Is matcha supposed to taste sweet?

Almost everyone arrives at this question from the same place: a café matcha latte that tasted sweet and creamy, then a tin bought at home that tasted like nothing of the kind. One of the two is doing something the other is not, and it is worth knowing which.

Good matcha does have a sweetness, but it is faint, and it arrives late — after the bitterness, once you have swallowed. Anything that tastes sweet on the first sip has sugar in it. The sweetness in the leaf is made in the field by shading, not in the bowl by technique, so you cannot whisk it in. You can only choose a tea that has it.

What a bowl of thin tea actually does on the tongue

Thin tea made from a decent tea moves through three stages, and they happen in order. There is a short vegetal bitterness at the front. Then a broad savory weight in the middle, the thing usually called umami, which is closer to good stock than to anything in the sweet family. Then, once the bowl is down, a faint sweetness that comes back up and stays for a minute or two.

That last stage is the one people miss, because they judge the tea while it is still in their mouth. If you want to know whether a tea has sweetness, swallow, wait five seconds, and pay attention to what is left.

Where the sweetness is made

For roughly the last three weeks before picking, the field is covered. The plant, short of light, keeps its amino acids instead of converting them, and the leaf that comes off a shaded field tastes rounder and less astringent than the same leaf grown in the sun. That leaf is dried without rolling, ground, and becomes matcha: what tencha is explains the step most people skip over.

This is why sweetness tracks price so closely, and why it is the first thing to disappear at the cheap end. Shading costs a harvest's worth of labor and yield. A tea grown without it can be perfectly pleasant in milk and will never do the late-sweetness trick on its own.

Why the café version tastes sweet

Because it has sugar in it, and usually a good deal. A sweetened latte is a different drink with the same word on the menu, and there is nothing wrong with that — but it sets an expectation that a plain bowl of thin tea cannot meet and was never trying to.

The second reason is the powder. Tea blended for milk drinks is chosen to survive dairy and sugar, not to be tasted on its own: the difference between the grades is mostly a difference in what the tea is asked to stand up to.

How to get more sweetness without adding any

• Buy a tea that has it. This is nine-tenths of the answer, and it is the expensive tenth. A first-harvest, shaded tea from a named region will show sweetness; a cheap blend will not, however carefully you whisk it.
• Keep the ratio honest. Two heaped scoops of a chashaku is about 2 g, and 2 g wants 60 to 70 ml. Push the powder up without adding water and bitterness crowds the sweetness out.
• Sift, and whisk properly. Undissolved powder reads as chalk, and chalk masks everything behind it: why matcha tastes powdery.
• Drink it soon. A bowl left standing goes flat and drying as the foam collapses and the powder settles.
• Try thick tea once. Koicha, at four times the density, is where the sweetness in a good tea is most obvious — it is closer to syrup than to a drink: usucha and koicha.
• Eat the sweet first. A wagashi before the bowl is not decoration; it resets the palate so the tea's own sweetness registers: why the sweet comes first.

And if you would rather just sweeten it

Then sweeten it. I do not put sugar in thin tea, and that is a preference about balance rather than a rule I am handing anyone: at 2 g in 70 ml there is very little to hide behind, and sugar takes over the whole bowl. In milk it is different, because the milk is already doing the same job — honey, maple or a spoon of sugar all work, and the ratios are in how to make a matcha latte.

What I would not do is buy a pre-sweetened matcha powder and then try to judge the tea inside it. You cannot taste the leaf through the sugar, which means you cannot tell whether you are drinking anything worth the money.

Questions I get asked

Is matcha supposed to taste sweet?

Slightly, and afterward rather than immediately. A good tea leaves a soft sweetness once you have swallowed. Front-loaded sweetness on the first sip means sugar has been added.

Why does my matcha taste bitter instead of sweet?

Usually too much powder for the water, or a tea grown with less shading. Start with the ratio, then look at the tin: why matcha turns bitter.

Is uji matcha sweeter than other matcha?

Not by region alone. Uji is a region with a long record of careful shading, so its teas often show it — but a named cultivar and a recent harvest date tell you more than the place name does.

How do I sweeten matcha at home?

For a latte, sugar, honey or maple, added to the milk rather than the tea. For plain thin tea, I would change the tea or the ratio first, because sugar at that concentration covers everything else.

Does better matcha really taste sweeter?

Yes, and it is the clearest difference between price bands — clearer than color or smell. It is also the first thing lost when a tea is a year old, which is why the harvest date matters: how to store matcha.

Where this fits

If you want to taste the difference for yourself without spending much, the two-tin set pairs a tea meant for whisking with an everyday one for milk, which is the quickest way to learn what the sweetness is and is not. For the whole flavor, grass and seaweed included, see what matcha tastes like. The tools that keep it from being masked are a sieve and a whisk with enough tines, both in the complete set. If you are starting from scratch, the beginner's guide is the place.

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