4 Tests to See if Your Matcha is High Quality – Culinary vs Ceremonial Matcha

In this blog, we’re gonna learn four different ways. You can test your match to see if it’s high quality or low quality. We’ll also learn the differences between culinary versus ceremonial match when it comes to color, taste, texture and health benefits. Finally, we’ll show you what you can do with low quality match to make it taste better. So for this comparison, I’ll be taking out some low qualityality match i found deep in my cupboard and comparing it to the Premium Match Shan, a highqu match we discovered during a trip to southern Japan. You can already notice a clear difference between these two match powders just by looking at them. The premium match has a deep green color while the low quality match is more yellow and dull. There are a few reasons for the difference in color between culinary and ceremonial grade match and they all come down to how the two matches are produced. Culinary grade match is cheaper and because it’s used in culinary creations like desserts, it doesn’t need to be super smooth. Ceremonial grade match, on the other hand, needs to be carefully produced so it’s smooth enough to drink plain just like in the Japanese tea ceremony. To produce premium ceremonial grade match. The farmer will cover the tea plants in a special type of netting three weeks before the harvest. When the tea plants are exposed to sunlight, they produce more catkins as a protection against UV rays, but this can actually produce a more bitter flavor in the tea. By cutting off the tea plants from sunlight, they not only produce less bitterness, but they also produce more chlorophyll to compensate for the lack of light. The top leaves are selected as these are the sweetest and most nutrient dense, and they have the yellow stems carefully removed. The shading leaf selection and stem removal all contribute to a better flavor and premium matchup, but it also leads to a greener color, so it’s not the greener is always better. It’s more that the steps used to produce great tasting match also produce a very green powder. So our first test is the color test. But there are three more tests you can use to see if you have culinary versus ceremonial match. I put some of each match onto a white sheet of paper and now I’ll draw a line with each. This test not only gives us a better look at the color of the two powders, but it also gives us an idea of the texture. One of the things that separates high Quality versus Low Quality match is how the leaves are ground we mentioned before that premium match is made from carefully selected tea leaves, but what happens to these leaves next is also important. The leaves are fed into a large granite mill where they are carefully ground into a fine powder. This granite mill has a large network of grooves that push the leaves out so that by the time they come out the sides they are ground into an average particle size of ten microns which is 1 one 100th of a millimeter. Lower Quality Match or culinary Match, on the other hand, can be made from older rougher tea leaves and it can be machine ground to produce a coarser texture. This machine grinding process can also introduce more heat into the MAC which the careful stone grinding does not. This high Quality match powder has a super smooth texture which you can tell by how easily my finger moves around the paper. I can even draw with this powder although as you can tell, I’m really not a great artist anyways. It takes this granite mill an hour to grind 50 grams of this precious match powder, but it’s worth it to produce this fine texture. This finer powder also makes the drinking experience better because instead of a grainy texture, you get a smooth, velvety consistency in a premium match like this. We’re gona whisk up these two matches to run two more tests on them. But before we get to that, if you’re enjoying this blog so far, we would really appreciate it. If you could like the blog and subscribe to see more match blogs in the future now, let’s get back to that match comparison. So I’ll prepare these two matches using the same amount of powder, the same amount of water and the same whisking technique. By the way, you can also see the graininess of the lower quality match. Once you add the water in. These are the types of things that you avoid when you drink Premium Stone Ground Match Powder, but what I want to see here is how much foam is produced on culinary vers. Ceremonial Match. Lower quality match tends to produce and hold less foam than High quality match. So our third test is going to be the foam test. I’ll be using the bamboo whisk or chain which is the perfect tool for creating a beautiful layer of foam on top of your match. This foam is not just for looks, it also creates a better consistency and flavor in your match by whisking, you’re injecting air into the match, which gives it a lighter, creamer consistency and taste. The higher quality match foams up right away, but the lower quality match takes a bit more time still. For a low quality match, this foam is pretty good. We’ve seen a few low quality matches in the past that can barely produce any foam. When we pour the two matchcha out into a glass, you can see the difference more closely. The higher quality match has a really dense micropham with a ton of smaller bubbles while the foam on the lower quality match has larger bubbles that are less dense. After a little while, the foam on the low quality match also dissipates while the high quality match is able to hold its foam for longer. Finally, the most important test is the taste test. This is the only true way to evaluate the quality of the match. It all comes back to taste. We are looking for two main things here, bitterness and complexity. High Quality Match can still have a little hint of bitterness to it, but it shouldn’t be overpowered. You should still notice a complex array of flavors like citrus, steamed vegetables, a hint of cream, maybe some flowers, or even a slight nuttiness. Low Quality Match, on the other hand, will have this intense, bitter flavor and really not much else. When you take normal tea leaves and grind them into a powder, it intensifies the flavor and makes the tea very bitter. By default, it takes a lot of work to produce a match that has a flavor that’s good enough to drink plain. There are also differences in the health benefits between culinary versus ceremonial match, with the premium match having higher levels of chlorophyll, caffeine and threonine. Threonine can buffer some of the negative side effects of caffeine. So instead of getting this jittery feeling and then a crash later on in the day, people report that when they drink High Quality Match, they have a longerlasting, calm, alert feeling that’s much more smooth than a typical caffeine jolt. So what can we do if we have culinary match or Low Quality match? Unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do to improve the quality of the match itself, but you can improve the flavor by adding your favorite milk into the match and creating a latte. We like to recommend one half cup of milk for each teaspoon of match powder. Speaking of which we like to consider a third Mac which we call Latte Grade match. Somewhere in between. Culinary vs. Ceremonial Mac. This match is made from later harvest so it’s much more affordable, but it still is carefully grown without pesticides and meticulously produced to work great. In Macha lattes, this match may be a bit too bitter to drink plain, but it pairs great with milk and a little bit of sweetener. If you don’t want to add anything to your match, you can improve the flavor by eating a sweet alongside of it. This is mochi, a traditional Japanese sweet that can be eaten alongside a bowl of match. Particularly during the tea ceremony. All types of mochi are made with rist dough, but this type is filled with ankco or sweet azuki bean paste, which can smooth out the bitterness of the match without adding anything to it. If you want to find a premium match that tastes good enough to drink plain, you’ve come to the right place. After traveling around Japan for the past few years, we’ve met with dozens of farmers and tested 100 of different mauteses to find the very best. We’ve ultimately selected a small handful of our favorites and you can try them all by visiting neotese.com and browsing our selection of Premium Pesticide-f free match teas. Not only do you get some great match, but you also help to support this Website and all the talented farmers we work with. Thank you all so much for reading we’ll see you next