Matcha Blending Attempts in 2024

Matcha Blending Attempts in 2024

I’ve gotta say: grinding matcha is a lot of work. It’s worth it when you can drink your creation, or see the look of happiness on someones face when they do. My hand ground Gokou is within the top 3 I’ve had, and I’ve had a lot, even stuff considered the very best that Japan produces in a year. Hori-san is surely looking down from the heavens blessing every bowl I make, I bought her tencha before her passing, and a bit from her family afterwards. It’s a niche thing to drink this hand-ground tea, I can’t really do a lot of it because of the time and energy investment, and since I want it to stay fresh, I just do enough to make 1 or 2 bowls at a time. Needless to say, I have a lot of customers and clients interested in that tea, but not the means to get it to them. I want a plan b, a teaser of that that I can do at a lower cost, but still be proud of, and I’ll accomplish that via a different technique: blending.

I came very far in the art of blending several years ago, and was very satisfied with my results. But I just didn’t have a market for the teas at the time, but that has grown a bit, and now its time to revisit this.

I picked up 3 quite good matcha from Japan, and I will make my own blend using them.

My base notes from drinking a 1:30 usucha are:

Tsujiki Asahi
Smells a bit like oatmeal, old tatami rooms, and old silk. Other aspects are very good though, everything is in balance, full creamy texture, not bitter, the flavor is bit plant like, greenhouse-y, synthetic?

Tsujiki Gokou
Doesn’t carry the aroma I want, bit weak as usucha but mid-palate and beyond is acceptable. It’s not bitter, perhaps it would be better as koicha.

Osada Tea Organic Gokou
Smells good, weak and watery usucha, unpleasant bitter finish.

It’ll be practical to attempt a 2g blend of (.9g Tsujiki Asahi, .8g Osada Gokou, .3 Tsujiki Gokou) with my reasoning being:
The balance and mouthfeel of Asahi is integral to the mix, as much as Osada’s gokou is to the aroma. An issue I have with Asahi is the boring aroma, but that should be overcome by making asahi is the minority in the blend at 45% while the combined Gokou is 55%. The Osada teas unpleasant bitterness will hopefully be overpowered by being just 40% of the blend. If test 1 flops, I think I’d play around with the gokou ratios, as the tsujiki gokou doesn’t really have too many negatives, and will round off the hard edges of the tea.

The result of that blend really missed the mark.

2g blend of (.9g Tsujiki Asahi, .8g Osada Gokou, .3 Tsujiki Gokou)
Asahi aroma too strong with less fruit than I wanted, comes off as nutty. flavor is too bitter~grassy and fresh.

In a dramatic swing, attempt #2 should be much better. I’ll try to make the lions share the best but most inert matcha here (the Tsujiki Gokou)
2g blend of (1.2 Tsujiki Gokou, .4 Osada Gokou, .4 Asahi)
The aroma of koicha is nearly exactly what I want, it could have a bit more of gokou’s ‘red’ fragrance is all I’d nitpick out.
As the usucha it smells a bit ricey and strawlike ala a tatami room. The balance however, is fantastic. I’d say there are no negatives other than I wish it was a touch more potent in both aroma and flavor.

Looking at this result, and having some experience behind me, I’m frankly rather close to a finished product. Potency is an unsolvable issue if I’m not willing to adjust the ratio of tea to water, the tea simply put is incapable of hitting harder than it does. If I want more potency in the final result, the ratio can be adjusted from 1:30 to 1:25~1:26 for example. See the chart below:

Before I start adjusting the water, there was one last thing I could do in the ratio. I did a blend of 1.2 Tsujiki Gokou, .5 Osada Gokou, .3 Tsujiki Asahi to see if it would beat the .4 .4 variation. This result eliminated the rice and tatami notes in the usucha, and although it wasn’t as berry-like as I hoped, I couldn’t think of any negatives in the tea. The blend of these specific teas probably can’t be better than this, or at least, I’m happy where its at. No negatives is a big win.

I’ll blend up a batch to serve in the restaurant now.

From my leftovers after testing, I have only 13.6g of Tsujiki Gokou to use for the rest of my blending. Since that is the lions share of my blend, I am limited as to how much more final matcha I can prepare right now. At this ratio I’ll need 5.67g of Osada Gokou and 3.4g of Asahi.

Once all the teas were mixed in a container, I put a lid on and shook it like crazy. The world isn’t perfect, but I hoped in doing this I could create a homogeneous mix that distributes my tea ratio in the same way as if I were blending components individually.

The results of tasting this mix:
It wasn’t different than my expectations, so that’s a win?