Measuring green tea

Are you sure that you always use the correct amount of tea leaves?  Doesn’t your tea sometimes get too strong or too weak?  Today, I will give you some tips in solving this dilemma.

 

Tip No. 1

Use the same tea spoon always.  It develops your visual estimate of the amount of tea leaves on the spoon.  This is a regular size teaspoon.  The American quarter coin just acts as an additional basis.

 
Tip No. 2
Try to scoop 2 grams of tea leaves.  It is the basic amount for one serving for the most of Japanese green tea.  This is how 2g of gyokuro looks like.  It is slightly more than the level teaspoon.  This will work the same with sencha and kabusecha. 

The scale isn't really needed every time. Just as long as you manage to scoop the approximate amount of tea leaves with your teaspoon, the size of the teapot nor the number of servings won't really matter anymore.  The most important key here to serve a great cup of tea is to practice measuring 2 grams of tea into your regular teaspoon.

Given the fact that some types of tea require more or less than the usual amount (2 grams), acquisition of the basic knowledge will help you figure out.  Here is how 1g (Left) and 3g (Right) of tea look like.  The middle one is 2g.  One gram will be slightly less than the level teaspoon.  And three grams will be a heap of scoop. 

Tip No. 3

One more thing that I want you to know is that it can differ by the size of tea leaves.  What I have shown above is for the common sized tea leaves, such as sencha, gyokuro and kabusecha.  When it comes to the tea with smaller pieces like deep-steamed sencha and konacha, it will look less.  On the other hand, the lager tea leaves have more volume, which are bancha and hojicha.  Here is one example.  These three types of tea leaves are all measured 2g.  (From Left to Right: deep-steamed sencha, gyokuro,  bancha)  You need to consider the size of leaves when measuring.

After you reading this article, hopefully there will be no too strong nor too weak tea on your table anymore.

 

Correct amount of matcha on a tea spoon

The correct amount of matcha is about 1.8 grams for one serving.  It is about 2 scoops with chashaku or a special bamboo scoop for matcha.  You mix it with about 60 ml (2 oz) of water.  I have shown you some pictures on a previousentry for how much the macha shouldlook on chashaku.   This post would serve as a guideline to those who don't have a chashaku and are only using ordinary spoons.  The pictures below shows you how much the correct amount of matcha would look like on a regular teaspoon.  I was a little excited to see how it would look like.  I always use chashaku, and this was my first time using an ordinary spoon.

 

This is how regular teaspoon would look like.   The American quarter coin just acts as an additional basis.

 

 

Here is how a 1.8 gram of matcha looks like on a regular teaspoon.  I already sifted the macha and surprisingly, it still got quite a heap of scoop!!

 

Now, this is how matcha looks like if un-shifted.  It has less volume, so you don’t have to scoop so much.

1.8 gram is not the absolute amount.  You may adjust depending on the preference of your own taste buds.  I hope these pictures will help.