Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / Status Quo of Fresh Ground Matcha

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Status Quo of Fresh Ground Matcha · Specialty Matcha Podcast

0:00
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Match podcast.
0:02
My name is Ryan, this is my Coho Zenjun.
0:04
Hello, hello. And we're the Co founders of
0:06
Sang Co match products. Yeah.
0:08
So we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey and
0:12
match our share startup stories and interview experts.
0:14
And sometimes we have some interesting conversations during
0:19
the day that we wanted to really enlarge that into a real
0:23
episode. Yeah.
0:24
So this is a less filtered, less structured discussion that we
0:28
were having and we realized it was continuing to evolve and it
0:32
might be interesting to share. So we don't have any conclusions
0:35
yet. I'm not sure if we will at the
0:37
end of the episode. But it is also important to say
0:41
that we are maybe a little bit biased because we're in the
0:44
process of creating a machine that can mill matcha fresh.
0:47
But this is a discussion on the status quo of fresh milled
0:52
matcha and both some in person dialogue that we've learned over
0:56
the past, I don't know, a year or so talking to people who've
0:59
been doing it or have experience with it.
1:02
And some of the commentary that's going on online as more
1:06
and more entrance to the fresh ground matcha space are voicing
1:09
their opinions. And we find some of the
1:11
perspectives really quite interesting.
1:14
The title of today's episode is the status quo of fresh ground
1:17
Matcha as we see it. So you can almost view this as
1:20
an opinion piece. So as Anjun want to sort of tell
1:24
everyone what sparked this conversation.
1:27
Yeah, so I guess like just by talking to a lot of people and
1:32
their opinion or their preference towards fresh ground
1:35
matcha, we've been really thinking about this problem
1:37
space lately. And also by seeing some of the
1:42
newer people trying to develop a similar solution to fresh ground
1:48
matcha and seeing their posts getting commented by, you know,
1:54
potential or not potential consumers, we really sparked
1:59
this thinking of, you know, what is, is it fresh ground just
2:03
better or is it like really debatable compared to pre ground
2:07
or stored well stored matcha? Yeah, because some people who
2:13
say that there are some very prominent tea vendors that were
2:16
what looked like trying to get rid of last year's stock,
2:20
telling everyone that the flavors are balanced and
2:22
harmonized and really they've reached their peak after one
2:26
year of aging. Sounds like a convenient excuse.
2:29
And on the other end, you see very similar Western vendors
2:32
saying our fresh milk matcha is in, it's amazing.
2:36
There's nothing like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:38
But if you make a, you know, horizontal comparison to, you
2:42
know, like, for example, Chinese tea, like Yan Cha, when it's
2:46
freshly roasted, it doesn't taste good at all.
2:50
Like, it has this very strong roasted burn notes.
2:53
And if you let it sit for a while, the flavor does become
2:56
more balanced. And also on the other hand, you
2:59
know, in the wine industry, you have, you know, new wine from
3:04
Beaujolais and people really like the fresh, juicy, fruity
3:07
notes coming from. Them Beaujolais nouveau, yeah.
3:11
So like. Except the French.
3:13
I've my girlfriend is French and I've been spending a lot of time
3:16
with her friends and I think there is no more universal dis
3:19
preference for wine than Beaujolais Nouveau.
3:23
Seems like they've done an excellent job selling this to
3:25
American. To the Chinese, I guess it's a
3:27
perfect dessert wine. It's almost like grape juice
3:32
drink. With it's easy.
3:33
Drinking of alcohol, you know, I think it's a totally fine drink.
3:37
So like when it applies back to matcha, like does it make the
3:43
same? Can you make the same argument
3:45
about, you know, like fresh ground?
3:47
It's just better. It's fresher flavor.
3:50
It's more pungent. Or, you know, like if we let us
3:53
sit for a while, it turns into a more balanced flavor.
3:55
Like what do you think? Yeah, I mean, it depends on how
3:59
the tensha was stored, right? So like a lot of this tensha is
4:02
very cold stored, some is even frozen.
4:05
Believe it's called the Global Japanese Tea Group or Society, I
4:10
forget what it's called Conference.
4:13
They recently put out two YouTube videos of their
4:15
conference, which they hold in both English and Japanese.
4:18
They did one in Tokyo. They did one in Kyoto for 2024.
4:22
And one of the keynote speakers was using what's basically a
4:27
freezer freezing technology to preserve matcha.
4:31
And we learned from Ian that the amino acid components in the L
4:35
theanine degrade a much slower at low temperatures than the
4:40
catechins. So basically what that does is
4:42
the sweet natural sweetness and savouriness of the tanja or of
4:46
the matcha is more preserved and will remain.
4:51
And then the bitter and astringent catechins will slowly
4:55
degrade. And you know, this is well
4:58
known, accounted for historically with the holiday of
5:02
Robbie Rocky, which happened in the fall.
5:04
I think it happens in November and that the tea ceremony
5:07
practitioners practice, it's the tea new year.
5:09
It's about 6 months after harvest and the tensha is stored
5:13
in a jar and on the outer part of the jar is all the Usatra
5:17
tea. There's another jar within the
5:19
jar sitting in the tent of the koicha tea, and in the part of
5:23
the ceremonies they mill it fresh and then they consume it.
