We get a lot of calls and emails asking about caffeine and matcha. The short answer is that is has far less caffeine than brewed coffee does — about a quarter as much (roughly 25mg of caffeine for matcha, roughly 100mg or more for coffee, depending on factors such as steeping time, water temperature
It may seem ridiculous to some, but I think of a daily matcha habit as a cross between meditation and medication (with some epicurean fun thrown in to keep things interesting). We’ve covered the meditation part of matcha in these pages here and here, but to recap: great matcha has large quantities o
I’ve talked about the origins of matcha and its deep connections with zen buddhism on this site before, but I thought I might share a personal story. When I was 19 years old I stumbled, quite literally, into the Mt. Baldy Zen Center, a working zen monastery in the San Gabriel mountains, east of Los
A little while back I got the most delightful email — it was from Amanda Lee Peers, a singer/songwriter from Rochester, New York who was really into matcha. She mentioned that she was a contestant on the hit TV show The Voice, and that Gwen Stefani, one of the judges on the show, had taken [...]
This week I’ve been rereading Charles Duhigg’s utterly absorbing book, The Power of Habits, and am struck by how increasingly sophisticated the scientific understanding of habits has become — how they’re formed, and how they can be disrupted and changed. For anyone interested in developing excellent
“Would you care for a cup of matcha?” asked my DENTAL HYGIENIST the other day at the end of my cleaning. As you might imagine, this piqued my interest. My dentist, it turns out, has had a lengthy love affair with matcha. He loves all the usual things many of us love about matcha, but he especially [
Human beings crave the sense of being satiated. It’s a delightful feeling to be “full” in the best possible sense of the term. For many of us (including greedy-monster me), we keep eating AFTER reaching that optimum place where it feels just right to be perfectly full and not excessively full. How t
Confused about which matcha to try? You’re not alone. The first step is to figure out why you’re interested in matcha. It basically boils down to two reasons for most people: health benefits, and incredible taste. If you’re looking for health benefits only, and exquisite taste isn’t your primary con
Coldbrew matcha. Really? Really. We’ll talk about the pleasures of drinking icy-cold matcha in a second, but first: What do I mean by coldbrew? Coldbrew matcha simply means matcha powder prepared with cold water; as with coldbrew coffee, the water for making coldbrew matcha is never heated; we use
