Everything You Need to Make the Best Matcha Tea

All I need is a great matcha tea brand right? 

Sure, if you want to make a good matcha tea. But if you want to make the best matcha tea, you’ll need some essentials before you can get started. The Talk Boba team is going to help you make the perfect matcha tea by showing you exactly what we use to make our team members smile with each sip of matcha. (No really, everyone in the office actually smiles after their first sip, it brightens up their day!) 

There’s only a few essentials you’ll need but these are very important in order to make your very best matcha tea right at home or in the office like us. Shall we get to making the matcha now? 

The Right Matcha Tea Brand

Obviously the first and arguably the most important tool in making any matcha tea is to source the best matcha brand you can find for your taste buds or preference. There’s different levels of matcha grades if you didn’t know (ceremonial matcha and culinary matcha). The two different matcha grades are what determines what and how you will be using your matcha tea blend. 

Here’s a quick run down of what the difference is between ceremonial matcha and culinary matcha is. Ceremonial matcha is typically harvested with younger matcha leaves and appear to be more vibrant in color. The younger matcha leaves from the matcha plant (Camellia sinensis plant) have a sweeter taste and aroma to it than culinary matcha, making it the perfect matcha blend to drink only with water. Culinary matcha however is typically harvested with more adult leaves from the matcha plant and more dull in color, appearing darker than ceremonial matcha grades. With the plucking and processing of older matcha leaves, the taste and aroma of the culinary matcha grade is more bitter, making it the perfect counterbalance mixed with a sweetener and milk. You’ll see culinary matcha used in many of your matcha lattes or matcha milk teas. 

Learn more about ceremonial and culinary matcha here, we go way more in depth for those that want to seek more information. 

Did you know? Many people think that a better tasting matcha is actually bitter. But this is far from the truth, when you have a bitter matcha, it’s actually seen as less premium, therefore it is cheaper in price and often used to mix with other ingredients. You’ll know you have a very high quality matcha blend when you can drink it on its own without any added ingredients because it is actually sweet with a hint of of a delicate earthy aftertaste. 

Here’s some of our favorite matcha tea brands. 

Encha Matcha 

Rated highly as one of the best premium organic matcha blends out there, Encha matcha boasts itself in being a very mixable and frothable blend of matcha that tastes very pleasant. With their ceremonial matcha grades you will taste sweet bitterness. What do we mean by that? Right when you open the packaging you’ll find yourself smelling the sweet aromatics of the matcha blend and when you sip on it, you’ll have a pleasant bitter aftertaste that makes you longing for more. 

Epic Matcha 

Simply put, it’s epic. This brand of matcha powder prides itself in finding and sourcing the best (only the best) quality matcha plants to pluck from. They really believe that it all starts from the leaf itself, with the right matcha plant (Camellia sinensis) they can produced the world’s best matcha powder. 

Enzo Matcha 

Not only does this brand make some of the most premium and best tasting matcha powders out there, they do so by helping others too! With every purchase of a bag of their matcha powder, they will donate $1 to your favorite charity of choice. Isn’t that so cool? Talk about helping others with every perfect cup of matcha tea. 

The Almighty Matcha Bowl— the Chawan 

After obtaining the best matcha brand that fits your preference, you’ll need to have something to start mixing it up in right? What better way to get the best matcha bowl otherwise known as Chawan. 

Typically matcha bowls are made with great craftsmanship and detail by the crafters bare hands. Most matcha bowls are made with a mix of several types of clay material in order to be durable and molded properly. You’ll find matcha bowls in various sizes from deep to shallow but we found that the shallow bowls are better for mixing and allows for an easier froth of matcha tea (we’ll expand and touch upon this more later). Be sure that your matcha bowl has enough space to fill up 6oz of water though, we believe this to be the ideal amount of liquid used for matcha tea. Like we mentioned earlier, our matcha tea in the office makes people smile, so we must be doing something correct right? 

Quick Tip: don’t microwave or heat your matcha bowl in anyway as this destroys the integrity, durability and usage of the bowl. We don’t want that. To clean the bowl simply wash it with dish soap and a wash cloth or something similar like this, then leave it to air dry. Keep good care of your matcha bowl and it’ll return the favor! 

Here’s a great matcha bowl if you don’t want to bother looking for one on your own, let us help you get to making matcha faster! 

Japanese Bamboo Whisk— the Chasen 

Carefully crafted by hand with careful precision, the chasen or Japanese bamboo whisk is made to create the perfect froth for your matcha tea. Without this tool, it’s very difficult to get the best mix and froth from your matcha tea. Please by all means don’t use a fork, blender or any other mixing tool for your high quality matcha. You’ll make us cringe! 

Typically the bamboo whisk will last quite a long time as long as you take care of it. When using it to froth up and mix your matcha tea, be sure to use swift back and forth motions (non-circular) in order to froth it up. Keep note that you should not be touching the bottom of your matcha bowl when whisking (you should only do this for a brief moment to get everything incorporated well), this will shorten the lifespan of your whisk much faster. 

To clean your chasen, what we like to do is have another bowl of warm water and start whisking the warm water as if you’re frothing up your matcha tea blend. This will ensure that you get the matcha and anything left on the whisk freed up! From here, simply air dry it and once it’s dry you can even place it on top of a whisk holder if you want to go above and beyond. Here’s a whisk holder if you care deeply about your whisk like us at Talk Boba. The reason for this is to keep the integrity and shape of the bamboo whisk so that it is ready to use for the next round of matcha tea (which most likely will be the next day if you’re a fanatic like some of us). 

Here’s 2 Japanese bamboo whisk brands that we like to purchase from that are highly reputable: Bamboo Worx and  Matcha DNA.  They’re some of the best in the business! 

There you have it, everything you need to make the best matcha tea. We mentioned it was only a few essentials so we hope you stuck around for the whole thing. And if you didn’t jump ahead already and buy some of the tools, check out this awesome deal from amazon. Click here to get a 30 day free trial of amazon prime, this way you can get these items shipped right away! 

Thanks for reading with us and we hope you know what you need to obtain for the best matcha now. Especially what matcha blend is right for you! If you want to try your hand at creating some matcha milk teas, check out our full recipe guides here. Like always, just talk about boba, duh! 

Did you read these matcha articles yet?

• How to Make Blue Matcha
• How to Make Strawberry Matcha with Boba Pearls
• How to Make Whipped Matcha with Boba Pearls