Blue Matcha vs. Green Matcha – What is Blue Matcha and Drinking a Blue Matcha Latte

What is blue match. This is something I’ve been seeing online recently, so I thought we’d make a video about it. In this episode, I’ll be comparing Blue Match to Green Match and see how the color, taste and texture compares to the classic match powder. We’ll also learn how to make a magic color changing tea and how to make a blue macha latte. While we sift this blue match powder up, let’s explain what it is, so Blue match is actually not match, but instead it’s made from powdered butterfly pea flowers. These blue flowers are sometimes called blue tea, but they are not technically a type of tea at all because they don’t come from the tea plant. Camellia sinensis. Still, they are used mostly as a coloring agent in food and drinks because while they have this vibrant blue color, they really don’t taste like much. So why isn’t this blue powder a match. Match is made from green tea leaves which technically makes it a type of green tea. If you were to grind up just any old tea leaves into a powder and mix it into water, you would end up with an extremely bitter taste. In order to produce this naturally smooth flavor that high quality match is known for, the leaves need to undergo a long, labor-intensive production process. First, the tea plants need to be shaded for three weeks before the harvest. This allows the leaves to maintain higher levels of chlorophyll, threonine, and caffeine, which produces the sweeter flavor and greener color of the final match. In the spring of each year, the tea plant is harvested for the first time. It’s had all winter to build up nutrients from the soil and those nutrients are released into the young sprouts. These sprouts are not only the richest in nutrients, but also the smoothest in flavor, so they’re selected for the premium match. The stems are removed to improve the flavor even further and then finally the leaves are ground into a fine powder in a large stone mill. So to call this powder blue match wouldn’t really be fair to all the farmers that work hard to produce great tasting match like this. By the way, the match we’re using for this comparison is the Sakamoto sa Macho which is produced by Mr. Sakamoto in Shibuhi. Mr. Sakamoto normally specializes in Gilkr, a premium Japanese leaf tea, but in the last couple of years he started producing match and we’ve been really impressed with the results anyways, let’s get to this comparison. I’ll be preparing the match in a clay bowl also called a Chowan or tea bowl. I’ll be whisking it up using my trusty bamboo tea whisk or Cha Sen. This tool really is perfect when it comes to creating that beautiful foam on top of the match which gives the tea a smoother airier consistency. What you want to get. On the surface of the match is a thick layer of micropham. With really small bubbles you can even tell of amaa’s high quality if it’s able to hold a thick foam like this now it’s time to whisk up the so-called Blue Mac. I put a few grams of this powder into the bowl and mix it up using the same temperature, water and bamboo whisk. I’m using a white bowl for this one so you can get a better look at the color. I was actually really surprised at how much foam this blue match produced. Somehow I was able to get the same micropham as I did with the Premium match, but the taste that was a completely different story. Before we pour it out and give it a taste. If you’re enjoying this video so far, it would really mean a lot if you could like the video and subscribe, so you can see more like it in the future. Now I’ve really been dreading this taste test. I’ve done experiments with butterfly pea flowers before, and the taste is really off-putting. The first impression was nowhere near as bad as I thought, with a slight sweetness that reminded me of Licorice root. Soon an extremely bitter flavor set in which really made me recoil. It almost tasted like dirt. Sweet Dirt maybe, but still dirt. Match is carefully produced for flavor and it really is this balance of sweetness, savoryiness, creaminess and a hint of citrus and steam. Vegetable Notes. You could tell the Green Match was meant to be enjoyed while the Blue match was just meant to be used as a food. Coloring. While I have all this blue match out. I figured I might as well play around with it a little. I poured some oat milk into the drink to make a blue macha. Late, this blue Macau latte really improved the flavor and reduced a lot of the bitterness, but it still isn’t something that I would crave. I then poured the high quality maa on top of the blue latte to make this cool color layering effect. Again. This improved the flavor of the blue latte, but I would still rather just have a macha latte or a plain cup of match mixed with water. So for plain drinking. I would say the green match has a huge advantage over the blue match and the same goes for latte. If you drink it plain, you really get this strong, bitter aftertaste, and when you mix it with milk, it hardly tastes like anything at all. This mancha, on the other hand, works great in latte and it’s also smooth enough to drink plain. Making it the perfect powder. But the one thing I was impressed with is how powerful the blue color is, and I really don’t think it comes out well, so I wanted to try a different experiment. I took out a tea strainer and added just a tiny bit of the bluema of powder to it. I then poured in some hot water to brew the powder and instantly the water turned blue. I barely used any powder for this experiment at all, and the color was very strong. The reason this color is so strong is thanks to the anthocyin, the same pigments that get blueberries their color. If you change the ph of these anthocyins, they change from blue to purple so you can actually change the color of this drink just by squeezing in a little bit of lemon juice. As the acid from the lemon is introduced to the blue match, it changes from blue to purple and then a light pink color. This color change also works the other way. If you put a little bit of lemon juice into a glass and pour some of the blue mana on top of it, the drink will instantly change from blue to pinkish purple. So yes, this is a fun kitchen experiment you can do at home and the coloring can create some cool effects for drinks and lattes. But this so-called blue match is very different than actual match powder, and hopefully we’ve cleared that up today. If you really want to see the difference that high quality ceremonial grade match makes, we would really appreciate it if you could visit neotese.com and browser selection of the best pesticide MAA teas we found in Japan. Not only do you get to try some great tea, but you also get to support this channel and help us to support all the talented farmers we work with. Thank you all so much for reading we’ll see you next time.