The Ritual Journal — Entry No. 03
How to Whisk a Proper Bowl of Matcha
Usucha, step by step — foam first, haste last.
A bowl of matcha asks for five minutes of your full attention, and gives back considerably more. The whisk — the chasen — is not a prop. Cut from a single piece of bamboo, its eighty or so tines exist for one purpose: to turn powder and water into a soft, even foam.
Begin with the water. Just below the boil, around 80°C, is right; boiling water scalds the tea and flattens its sweetness. Warm the bowl, empty it, dry it.
Sift two bamboo scoops of matcha — roughly two grams — into the bowl. Sifting matters: unsifted matcha clumps, and clumps resist the whisk.
Add seventy millilitres of water. Hold the whisk lightly, as you would a paintbrush, and briskly stroke an M into the bowl — loose wrist, arm doing the work. Within fifteen seconds a fine, pale-green foam should gather at the surface.
Drink it immediately. Matcha foam is a live thing; it settles, and with it the moment passes.