How long should you whisk matcha?

Every guide gives you a number. Twenty seconds. Thirty. Fifteen to forty-five, depending on who you ask. I have written one of those numbers myself, and it is lower than everyone else's: ten to fifteen seconds.

Both numbers are right, and that is the problem with the question. How long you whisk is a result, not a target. It depends on how hot the water is, whether you sifted, and whether you are moving from the wrist or the arm — and those three things move the answer between about ten seconds and about a minute. What you should be watching is the foam, not the clock. When the large bubbles stop appearing and the surface turns matte, you are done, and another twenty seconds will make it worse rather than better.

Why my number is half of everyone else's

Seven guides I read put thin tea at twenty to thirty seconds. I say ten to fifteen. Neither of us is lying; we are describing different bowls.

So the honest answer is: if the water is just off the boil, sifted, moving from the wrist, in about 70 ml, ten to fifteen seconds is enough. Change any one of those and the number goes up. The guides quoting thirty seconds are describing an unsifted bowl at a lower temperature, which is what most people actually make.

What to watch instead of the clock

You can see when it is finished. The signs arrive in this order.

1. The large bubbles stop appearing. Early on the surface throws up bubbles you could count. When new ones stop forming, the air is going in as microfoam instead.
2. The surface goes matte. A finished bowl of thin tea does not shine. It looks like paper rather than glass.
3. The sound drops. The whisk gets quieter as the liquid thickens with air. This is the one people notice last and rely on most once they have it.

Then stop. Lift the whisk to the surface, draw it once through the middle to break any large bubbles that remain, and take it out through the center.

I should say where my own number comes from, because it is not a stopwatch figure. It is what I was taught, in a school where you are told to watch the surface rather than count, and it is what I have kept doing. The reason I trust it over the thirty-second figure is that when a bowl of mine does take thirty seconds, there is always a reason upstream — the water had cooled while I was doing something else, or I had not sifted, or I was tired and whisking from the arm rather than the wrist. Fixing the reason shortens the time. Chasing the time does not fix the reason.

Whisking longer does not make it better

Past the point where the foam stops changing, more whisking works against you. The foam begins to collapse back into the tea, and the bowl cools while you are doing it. Thin tea is meant to be drunk hot, in three or four mouthfuls, and a bowl you whisked for a minute is noticeably cooler than one you whisked for fifteen seconds.

There is also the whisk to think about. Every second of whisking is bamboo flexing against liquid, and the tines are a consumable. Whisking for twice as long, twice a day, is a real difference over months. How often you replace a chasen covers what that actually costs.

The one thing that is not about time

Keep the tines off the floor of the bowl. They should move through the liquid just above it. Scraping the ceramic is the most common way a beginner destroys a new whisk, and it is the only mistake here that cannot be undone. The first-use guide has the full routine, including softening the tines before the first bowl.

Thick tea is a different action entirely

None of the above applies to koicha. Thick tea is not whisked and does not foam — it is kneaded, slowly, until it is smooth and glossy like poured honey. If you try to whisk koicha the way you whisk usucha, you will get a bowl of paste with air beaten into it, which is neither. Usucha and koicha explains the two side by side.

Questions I get asked

Is thirty seconds wrong?

No, it is just a different bowl. At a lower temperature, unsifted, moving from the forearm, thirty seconds is about right. Fix those three things and you will find yourself finishing sooner without deciding to.

How many strokes is that?

Roughly two to three per second from the wrist, so ten to fifteen seconds is somewhere between twenty and forty-five back-and-forth passes. Counting strokes is a better guide than counting seconds when you are learning, because it makes you notice how fast you are actually moving.

W, M, or circles?

W or M. A circular motion pushes the powder to the edge of the bowl and builds a slow, coarse foam. The back-and-forth shape drives air in from the front of the tines on every pass.

My foam disappears after a minute. Am I whisking too little?

Usually not. Foam that collapses quickly is a temperature or a ratio problem more often than a duration problem. Why matcha will not froth works through the causes in order of likelihood.

Does whisking longer make matcha more bitter?

Not directly. Bitterness comes from the water being too hot, from too much powder, or from clumps that never dissolved. What longer whisking does is cool the bowl, which makes what is already there taste flatter.

Where this fits

If you are still putting the pieces together, the complete beginner's guide covers the bowl, the scoop and the powder alongside the whisk. The whisk I stock is a 100-prong Takayama chasen, and the bowl I use is a black Mino-yaki chawan with a flat floor, which is the shape that lets the tines work.

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