers to a very specific kind of green, powered tea, which is used in the tea ceromony (茶道) and appears in lots of yummy deserts and treats throughout Japan. Maccha is a very bitter, dark tea, that is very strong in both vitamines and in caffeine. It is by far my favorite tea. I enjoy it in it's original form (the way that it is served in the tea ceromony) and with sugar and milk, or if i am really lucky, Jun-Dai will make me a "Maccha Latte" which is the best of the best! mmm....

As maccha is a very ritualized tradion in Japan, in order to make it "properly" you are suppose to buy a number of quite expensive tools and learn an annoyingly tedious process which theoretically takes decades to master. Um, can i just drink the tea, please? What follows are instructions for making maccha without spending too much time or money.

What to Buy

The little tool that you use to wisk the tea around is called a Chasen (茶筅) and unless you are planning to use a blender or something, it's sort of a neccessity and somewhat expensive. I think they are usually around $15-20 USD in Japan, but people have told me that you are able to buy Chinese-made ones in San Francisco from around $5USD. Next to the Chasen i would say the only other tool you should buy is the little bamboo stick for measuring the tea, which i find is quite useful. You could use a normal spoon for this but it's harder to measure. Next you need a device for shifting the powder (i just use a normal tea strainer for this), and of course you need a tea bowl to drink the tea out of. You can't really use a normal tea cup for this, but usually a rice bowl or other small bowl will do the trick. However, not using a proper tea bowl does go against the whole wabisabi principle in a pretty servere way, so if you can, you should get a real maccha bowl. Not only does it looks nicer, but it adds something to the experience that i can't really put down into words.

The tea itself is also quite expensive. It usually comes in 20 or 40 gram small cylindrical tins that start around $5. The decent stuff starts around $15 and it can go up to around $50. One day i decided to buy the most expensive stuff to see if there really was a quality difference and was dissappointed to find out that there was. (*sigh*). The good news is that once i added milk and sugar, i couldn't really detect much of a distinction in taste (although there is in texture), so if you don't plan to drink it straight you can save some money by buying the cheaper stuff. By the way, you should store your maccha in your fridgerator or even in your freezer. Don't leave it out.

How to Make Maccha

First boil some water and then pour some of that water into the bowl you plan to use. Stir it around with the chasen for a good 30 seconds. Then toss the water out and dry the bowl. You are doing this simply to heat up the bowl and the chasen.

Take two grams of the maccha and dump them into the shifter above the tea bowl. If you have that bamboo tool, this would be two full scopes with it. Strain the maccha using a spoon or some other tool to push it all through. When you are done you should have a shifted pile of green powered at the bottom of your bowl. You need to do this in order to loosen up the powder so that it will mix with the water properly. Some people even shift the powder two or even three times. Don't skip this step.

Pour about 100ml of the boiling water into the bowl and stir it vigerously with the chasen. With the first couple of motions try to get the chasen to pick up the loose powder at the bottom of the bowl. Then stir it like crazy until you get a thick fomy surface. Try to avoid large bubbles. When you are done there should be a nice uniform layer of foam at the top.

Voila. Now enjoy your maccha. The maccha is not suppose to sit around for very long (the powder will end up gattering at the bottom of the bowl again), so please drink it quickly.