How to Make Matcha

So here we've got just a little coaster so it's not going to slip too much on the table and that'll protect the bottom of the table. In an ideal world we want to pre-warm the bowl and you can put in about a quarter of a cup of water and then it's very nice to put the whisk. We do a character in Omotesinke called coal and then we do this three times. So this is both attractive to look at and it's also delicate on the whisk because we're just gently moistening and I don't know there's just a little steam that's rising and then gently whisk a little bit. So this process helps to moisten the whisk before you use it. Any kind of receptacle, put it into your sink is fine. And then here you can use paper towel if you want. This is a linen cloth that we use in tea ceremony and we go around the entire perimeter of the bowl three times and then come into the center and in Omotesinke again we make hiragana yu no ji or the character yu. And so that just helps to make sure that not whisking your tea is really critical. Now here's the amount that I'm putting on the bottom. Okay so one and two. So if you have a look in there at the quantity I would say that that's a little bit less than a teaspoon but it's more than half a teaspoon. Okay gently transferring this over and I'm going to whisk it or just gently sift it into the bottom. I'm not scraping it through because I don't want to damage the matcha in any way. And I think you can see that there's a considerable help when you are blending. Now I am using a chashaku or teaspoon to get this last little bit through the very fine sieve. You can see that this is a very very fine sieve that we're using. And at the bottom of the bowl and then we'll tap the tea bowl once and twice in Omotesinke boiling. You're not going to be able to make delicious tea if you use too much water and not enough matcha. You won't be able to get the foam of that. Okay in Urasenke they hold their tea bowl on the side but if you're a beginner and you're not that experienced holding it on the top with your index and thumb fingers together off to the side of the bowl. Here we're roughly at 11 p.m and 7 p.m and then back and forth straight not scraping it against the bottom of the bowl because then I can't get the speed that I require to oxygenate the tea. But roughly I'm about I'm not quite maybe like half a centimeter from the top of or the bottom of the bowl of the tea. And then when I get to the very top I just gently go on the top and break up all the bubbles so that you have a thin film of bubbles. If you have really chunky big bubbles like this it's not considered polite and it's not quite as delicious so if you can break those bubbles up just by floating the whisk on the top of the surface of the bubbles until they're all broken up then it's a much more beautiful field of green green jade as they call it. So you see there's a little bit of a difference between the two. I'm going to drink that all in. Tea takes time relax and enjoy.