Ottawa Tea said

Have you made your own matcha?

Have any of you ever made your own matcha from tea leaves, using a mortar and pestle?

13 Replies
SimplyJenW said

I haven’t done it, but I would think a food processer, or a dedicated coffee grinder might be better.

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Alana237 said

You can buy matcha mills made for that, but I have never used one.

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Cofftea said

Samovar is the only place I’ve seen a matcha mill and it’s the only way I’d make matcha. I don’t see how a person could get it ground fine enough doing it w/ a mortar and pestle. I’d also think a food processor or coffee grinder would just make a green tea snow globe lol… maybe I’m wrong.

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SimplyJenW said

Hmm. I think I would take my chances with an electric coffee grinder first at $15. That mill is quite expensive.

I am an avid baker. The reason I suggest the coffee grinder or food processor is that both work very well to make rolled oats into fine oat flour. I think bodywise, the green tea leaves and oats are kind of similar.

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I tried it in a coffee grinder, i’d have to say use only sencha like steamed teas (chinese, japanese, whatever), take out the stem stalks (could be time consuming) and go easy on the blending. I learned the hard way when i wanted to pulverize it and ran it too long in the blender and it came out darker and burned.

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Ottawa Tea said

Thanks all. I’m always curious to try new things, and making my own matcha sounded interesting.

I’m going to try both mortar and pestle and coffee grinder…I’ll report back with my findings!

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Yeah all I can say is avoid heat and remove veins and stems.

Ideally you find a tea dealer that has tencha. Otherwise use any shade grown japanese tea and devein it yourself.

Good luck though. A stone mill really is the best way to do it.

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I tried it once in our granite mortar and pestle. We actually started with pu’er (to see how tea was made originally, but minus the garlic/butter/etc) and I ground it while doing other things for a good two hours or so. It was interesting! But not really worth repeating.. :p

Tried the next day with some green tea, and ground basically all day while working on the computer/watching movies/etc (probably 5 hours of grinding). It was a superfine powder, but it was terribly bitter when we made it up! I’m sure it’s because (as Mark mentions above), I couldn’t remove the short stems and veins.

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No. Tea should already be made, just placing it in cup of hot water. I am lazy.

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Emilia1 said

We mostly use matcha for matcha milk, but yes, I have successfully ground my own matcha powder using a coffee/spice grinder. It’s important not to have residual flavors so I put some uncooked white rice and ground that to collect any off flavors. Then I cleaned and dried my grinder and let it dry out very well. I put perhaps 1-2 tablespoons of sencha tea into the grinder and ground it. The stems do not all grind of course, so I have a fine strainer and I shook the powder into a clean container and then tossed the leftover stems. It produces a reasonable food grade matcha suitable for lattes. I probably would not use it for straight up matcha though. Still, considering I can get a decent sencha at the Asian market for very little, this is considerably cheaper than buying the already made matcha. My daughter drinks matcha milk like a mad person, and while I could mail order it’s just easier for me to pick up sencha at the market and make into matcha as necessary. It’s not like I don’t already keep sencha in the house anyway.

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