5:26
So fresh milled matcha was. They might have been drinking
5:30
better matcha way back in the days before you had electricity
5:35
in a motor to strap on an ishiyusu to make this matcha.
5:39
So fresh ground matcha is actually more historic and has
5:45
been done for a longer period of time.
5:47
But there's a difference between, I guess, aging tensha
5:49
and aging matcha. So, you know, is there a change?
5:53
Absolutely. So I think things are going to
5:54
degrade at different rates. Whether or not it harmonizes it,
5:57
I don't know. But also, you know, the blending
6:01
skill is around this methodology, right?
6:04
The baseline assumption now is that best case scenario, a
6:08
consumer is going to consume the matcha within three months.
6:12
Realistically, it's closer to six months to a year if you're
6:16
lucky, in a good supply chain with good vendors that aren't
6:19
taking on a ton of inventory that they can't move through.
6:23
And because we don't have mill dates, we really have no idea
6:26
how long that thing has been set as powder.
6:29
But I bet those blenders take it into account.
6:34
I don't know if it was a multi generational blender.
6:36
There's probably things you can do to understand the degradation
6:41
path of tensha to make a better product after its three months
6:46
aged, 6 months aged or degraded. Pick your term.
6:49
So maybe that's just the reality of the world we live in with the
6:52
continuous improvement that's being done in Japan.
6:55
Yeah. Also, if you really try to wrap
6:59
your minds around all these criticisms about fresh milled
7:02
matcha, I think people are, I don't know if it's intentional
7:06
or unintentional, trying to fuzz the line between tencha and
7:10
matcha, like aging tencha and aging totally two different
7:16
things. A old tencha and the old matcha
7:20
is totally two different things. That's true.
7:23
And fresh milled is fresh milled.
7:27
You can fresh milk new tanja or you can fresh milk old tanja or
7:31
well stored tanja. And you know the the the result
7:35
doesn't change the nature of the tea or the matcha being fresh
7:39
milk. Kind of like in the coffee
7:41
world, right? You can have green coffee that
7:44
is 2 years old. It's considered very old usually
7:49
and fresh roasted and like, yeah, it's degraded.
7:53
Although weirdly there's some exceptions to that in Japan.
7:56
In particular in Ginza, there's a cafe called Cafe Dambra and
8:00
they have some green coffee that's like dating back to the
8:03
80s, some back to the 60s that they roast fresh on premises.
8:07
Zooming back into the topic, what is the status called?
8:10
A fresh ground matcha. I would say in Japan it's nearly
8:14
non existent. You don't see anyone advertising
8:16
this, you don't hear about it. No one puts mill dates on it.
8:19
We're going to travel there. We'll re look and see if that is
8:26
indeed the case, but I haven't heard of it.
8:28
I haven't heard of anyone talk about it.
8:30
So basically I think there's about 3 or 4 ways.
8:33
And we've been hesitant to name any companies by name, but I
8:38
think in this case we should wouldn't be doing this topic
8:41
justice. So the first method is to import
8:44
an ishiyusu, which is a traditional granite stone mill
8:48
that weighs a lot and it's basically an industrial piece of
8:50
equipment. And a couple of people have
8:52
them. And there's basically two types
8:54
of Ishiyusu that get exported. There's ones where the motor is
8:58
strapped to the bottom sand it can operate and it usually
9:01
operates in this beautiful glass box or plastic box that you can
9:06
put around it because the motor is underneath it.
9:08
The problem is, is that motors get hot, transfers, heats to the
9:12
stones, heats degrade matcha so they can't be run commercially
9:17
all the time. You can do small runs but I
9:19
think after 8 or 10 hours, and please excuse if my numbers are
9:23
slightly off, that's what I've heard.
9:25
I've never operated one. After around 8 or 10 hours, the
9:28
whole system gets too hot, so you can't run it continuously.
9:33
The other type. So that's kind of what Kettle
9:34
has. I know Setsugeka, excuse my
9:37
pronunciation, on 7th St. in the East Village in New York, they
9:40
have 1, and I believe there are some others in the United States
9:44
that have this type. It's more for demonstration and
9:48
show than like really commercial milling.
9:50
And then you have the commercial milling machines where the motor
9:52
is strapped on top very far away from the stones.
9:56
And those you can run quite a bit longer because there's no
9:58
heat being transferred here. So I've been told.
10:01
And someone like Mark from OECA, he has them in Lawrenceville,
10:05
NJ, and there's one in Minnesota called River and Stone Teeth,
10:09
and I believe they have one as well.
10:11
And there might be others that I'm just not aware of.
10:14
So that's really the first method where you import this
10:16
hardware and on the very cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap end.
10:19
And I don't think I've heard of anyone importing these in the
10:22
States. That's around $2000.
10:24
And then like the price for the actual equipment goes up to
10:27
10,000 and then you have to account shipping.
10:30
And I know that a lot of the good ones are made to order.
10:32
So if you can't get it used, it's not like people have
10:35
inventory of these. So it might take a long time to
10:38
get one. Yeah.
10:39
And also after some usage, they need to go through this process
10:43
called meditate, which means, you know, the stone needs to be
10:46
re sharpened to continuously provide, you know, the same
10:50
quality from the beginning. So it's quite a hard work to
10:55
maintain these things over, especially outside of Japan,
10:59
because a lot of these specialties are really only can
11:03
be found in Japan. Yeah, and it's quite a miracle
11:05
that people are willing to do this.
