Water temperature for Matcha

I didn’t find the matcha that I prepared at home as tasty as the sample that I tried at a tea shop.  The sample at the shop had a very mellow but rich flavor with a mouth-filling umami, which is not bitter at all.  It was my favorite type of flavor that I'm looking forward to find in matcha.  When I tried it at home,  the rich umami was still there but the tea also became a bit of not so good taste.  It happens sometimes.  Even though, I get the same tea, it doesn’t taste good when I prepare it at home.  Have you ever experienced this kind of stuff?  You may think of various reasons, it could be the water, utensils or how you prepared it. 

When the lady at the shop was preparing the sample matcha, I noticed that she cooled down the hot water with a yuzamashi, ceramic bowl.  I got it!  Water temperature!  I didn’t give much attention to the water temperature when I prepared it at home.  Now, I got curious what would be the best temperature for this matcha. 

I prepared this tea with four different temperatures; 90, 80, 70 and 60C (194,176,158 and 140F).  What do you think about it?

From Left: 90, 80, 70 and 60C (194, 176, 158 and 140F)

I started to sip from the 90C tea.  I expected it to be bitter but it turned out quite great.  It has a rich flavor but it’s never bitter.  I love it.  I realized the excellent potential of this tea.  I tried tasting 80, 70 and 60 in turns.  They were getting milder as the temperature gets lower.  Each tea had a good sweetness.  The 90C tea has both sharpness and complexness in its flavor, while the 60C tea highlights its rounded umami mainly.  I found that the 90C tea was the tastiest at first impression and the 60C tea was too mild.  But then, when I tried them in the inverse order, from 60 to 90, I found a slight unpleasant taste in the 90C tea, and the 60 was the best.  The order has a big impact to my impression.   As I repeatedly tasted them, I got confused and I couldn’t tell which one I like the best.  Moreover, the teas seemed to get stronger and created more bitterness as the time passed.  

These four tea that I prepared today were relatively good when comparing with the tea that I had prepared previously.  The cause for the bad tea at home might not be the water temperature.  There might be some other reasons.  The difference between the previous preparation and this time is sifting.  I didn’t sift the matcha last time because it was a new tea that I just bought from the shop.  I found some lumps in the tea, so this time I sifted it before making the tea.  I guess that sifting has much to do with the taste of tea.

What I learned from today’s test are ..

-Sifting can be an important factor to serve a good tea. 

-High temperature water makes crisp tea with delightful complex flavors, and low temperature water makes mellow tea with abundant milky umami.

-I should consider the idle time after tea was served until the one to be drunk.  The tea gets stronger and bitterer during the period. 

Each tea was unique and attractive.  I can’t simply say what temperature is the best.   The temperature is only one of the many factors to serve a precious bowl of tea.