Royal Matcha Green tea is high in nutrients and perfect for any occasion. It's beautiful bright green color and wonderful taste make it great for every day of the week. Drinking it so often can make it somewhat boring after a while. To keep your Royal Matcha tea exciting and always something you look forward to, let's explore some ways to prepare it.

Traditional:

As a hot tea, Royal Matcha's penetrating smell and amazing flavor really come to life. To enjoy Royal Matcha as a hot tea:

1. Bring your Royal Matcha powder to room temperature [18°C (64°F) to 23°C (73°F)], and sift through a strainer.
2. Scoop 1 ½ to 2 rounded teaspoons of sifted Royal Matcha into a tea bowl or cup
3. Add ¼ to 1/3 cup of hot, simmering water (this may be more or less diluted based on your preference).
4. Briskly whisk your Royal Matcha. As the Matcha begins to dissolve, move the whisk briskly back and forth as fast as you can in the middle of the bowl or cup. The whisk should be vertical and barely touching the bottom of the bowl or cup. Once your Matcha has developed a soft, light foam, slowly lift the whisk from the center of the bowl or cup.
5. Enjoy your frothy, healthy cup of hot Royal Matcha Gree tea!

Traditional with a chill:

1. Royal Matcha is excellent as a chilled or iced tea, perfect for hot summer days and when you're on the run. To prepare chilled or iced Royal Matcha-
2. Get a 16 oz water bottle or glass that accomodates 16 oz.
3. Measure ¼ teaspoon (or more if you like) into the bottle or cup with 16 oz of cold water. If you've opened a new bottle, be sure to sip a little so you don't overfill it!
4. Shake or stir vigorously to dissolve the Royal Matcha powder.
5. Drink immediately, pour over ice or refrigerate.
6. If desired, add a sugar substitute or honey to sweeten it to y our liking.

Here's an interesting fact: Strawberries aren't considered berries in the traditional sense by botanists. Reason being, normal berries house their seeds on the inside; whereas strawberries are lined with them on the outside (like sesame seeds on a hamburger bun). I find that a little disheartening since strawberries are my favorite in the plucked-berry pantheon. Learning that was like a Scorpio learning their ruling body (Pluto) was no longer a planet. Okay...maybe the astrological metaphor was a tad obscure - still applies, though.

I bring this up because of a product put out by Red Leaf Tea - my first ever matcha blend. Instead of just being stone-ground green tea, natural flavors of strawberry were added. That's not all. I'm not sure what goes into making a matcha blend - I've never tried one before - but etiquette dictates that there should be mention of additional ingredients. Along with the natural flavors, there were actual strawberry seeds in the powder.

Perhaps it was an aspect that hadn't been added to the product description. After all, there wasn't even a full bio for this matcha yet [as of this writing]. What little there was on the profile stated that this was an organic, ceremonial grade matcha. On first impression, I disagreed with that claim.

There really isn't a set hierarchy when grading matcha. Rule o' thumb is: "The brighter green it is, the better it is." From there, the only two delineations that exist are thickness and powder quality. As far as I know. I tend to prepare my matcha using a koicha ("thick tea") prep, and ceremonial grade matcha is best for this. Mid-grade and kitchen grade matchas are best for usucha ("thin tea") preparations...as well as flavoring agents for food and green tea lattes. This was not a ceremonial grade matcha, at least not from what I've encountered in the past.

The powder was much finer than the usual stone-ground variety, almost reminding me of machine-ground sencha. The color was a faded, earthy green, not the brighter color of truly ceremonial matcha. And then there were the seeds. There was no mention of freeze-dried strawberries being included in the blend. Normally I would welcome it, but these were full seedlings amidst the powder. How would that affect the brew-up? On the plus-side, it smelled delicious - like Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries.

I ended up having to brew this up twice. The first time around, I did my usual pre-sift of the powder with cold water and a chasen. The powder was so fine, though, that it didn't appear necessary. When I finally added 4oz of 165F water, the tiny green granules instantly turned to broth. An attempt at whisking it to froth for thirty seconds turned up nothing. Only a swamp-colored liquor resulted.

On a second attempt, I skipped the pre-sift and added the hot water immediately. I took chasen to bowl again and whisked vigorously. "Some" froth bubbled to the surface but only on the periphery. There was none of the magnificent green foam of high quality matchas past. And again, there were the seeds...

As I feared, after tumbling around as I whisked, the strawberry seeds floated about in the green matcha muck - undisturbed. It was like they'd been sprinkled in after the whisk-up. The look of them in the liquor was quite unappetizing. On a positive note, they didn't affect the taste at all. The blend delivered on its namesake. Strawberries were the first thing I tasted and the last thing that lingered. Only a slight vegetal presence was detected in the middle but not much to elaborate on. The flavor of steeped, freeze-dried strawberries was omnipresent.

I'm no expert on matcha blending, but I gather the seeds were the result of adding stone-ground strawberries to the blend. The seeds probably didn't pulverize. A possible suggestion to avoiding this would be to use cut pieces of berry instead. No external seeds present. The taste would be the same without the unsightliness. Food for thought.

Geoff
Teaviews.com Reviewer

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