11:08
I really take my hat off to everyone who has imported Nishi
11:12
Yusu to bring fresh milled matcha to their country.
11:16
In this case, we're talking about the US, but to everywhere
11:19
else as well. It's, I mean, it's a big risk if
11:22
you're milling all of your matcha fresh ground and you drop
11:25
a millstone just if say you have two stones, you just lost half
11:29
your capacity to make products. And so it's really a huge risk.
11:33
And plus the devaluation of the machine, the asset itself
11:38
overtime because it has to be shipped back to Japan to get
11:42
refinished every once in a while, especially if you're
11:45
using it basically in a very heavily commercial layer for
11:49
really you're running the machine all the time.
11:51
So that's a modern miracle that that can exist and really
11:55
shortens the supply chain to bring a much fresher product to
11:59
consumers. And later on, we'll talk about,
12:01
you know what, to what degree we think that that's better.
12:04
We do think it's better. Really mad respect to these
12:07
pioneers. Absolutely, absolutely.
12:10
The second method is a couple years ago, the owner of Stone
12:15
Mill Matcha Cafe in the Mission District in San Francisco, which
12:19
I've walked by many times but never went in.
12:21
I'm a little sad about that now. Apparently it changed donors
12:24
recently, but it was really the place to get matcha.
12:28
Unfortunately, it was right across the street from Dandelion
12:30
Chocolate, Bean de Bar Chocolate, which always just
12:33
drew my eyes and I was like really into Bean de Bar
12:36
Chocolate at the time, so I always.
12:40
Making chocolate nips infusions. Yeah, the drinking chocolates,
12:44
so good. That's great spot.
12:46
Anyway, never, never managed to go, which is very sad one day.
12:50
But that gentleman started a company called Kuzan from where
12:53
the product is called Kuzan. I think the companies, it's a
12:55
different name and Kuzan is a small countertop all in one
13:00
device. And the basic description is
13:02
push a button and get matcha and it has their proprietary tensha.
13:07
And if you use any other tensha, I believe you void the warranty
13:10
or they won't guarantee that the machine works.
13:12
And there's a little very small ceramic millstone inside that
13:17
mills the tea. It drops into a cup that has a
13:20
little magnetic stirring rod just like you saw in my
13:23
chemistry class in high school or university and that they've
13:26
modified to make it froth a little more.
13:28
The one thing is though, with that machine is that you can't
13:31
put in hot water because the steam goes up and can clog and
13:35
make all the matcha gum up. And you get basically a shot of
13:40
matcha product that you can add to water to make an americano or
13:45
to a latte or whatever. And they've been very
13:49
pioneering. I was reading online they've
13:51
sold 10,000 units and really putting the idea and value
13:55
proposition of fresh ground matcha in the minds of
13:58
consumers. And this cousin has really made
14:01
a splash. I mean, you're starting to see
14:03
it at coffee shops a little bit. I know Hailey Bieber has one
14:08
right. So he has caught the attention
14:10
of celebrities. So it's, I mean, a really
14:13
pioneering product as well. And I think one thing that
14:16
they've really gotten right is the idea that people will drink
14:19
more matcha if it's less complicated.
14:22
It is a big mess. It takes a lot of time and it's
14:25
really nice if you can afford the time and money to indulge in
14:31
a moment to make matcha a traditional way, in a mindful
14:34
way. It's a wonderful practice.
14:36
The reality of most people's lives, especially when you have
14:40
a daily routine depending on whatever your obligations are,
14:43
time constraints or cost constraints are there is a real
14:47
value proposition to pushing a button and getting fresh milled
14:51
matcha and not even fresh milled matcha, freshly prepared matcha
14:55
ready to consume in a way that's as easy as Nespresso.
14:59
So I think that's something that they've really gotten right
15:01
that's very inspiring It's it's not necessarily the direction we
15:04
want to go in at first, right? We'll want to really focused on
15:07
overcoming all of the technical challenges.
15:10
You need to have fresh milled matcha that is a very similar
15:14
quality to what's coming out of an Ishiyusu, but is a first
15:18
product. I think what they've done is
15:20
very inspiring. Yeah, for 300 bucks you can have
15:26
everything compact in such a small box.
15:29
It's pretty impressive. Yeah.
15:31
But you know, on the critical side, it's the particle size
15:36
they claim is 20 microns. We've measured it.
15:39
It's it can be quite a bit larger and some of the particles
15:44
are in my experience above the perception threshold.
15:47
And so the human perception to distinguish 2 particles from one
15:53
another or to anything from one another is around 30 to 40
15:56
microns in size or micrometers in size.
16:01
And in that case, I would say it's not as performant as an
16:04
Ishi usu, but I don't think that surprises anybody.
16:08
And like, do the users of such product really need that much
16:13
granularity? Like most cases, they probably
16:16
just, you know, dump that cup of matcha straight into a cup of
16:20
milk and mix it with some sort of fruit marmalade or sugar.
16:24
Yeah, you don't need like fine grind matcha for that kind of
16:29
use case or. Maybe finer would be better from
16:32
a texture perspective and arguably a flavor extraction
16:36
perspective. So I mean, there are a lot of
16:38
limitations. I mean, there's a lot of
16:39
limitations when you're just whisking with cold water, unless
16:42
you're dumping that in and doing some type of hot extraction,
16:47
there's a lot of aromatics that you're missing out on.
16:49
You know it, It is not a perfect device, but you know nothing is.
16:55
Yeah, but the, it really paves the path of, you know, fresh
16:58
ground being a thing that, you know, consumer wants.
17:02
And it's it's something that you know can be done and can be
17:06
achieved and can be loved by people.
17:07
Yeah, absolutely. And it's gotten a fair bit of
17:11
criticism and quite a bit of love.
17:13
I think the most, I don't know, reductive in a great way, A
17:18
great generalized comment of the criticism of this is that it was
17:22
a controversial kitchen gadget from the magic community.
17:27
This was like, what a fine way to put in a concise box.
17:32
A lot of the criticism I've heard of this machine, but you
17:37
know, on the other side, I don't see anyone else doing it like
17:40
it's. And now that we're designing a
17:43
countertop mill, it is an incredibly difficult technical
17:47
problem. Yeah, you know, like, you know,
17:49
being users for so many gadgets over so many years like it, it
17:56
has always been easy to criticize a product until we
18:00
actually trying to make a product ourselves.
18:03
Now I just have mad respect, mad respect any products, you know,
18:08
bad products, mediocre products or good products.
18:12
Like they all probably spend equivalent amount of effort and
18:17
time and probably development of budget into, you know, making
18:22
all of these and turning something like turning a idea
18:25
into a physical reality is hard. It's very difficult.
18:29
Oh. Absolutely, extremely difficult.
18:32
And yeah, mad respects to anyone and everyone that's entering
18:37
this field because it's it's very challenging.
18:40
So that's the second one that you can have fresh melt matcha.
18:43
A new machine has just come out. We haven't seen it called the
18:46
Tenji, which is looks like a motorized version of a hand,
18:53
hand milled size Ishiusu. So much smaller diameter of
18:58
grind surface or grind phase compared to a commercial
19:02
Ishiusu. I'd say it's about half the
19:04
diameter by estimating it and it produces less fine tea.
19:08
So there was a exhibition at Penn State University and Mark
19:12
from Oeka brought one of the hand mills and everyone got to
19:16
try it and we got to taste it too.
19:19
And we got to compare it to his industrial full size, full grind
19:22
phase Ishiusu product. And there were two completely
19:25
different things from the the the the good Ishiusu.
19:29
The big one produces much finer particles and much more
19:32
interesting tasting tea than the smaller ones.
19:36
But you know, the smaller ones are also very historically
19:39
traditional and is a way that people have consumed matcha.
19:41
Like when people were doing the Roby Rocky tea ceremony, you
19:44
know, grinding fresh the previous spring tensha.
19:49
I mean, that was being done on smaller units like this.
19:51
So basically we've retrofitted this to have a motor onto it.
19:56
We have not the industry and the founders OF10G have retrofitted
20:01
a motor onto it to to mill it fraction.
20:04
And we were reading through some of the comment threads.
20:06
We're a little bit grateful that they launched before we did
20:09
because it was. Harsh.
20:12
Criticism, harsh criticism. That was a little surprising to
20:15
see, but some of the criticism had some good points, which
20:18
really got us thinking. And one of the threads that
20:22
someone meant or one of the threads of an idea that someone
20:24
mentioned that we found inspiring was this concept of a
20:28
professionally crafted product. And they were making the
20:30
argument that Tenshaw is hard to blend and it's hard to get a
20:34
specific flavor profile outcome, which we completely agree with
20:38
and that it's not going to be the same product as a quote UN
20:43
quote professionally crafted product versus when you're doing
20:47
it at home. And we had a couple of reactions
20:50
to that them you, you had more sharp reactions than I did.
20:55
Yeah. So first of all, you know, the
20:57
argument about lenders expertise I think doesn't necessarily
21:02
establish because matcha blends are essentially tensha blends.
21:08
Yeah, you feed into a blend tensha into the machine, you get
21:13
blend matcha. I I don't necessarily think, of
21:16
course you can feed into single origin, single cultivar tensha
21:20
into the grind and you know it produce something else.
21:23
But you know, like the the usage, it's totally dependent on
21:26
what you feed into the machine. One thing I disagree with the
21:29
spirit of is the desire for and the perceived necessity of
21:36
consistent, specific flavor profile outcomes.
21:40
I actually think the variation for the home consumer market
21:44
would be super interesting. Yes, you can buy blends from
21:47
established houses and then have it taste the same, but I think
21:51
people want to taste this estate, this year's harvest,
21:56
this cultivar, whatever, and have it taste completely exactly
22:01
as that product is. Or people can try their own
22:06
blend. Why is blending such a gated art
22:09
with experiments with people trying with the available
22:14
technology and available tensha? Everyone can start their own
22:18
experiment and try to find, you know their own consumer path
22:23
towards, you know, the product that they love.
22:25
Is that not stepping on the toes or stepping on the feet of
22:29
tradition where you have. I mean, that'd be like someone
22:33
trying to say like, I'm going to try to blend my own champagne
22:36
when there's people who've been doing it for hundreds of years.
22:39
It's like, OK, yeah, go ahead. But you know, on the other side,
22:44
it's, you know, the preferences of people in Japan are very
22:50
different. And I hesitate using the word
22:53
weird. But having done consumer testing
22:56
in I think 18 different countries ranging in South
23:01
America, North America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and
23:06
Asia, I can say the Japanese taste preferences are some of
23:10
the most unique than any other country that I've ever done
23:15
consumer testing it. And even it's baked into the
23:19
language. I believe Japanese has doubled
23:23
the number of texture terms as it relates to food than we have
23:28
in the English speaking lexicon, just in sheer resolution of
23:32
terms to describe a product's texture and across different
23:37
flavor. They have their own unique
23:39
vocabulary ranging from things like ohika, and there's others
23:43
as well, and they're perceiving and appreciating very different
23:47
sets of attributes. Now, you could make the argument
23:50
that people love Japanese food outside of Japan.
23:53
I think that is absolutely true. But there's also a lot of
23:56
Japanese preferences that do not translate or get exported.
24:00
I think NATO is a fine example, and that's a particularly
24:04
polarizing one. But I think a lot of these umami
24:07
tea teas in general, and we've seen this as well, they don't
24:10
translate necessarily. And it's so interesting to me.
24:14
I was watching the video with the founder of Tea Drunk and
24:18
Martin, and they had an hour long one about Mark from Oika.
24:21
They were tasting mocha, their version of mocha.
24:24
Also some matcha and she mentioned the exact same tasting
24:28
note that you mentioned Sam when she tasted some of the more
24:31
umami rich matcha. To her it tasted like seaweed
24:34
soup. No, not just seaweed.
24:36
Seaweed. Soup.
24:37
Yeah. Seaweed.
24:38
Soup and I believe she's from mainland China.
24:40
You're from mainland China your friend in Shanghai who's really
24:43
into tea that hosted that Thai and matcha event with a bunch of
24:46
mainland Chinese consumers who are tea people.
24:50
Seaweed soup. It's a It's a very interesting
24:53
reference that people just cannot Unsee.
24:56
Yeah. I mean, like, you can
24:58
deconstruct seafood soup into a lot of, you know, more granular
25:03
flavors, but when you have the reference flavor for that
25:08
notion, you just cannot Unsee or untaste it.
25:12
Like it's so strong of, you know, reference that it's really
25:17
hard to break it down into smaller parts and develop, you
25:20
know, more. Granular reference.
25:23
I wonder if Koreans have the same because they have that
25:25
whole like what is that called a meal go cooked seaweed soup.
25:29
I wonder if they have that same reference and they wouldn't
25:32
like. Yeah, very, very likely.
25:35
But you know, go but go. Going back to the topic, you
25:37
know, it's I think people can and will blend their own tensha
25:42
and make it taste good. And the notion and arbitrary
25:46
social construct that is quality, it might be completely
25:50
awful to anyone who does matcha in a ceremonial context, in the
25:54
Japanese context that has been working in the industry for.
25:57
Tons of years. But it might just be something
26:00
that someone in Spain loves, or that someone in the States
26:05
loves, or that would fit mainland Chinese preferences, or
26:09
what people in Indonesia would love.
26:12
It's like how people, you know, trying to speed up poor aging
26:17
and, you know, accidentally created show poor from, you
26:20
know, artificial aging or they call world way.
26:23
From wet fermentation. From wet fermentation like from
26:27
like a traditional shun poor Rob poor perspective.
26:30
It's. It's a bastardization.
26:32
It's not a good product, but people like it nowadays, like
26:37
especially people in Guangdong, like they they cannot have Yong
26:41
Cha Yong Cha or you know, morning a breakfast style dining
26:46
in Guangzhou without Xiao poor that's, you know, like it.
26:50
It's it can. You can almost see it as a
26:52
different product. And someone we don't know who
26:55
yet, specialty matcha artisan somewhere in the world, when
26:58
they have access to this fresh ground matcha equipment and can
27:01
buy different tensha and source different tensha, might do
27:04
something that would be considered equally absurd and
27:08
just stumble upon something that is fantastic.
27:12
It's like the difference between having a few perfect artisans
27:16
perfectly focused on their craft and their own little bubble,
27:19
which we totally respect by the way, love these traditional
27:23
arts, versus letting a million flowers bloom and seeing what
27:28
happened. I think the availability is high
27:32
for a blending or, you know, self creating new tension plan
27:38
in house because you know, previously, right, you made a
27:41
comparison of you're trying to blend your own champagne, but I
27:45
don't think it necessarily equates to a scenario like this,
27:49
right, Like because like blending champagne, making
27:51
champagne takes a lot of other steps other than just.
27:56
That are not isolated they're. Not isolated, but for blending
27:59
tensha, you know, creating your own blend of matcha you know you
28:04
have already abstracted a lot of other process away.
28:07
Yeah, yeah. There's too many dependent
28:09
variables in that. Exactly, exactly.
28:11
And the Tenta itself is almost a half finished product.
28:15
So you know, you when you're putting, you know, two or more
28:18
different type types of Tenta together and trying to create
28:21
your own plan and trying to meal it with, you know, technology in
28:25
the future, I would not necessarily see it being
28:29
inferior than, you know, the matcha plant that we have
28:32
nowadays on shelf. Yeah, that's a great point.
28:35
Great .1 of the other things that he said too, is that fresh
28:38
ground isn't always better and I think the company that makes the
28:42
stone mill reached back out says, oh, we source tea directly
28:45
from Japan. But like this idea that fresh
28:48
ground isn't always better. I mean, of course, if you start
28:51
with horrible tensha and fresh grounded, you're not going to
28:54
necessarily get a better product.
28:56
Yeah than if you start with high quality tensha and it sits for
29:00
six months in extreme powdered form, right?
29:03
I mean, let's revisit this. We talked about this a lot.
29:05
Matcha is incredibly unusual. I, I believe someone was
29:09
speculating in the food science world that it might be the
29:12
finest particles that we, that is a normal food stuff that gets
29:17
consumed. I believe fine chocolate is
29:19
around a similar particle size, around 3:00 to 5:00 microns and
29:23
maybe even a little finer for, for really fine chocolate.
29:26
But there's very few things that we consume that are that small
29:30
that they can be suspended, you know, 10 times finer than
29:34
coffee. Just the amount of surface area
29:36
is almost infathomable in these products in, in matcha.
29:42
So yeah, garbage in, garbage out for sure.
29:45
But I the question is, is if you can get the quality high enough,
29:49
is fresh ground matcha better than six month old matcha?
29:55
Or even if it's milled slightly worse, is it better or worse?
29:58
And then then something that would be quote UN quote,
30:01
professionally crafted, which is a very interesting concept.
30:05
And you know, maybe not at first.
30:08
I met like the first power home users of a machine like this of
30:13
a very super easy automated, you know, stone mill that was
30:18
usually a hand grinder level. Yeah, it's probably not going to
30:22
taste very good. First, you have very limited
30:24
supply of tension that you can buy at the moment.
30:27
You know, it's people have no blending skill.
30:30
It's like you're just learning how to walk, like it's going to
30:34
take time for people to acquire the skill.
30:36
And that guy will probably be right for the first three or
30:42
five years that these machines are on the market where people
30:47
can mill their own matcha. There's no skill and there's no
30:51
way to learn the skill or learn about it because it's all so
30:54
protected. But I think in the long term,
30:57
but it won't run out. And I know that's one area we
31:00
really want to focus on part of what we see in the broader
31:03
vision of in the countertop matcha mill that we're making
31:06
with a cooling system, because the number one reason why people
31:09
like Ishi Usus is because heat degrades the product.
31:13
So we know that's incredibly important, which is being
31:15
engineered from the very beginning using technologies
31:17
that we're borrowing from the the CPU cooling industry.
31:21
And having being very aware of particle morphology or particle
31:25
shape and different creating different patterns on the
31:27
grindstones themselves to make sure that we have very high
31:31
surface area particle morphology, which means it forms
31:34
a higher quality suspension. And we're working with food
31:38
scientists in the Netherlands and to help compare our particle
31:41
morphology, we want to do sensory testing to show that it
31:44
can do that the flavor is it's performant from a flavor
31:48
perspective. And we're also allowing all of
31:51
the users to change the RPM, which effectively changes the
31:55
heat that it's being milled at with an active cooling system,
31:58
right? So that brings a whole lot of
32:00
craft. Who, however, is using this,
32:02
right? Maybe if you run it a little
32:04
hot, you can create really interesting flavors that people
32:07
would really love, or you can run it very cold, preserving
32:10
more of the inherent taste that is in that tenta.
32:13
What? We learned recently is that the
32:16
heat doesn't necessarily it's, it's not necessarily a bad
32:19
thing. Like some level of heat at some
32:22
stage will have very interesting impact on the overall flavor
32:26
profile of matcha. So like for some issue used to
32:30
users, they would even like grind the issue used to dry
32:35
without any tea inside to create a some sort of a baseline heat
32:40
or you know, temperature before dumping, start dumping tancha
32:44
into the the grind surface. Yeah.
32:47
That that, that was very surprising.
32:49
So I mean, what the whole world will slowly learn as the
32:52
specialty matcha movement grows is how our flavor profiles
32:56
transform. How do you go from a sensory
32:59
profile on evaluation of tensha to the end matcha?
33:02
And how do different blending components create different
33:05
flavors? And how do process parameter
33:08
changes such as temperature affect the way flavor profiles
33:12
get transformed? And this is the craft that can
33:15
create some incredibly unique products in our industry that
33:18
are better, better fit to consumers preferences where they
33:22
are and maintain quality standards.
33:24
There really is this like really high barrier of quality
33:28
standards in matcha because not only does it degrade with time,
33:32
it degrades with ambient temperature quite a lot.
33:35
And so even if you're just arguing based on nutrition for
33:38
matcha, you should consume it fresh.
33:40
The there's less L theanine degraded, fewer catechins
33:43
degraded. Even at two months at room
33:46
temperature, you lose 40% of the EGCG in a matcha.
33:50
That's incredible, I guess one of the primary reasons why
33:53
people drink it and then why it's healthy, let alone six
33:56
months, let alone if you don't have a perfect cold chain, which
33:59
by the way, almost no one has a perfect cold chain.
34:01
And the degree of heat stress and degradation that can happen,
34:05
especially if you live in a warm country.
34:07
It's a huge problem with the chocolate industry actually, is
34:09
that the product will get basically destroyed if it gets
34:13
too hot. And imagine you're some place
34:15
like, I don't know, like Bangkok, like Guangzhou, like
34:18
Japan in the summer, it's incredibly hot and these things
34:21
do not travel on the cold chain. One, it would be incredibly
34:24
environmentally unfriendly. It's very energy intensive to
34:28
have things travel on the cold chain.
34:30
And it's probably too expensive for what most people are doing
34:33
anyway. So you don't even know what kind
34:35
of heat stress your matcha has by the time you've opened it,
34:38
even if it was produced three months ago.
34:40
I know we, we left some matcha in the car the other day.
34:43
You know, we just tried it. It's a different product.
34:46
It's set for three days in the the Cantonese hot August summer,
34:51
well seasoned. Well matured.
34:53
Color changed. Right.
34:55
But you just and the problem is consumers don't know if they
34:59
should blame the product or if it was degraded in some way.
35:03
So really pushing this end processing step to the edges
35:07
makes the most sense, even if, let's say, instantly milled
35:11
matcha doesn't taste as good as after it's set for a week or a
35:15
month, which also we're hearing a little bit, Yeah.
35:18
Is that some graceful aging might help.
35:20
And I believe that that's true anecdotally, yeah.
35:23
But the fact is that. They know how long their matcha
35:27
will be, you know, sit or aged for that graceful amount of
35:31
time. Yeah, like they can control that
35:33
component because they know because.
35:35
They were the one. They either know the Miller or
35:37
they milled it themselves. Yeah.
35:38
Or like. Yeah, exactly.
35:40
And they can experiment. You know, Asafi will taste
35:44
better if you let us sit for like 2 weeks, or like Samidori
35:47
will taste the best when you let us sit for like just one week or
35:51
10 days. But maybe Yabukita?
35:53
Tastes fantastic. Like really right off the mill.
35:56
Yeah, like you just. Don't know, but now you have the
35:59
possibility to discover this gated secret for centuries.
36:04
Yeah, No, absolutely. I think that like all.
36:07
Of these, macho milling technology really opens the
36:10
possibility for regular consumers to be able to
36:14
experiment or experiment and experience something that was
36:19
once just not available for anyone else.
36:22
I think for this. Movement to be the most
36:24
successful as we project out a future for what specialty much
36:27
it can be. I think it's very important that
36:31
the traditional players come along for the ride.
36:34
And the reason I think that is the universe of possible flavor
36:37
profile and quality options is enormous.
36:40
And a lot of people experimenting will I think allow
36:44
this industry to flourish in the wrong long run and to let 1000
36:47
flowers bloom is the right model.
36:50
However, we don't want that to be at the expense of the
36:54
perception of whether or not fresh ground matcha is good or
36:58
bad in the eyes of consumers. Because if you let that trial
37:01
and error out into the world, people might make preemptive
37:04
judgments about whether or not it is good or bad.
37:08
And the reality is if we can get the buy in of the traditional
37:11
players in the Japanese tea industry, they can give
37:13
guidance, they can pre blend tea to be milled, they can do
37:17
experiments with this machine to allow it to have different
37:20
temperatures and basically give a suggested recipe for the way
37:24
that these things are going to be made.
37:26
And then from there, we can have this, but without the seed
37:30
crystals of the principles of creating quality product from
37:34
people who've been empirically doing it and improving it for
37:37
decades. It's going to be a very long
37:40
learning curve that I don't think we should take consumers
37:43
along for the ride. Yeah, I mean.
37:46
Like by the end of the day, people still need to drink
37:49
matcha and for people to drink matcha they need to buy
37:53
attention. And for these traditional
37:55
houses, like they are still going to sell their attention.
37:58
It's really just a change of mentality and mindset of viewing
38:04
of the consumer narrative or consumer demand in the ever
38:08
changing world. Yeah, no.
38:10
Absolutely. So just to review, there's
38:13
different ways you can get fresh milled.
38:14
Matcha 1 is by buying matcha fresh in Japan, knowing exactly
38:19
when it was milled and having it immediately shipped to you,
38:23
which I think is about 0.00. I don't know how many zeros
38:28
percent of the industry because no one in Japan that I'm aware
38:31
of gives a mill date. Some people give guarantees and
38:35
maybe if a relationship with the producer they'll tell you when
38:38
it was milled, but a few consumers can pay.
38:41
A 200 or 300 bucks of their shipping fee on the cold chain
38:46
or to make it worthwhile. You know, ordering enough
38:49
products and then when you order a couple cans of matcha, like
38:53
when you're going to place an order like every two weeks, like
38:56
if you're ordering a couple cans of matcha at once, it's still
38:58
not going to be fresh. So that's, that's number option
39:01
one. Option 2 is you order from a
39:03
vendor who's brought in Nishi Yusu.
39:05
They're basically very similar or identical process.
39:07
It's done in Japan and it's just in a more distributed way where
39:11
it's much closer to you. Very innovative companies doing
39:14
that, which are very cool. So that's option #2 very
39:18
grateful that those Trail Blazers have imported these Ishi
39:21
Usus in the past couple of years.
39:22
You can have countertop machines like Kuzen, which can deliver a
39:26
fresh ground experience at home, but definitely does not
39:29
replicate the same product that you get from an Ishi USU, but
39:33
certainly will give you the health benefits for sure because
39:37
it's better preserved in tensha than it is in matcha.
39:39
So from a nutrition perspective, it's certainly the case.
