Last year, I visited Bird & Blend Tea Co’s shop for the first time and impulsively bought some of their flavoured matchas. They’ve been sitting around for a while until I finally bit the bullet and bought a chasen and other matcha utensils.
Since I’m not a matcha expert, this is really less of a review post and more of an account of my first few matcha sessions. Partly as a log for myself and partly so that if anyone wants to pick up matcha, they can avoid my mistakes.
While doing this, I found Nicole’s guide to matcha over at Tea For Me Please to be particularly helpful. All failures mentioned in this post are really all my fault rather than the guide’s (I’m sure I would have failed more without it).
Matcha the first: Ice Cream Matcha
The first matcha I made was, predictably, full of mis-steps. I’m not good at estimating the amount of matcha powder and added a bit too little at first. It took a while but I managed to get this foam eventually. The taste of this was sweet and pleasant – I’d make this as a matcha latter next time.
Second Time: Mermaid Matcha & Peaches and Cream
I started getting creative during my second session because I am always jumping the gun (see: many of my life decisions). In this session, I tried two things:
- Two types of cups – one was an open cup and one was a cup with a wider base and a smaller opening (on the assumption that the wind was the reason my bubbles disappeared so quickly). To be honest I did not see a difference for this because the foam disappeared very quickly. It was, however, a lot harder to whisk in a cup where the mouth is smaller than the base (not a surprise)
- Milk vs water – someone mentioned that they could whisk with milk as well and since the Ice Cream Matcha felt like it would go well with milk, I decided to try water vs milk. Milk actually had a better foam (finer bubbles) which held better. I’m not sure what kind of magic it is but this is pointing to way towards matcha lattes for me.
Third Time’s the Charm: Nordic Berry
Bubbles are a little large but they lasted (unlike my previous attempts)
I really should have this section in bold and colours (not sure how to do this in Gutenberg so it’s still black, which I guess is a colour) because I finally managed to make a decent bowl of matcha! There was foam and it lasted even after the photo was taken. The bubbles were bigger than what I would have liked but it’s definitely a step forward.
Nordic Berry Matcha was great because I love berries but let’s face it, it’s my favourite matcha of the lot because this is the first one I succeeded with.
Failed Fourth: Maca Mocka
Had to ‘chisel’ the tea out for this one! 
The saying “pride goes before a fall” is true because high off the success of my previous matcha attempt, I attempted to whisk up a storm with the Maca Mocka but only managed to tire my arm out. Even after at least ten minutes of whisking, I was unable to whisk bubbles that lasted more than a few seconds. I did get some promising bubbles, but they all disappeared in a flash.
Not sure if this played a part of it’s the result of the maca, but the powder here was very tight and clumped together. Could that have played a part? I did this as a latte but I don’t think the milk was the reason it failed, given that I managed to whisk the mermaid matcha latte the previous attempt.
I pretty much went out with a whimper for this mix and match set but you know what? It’s the journey that counts.
*whispers that to myself until I believe it*
Next Steps
What to do next (because having a plan can be nice):
- Finish up all the matcha (obviously)
- Get some plain matcha
- Maybe get a better quality whisk?
- Practice as much as possible