Matcha has a reputation for tasting bitter, grassy or chalky. Most of the time the powder is not the problem. Two things are: water that is too hot and too little water for the amount of powder. Get those two right and a decent matcha tastes sweet, savoury and rounded. This piece gives you the usual starting numbers, then lets you build a bowl and see what your choices do.
Matcha is made from tea leaves that are shaded for a few weeks before harvest, steamed, dried and ground to a fine powder. Because you whisk the powder into water and drink all of it, you take in the whole leaf rather than an infusion. That is why it is richer, more savoury and more caffeinated per serving than the same amount of leaf steeped in a pot, and why the water temperature matters so much: hot water pulls out bitter compounds quickly, and there is no strainer to stop the process.
Traditionally there are two styles. Usucha is the everyday thin bowl: whisked until it has a fine foam. Koicha is the thick one used in the Japanese tea ceremony: much more powder in much less water, stirred into a paste rather than whisked, and made from higher-grade matcha because there is nowhere for harsh flavours to hide.
Pick a style to load the common starting amounts, then move the sliders. The bowl shows how full and how strong it will look, and the notes underneath tell you what to expect from the water temperature and the powder-to-water ratio. The numbers come from the usual guidance (about 2 g in 70 ml at around 80°C for thin, about 4 g in 40–50 ml for thick); sources vary a little, so treat them as a starting point to adjust by taste.
Green tea is more delicate than black tea, and matcha is the extreme case. Cooler water extracts the sweet, savoury amino acids first; hotter water speeds up the bitter, astringent compounds. Most guides land somewhere between 70 and 80°C for a thin bowl. Below that the powder dissolves poorly and the taste is flat; above it you start to lose the sweetness.
You do not need a thermometer to get close. A kettle without temperature control can be let to stand after boiling, but it cools at a rate that depends on the kettle, the room and how much water is in it, so you are guessing. A kettle that lets you choose the temperature takes the guessing out, and it helps with other green teas too.
Bitter and sharp is almost always water that is too hot or powder that is too old or low in quality. Watery and dull is too much water. Lumpy and gritty means it was not sifted or not whisked hard enough. Yellow-brown rather than bright green points to old powder: matcha loses colour and flavour with air and time, so buy small tins and keep them closed and cool.
Matcha is a concentrated source of caffeine because you drink the whole leaf, and amounts vary between products. Treat a bowl like a cup of coffee: sensible in the morning, less so late at night, and worth checking with your doctor if you are pregnant or sensitive to caffeine.
You do not need much kit for matcha: a bowl, a whisk, a small sieve and a scale are the cheap part. If you want to fix the water temperature, a kettle is the one piece that is worth thinking about. Three things matter at any budget: