How to make koicha (thick matcha)

Every guide to thick tea gives you the same three numbers. Four grams of matcha, thirty to forty milliliters of water, around eighty degrees. Then it tells you to knead rather than whisk, and stops. If you follow that and end up with something lumpy, grainy, or already stiff before you have finished, none of those numbers is the reason.

The things that decide whether koicha comes together are all missing from the English recipes. Warm the bowl first and soak the whisk. Sift the tea — for thick tea this is not optional. Pour the water down the inside wall rather than onto the mound of powder, and add only about half of it at first. Then work it far longer than you have been told: not fifteen seconds, but something closer to a minute, until the surface turns glossy.

What thick tea actually is

It is not strong usucha. The two preparations are different in kind: thin tea is whisked to a foam and drunk brightly, and thick tea is kneaded to a smooth paste with no foam at all, closer to warm cream than to a drink. In a formal gathering it is the center of the occasion and shared from one bowl.

Which means that at home you are doing something slightly odd, and it is worth saying so. Making a single serving of koicha for yourself is practice, not ceremony. It is a perfectly good way to learn what the texture should feel like in the whisk. It is not the thing itself.

Before you start: the three minutes nobody mentions

This is the part that separates koicha that works from koicha that seizes.

Not one of the five English guides on the first page of a search mentions warming the bowl. Every Japanese guide I checked begins with it.

The method

Two level teaspoons of matcha — about four grams, or three scoops of a chashaku — sifted into the warm bowl.

Pour about half your water down the inside wall of the bowl, not onto the powder. Water dropped straight onto a mound of matcha wets the outside of the mound and seals it, and the dry center becomes the lump you spend the next minute chasing. Running it down the wall floods the powder from underneath instead.

Then work it. Not the brisk W of thin tea — the whisk stays down in the paste and moves in slow, wide circles, pressing and folding rather than beating, with the movement coming from the arm rather than the wrist. You are looking for the grain to disappear.

When it is smooth, add the rest of the water a little at a time until it moves like warm single cream. Thicker is not better. Paste that will not flow off the whisk is unpleasant to drink and is generally a sign the bowl was cold.

How long, really

Here the figures disagree — and not, as it is often put, because English sources rush what Japanese ones take slowly. Ippodo gives fifteen seconds in its Japanese recipe as well as its English one. The longer figure comes from other Japanese guides.

Neither is wrong. The short figure assumes everything above has already been done — a warm bowl, a soaked whisk, sifted tea, water added in stages. Start from a cold bowl with unsifted powder and fifteen seconds will not get you there; you will still be working at a minute and the tea will have cooled while you do it.

Work to the look, not the clock. It is finished when the surface stops being matte and takes on a low sheen, and when the whisk leaves a trail that closes slowly behind it. Thin tea has a similar tell, and in both cases the surface tells you before the timer does.

The tea you use matters more here than anywhere else

Doubling the powder doubles everything in it, including whatever is wrong with it. A tea that is merely acceptable whisked thin — where foam, water and a little air soften it — becomes flatly unpleasant at this concentration. Astringency that read as brisk becomes harsh, and a tea milled from later leaf turns bitter and dry.

This is the one preparation where the difference between a good tea and an ordinary one is not a matter of opinion. The labels on the tin will not tell you which you have; harvest, origin and milling date will. And it is not a cheap way to drink tea — four grams is roughly twice a normal serving, from the better end of what a maker produces, which is part of why good matcha costs what it does.

On the whisk

Thick tea is traditionally worked with a coarser whisk — fewer, heavier tines that can move a dense paste without splaying. I should be straightforward here: the chasen I stock is a 100-prong Takayama whisk, which is made for the foam of thin tea. It will make koicha, and mine has, but it is working against its design, and a fine-tined whisk asked to knead regularly will splay sooner. The difference between tine counts is mostly about this.

If thick tea becomes something you make weekly rather than occasionally, a coarser whisk is the right purchase, and it is not one I can sell you at present.

What I am not going to write

This is not how koicha is made in a tea gathering. The temae — the sequence of movements, the handling of the bowl and the cloth, how the tea is offered and received — belongs to a school and to a teacher, and it is learned in a room with someone watching, not from a shop's article. I practice; I do not teach.

What is above is how to get a good bowl of thick tea on a kitchen counter, so that when you do sit in that room, the texture is not a complete stranger.

Questions I get asked

What is the ratio for koicha?

About four grams of matcha to thirty or forty milliliters of water — half a ladle, if you are used to a tea room — against roughly two grams to sixty or seventy for thin tea. Work toward the lower end of the water first and add the rest as you go — it is easy to loosen a paste and impossible to tighten one.

Why did my koicha go lumpy?

Almost always one of two things. The tea was not sifted, or the water went straight onto the mound of powder instead of down the side of the bowl. A cold bowl makes both worse by stiffening the paste before you can work the lumps out.

Can I use a milk frother or a blender instead?

For thin tea an electric frother is a reasonable substitute. For thick tea it is not — there is too little liquid for a frother to engage with, and a blender needs volume it will never have. Kneading is a pressing motion, and these tools only beat.

Does koicha have more caffeine?

Per bowl, yes, because there is roughly twice the powder. Per gram of tea it is the same leaf. Sharing the bowl does not dilute this the way people assume: thick tea is kneaded for the number of guests, so about one serving goes in for each person and each person drinks about that much. Making it for yourself in the evening means a whole serving, not a share of one.

What should it taste like?

Dense, sweet and almost savory, with very little of the brisk edge of thin tea. If your first bowl tastes bitter rather than sweet, the water was too hot or the tea is not good enough for this preparation. Most people find the texture stranger than the flavor.

Where this fits

Once it is made, how to drink koicha covers what to expect in the bowl and in a tea room. If the two words are still doing your head in, usucha and koicha explained is the shorter piece and the place to start. Sifting matters more here than anywhere, and the beginner's guide covers the tools. The tea I stock for whisking is a tin chosen for the bowl, and the complete set has the bowl, the whisk and the scoop together.

Written by Mio.K, who chooses everything in this shop by hand in Japan.