Hot Matcha Latte

The mistake almost everyone makes with a matcha latte is adding milk to powder. Matcha will not dissolve into cold milk. It clumps, sinks, and you spend the rest of the drink chasing lumps around the bottom of the cup.

Make a paste first. Everything else follows from that.

What you need

• 2–3 g matcha
• 30 ml water at 70–80°C
• 180 ml milk
• A whisk

We use HANATABA for this. It is floral and sweeter than most people expect green tea to be, and it holds its own against milk without needing sugar. HATSUKOI also works and is the gentler of the two.

Method

1. Sift the matcha into a bowl or wide cup. Ten seconds, and it changes the texture of the finished drink more than anything else you do.
2. Add the 30 ml of water. Not boiling — boiling water scalds matcha and pulls out the compounds that taste astringent. If you do not have a thermometer, boil the kettle and leave it three minutes.
3. Whisk briskly in a zigzag, not a circle, until there are no lumps and the surface is smooth. You are looking for something the consistency of single cream. About fifteen seconds.
4. Heat the milk to about 65°C and pour it in slowly, against the side of the cup.

Notes

On milk. Full cream gives the roundest result. Oat is the closest of the alternatives in body and the one we reach for most often. Almond is thinner and lets more of the tea through, which you may prefer. Soy can split if the matcha paste is too hot, so let it stand thirty seconds before pouring.

On sweetening. Try it without first. Matcha has a natural sweetness that arrives after the bitterness, and sugar covers it. If you do want to sweeten, a small amount of honey stirred into the paste while it is still warm dissolves properly. Added at the end it sits at the bottom.

On the ratio. 2–3 g to 180 ml is a starting point, not a rule. If it tastes thin, use less milk before you use more matcha — the powder is the expensive part.

A 30 g tin makes ten to fifteen of these, depending on how strong you like it.