39:42
From a sensory or flavor perspective, you know, you only
39:46
have so many options when you are forced to buy tensha from 1
39:49
supplier proprietary tensha, some of which is not even first
39:53
harvest. So that's the second option or
39:55
third, excuse me. And then we have these hand
39:58
grinders where you can mill it yourself by either buying one.
40:02
I think the retail price is around $2000.00 for a hand one
40:07
when you buy from some of the the Japanese places online and
40:10
then pretty soon. We don't know exactly 10 G that
40:14
was 10 G Really cool to see that on the scene.
40:17
Very grateful that they exist and also trailblazing for us a
40:21
little bit. And then ours is going to be
40:23
much more similar to a high end coffee grinder, but specifically
40:26
suited to meet the performance metrics that you would need to
40:30
mill matcha fresh on. So very different engineering
40:33
problem actually, because coffee grinders, the birds don't touch
40:36
each other, so it produces significantly less friction,
40:39
which means you have very different torque requirements
40:41
and very different heat generation that's going on,
40:43
right? Ours, our millstones are
40:44
touching each other. So it completely changes the
40:47
game from an engineering perspective.
40:49
But engineering all the features that we need to kind of reverse
40:53
engineer what's going on in Nishi Yusu and put it using new
40:56
materials, new technology to have a much more contemporary
41:00
approach for the way that matcha can be mills, the way it can be
41:04
ground be very interesting in the.
41:07
Future to see how the mythology of the powder coming from our
41:12
machine compared to traditional issues.
41:14
How does it necessarily impact the way it tastes and impact the
41:18
way it performed in a matcha drinks and even within?
41:22
The first version of this machine you can swap out the
41:25
spring that's creating the pressure.
41:26
You can change the pressure and the force that's being had on
41:30
these matcha leaves. The millstones are completely
41:33
removable. You break one, no problem, we'll
41:36
send you a new one. Or maybe we'll send you one with
41:38
spare so you don't have to ship 25 kilos back to Japan to get re
41:43
sharpened. They're much.
41:45
Smaller. And you know, in the future.
41:48
Right now we only have one design of the millstone, but you
41:51
know, in the future there will be other patterns, other groove
41:54
patterns that can be made suitable for other kind of
41:58
teeth. Yeah, or other cultivars.
41:59
Or other use cases, there might be some that just grind much
42:03
faster than others. But you you're sacrificing on
42:06
particle morphology. I know the very spiral pattern
42:10
Ishiusu design proves very round particles, but they're much
42:13
faster so it won't suspend as well.
42:15
But if you're dumping into a latte, maybe that you don't
42:18
care. Or if you are a.
42:20
Hojita lover like me, I recently discovered my great love of
42:24
Hojita powder fresh milled Hojicha fresh mill.
42:28
Hojicha, there we go. Ryan, that will also be a future
42:31
project. And yeah, so it's.
42:33
Having these different millstone plate, you can completely change
42:36
the parameters around heat, around pressure and around
42:39
pattern, which is very exciting to us and the future that we'd
42:42
like to see. And you're slowly trying to
42:45
bring that to life. So I think the ability, I think
42:48
one of the conclusions that I come to at the end of this
42:50
around the status quo fresh mold matcha is that it's very much an
42:54
infrastructure problem. You can have all these very
42:56
clever solutions around shortening the supply chain or
43:00
importing issue, which are all great or these these at home use
43:05
hand motorized hand grinders. But to do this more commercially
43:09
at scale so that you know, the average person when they order a
43:12
macho is getting a fresh ground matcha or a recently ground
43:16
matcha with a transparent millday.
43:17
It's largely an infrastructure problem.
43:20
Not everyone can buy a Nishi Usu and probably is not profitable
43:24
for most people to buy a Nishi Usu or have the expertise to run
43:28
it to source etcetera. It's just it's too protected in
43:31
industry. And so, yeah, my take is that.
43:34
You know like by solving this technology problem we are really
43:38
offering regular customer a freedom create something that
43:44
can just not imaginable in the past.
43:47
We are giving off this creativity to the consumer,
43:51
which are the end users of these products or businesses or
43:55
businesses. You know, it's like.
43:57
Back in the days, you can only go to a photograph booth to take
44:01
your photos. Nowadays, you know, you can have
44:03
your iPhone, you can have your digital camera.
44:05
You are giving this ability to create something to the end
44:10
users. Yeah, absolutely.
44:12
And we're not beholden to the limitations of this
44:16
infrastructure deficit and add on to it.
44:19
I mean, what we're doing is very different to that.
44:21
And Ishi Usu, in some ways, it's not even comparable when you can
44:25
control the amount of weight or the temperature or the pattern
44:28
design. It is a completely new feature
44:31
set that can allow people to do things that are even beyond our
44:34
current imagination. The first versions are
44:37
definitely going to be more for businesses because it's going to
44:40
be very expensive to make them. You know, we're not going to
44:42
make a ton of inventory. We we're not the large enough
44:45
size of a company to take on that kind of risk.
44:48
Much more made to order type model like the history of like
44:53
La Razzocco and the espresso machines.
44:56
So in the beginning, everything's going to be made to
44:57
order, you know, the the possibilities that can be done
45:00
with this. I'm very excited to see what
45:02
happens when we can get something like this in some
45:04
people's hand and to create some very different, very different
45:08
products. So I think fresh ground matcha
45:10
is the future for sure, and have the ability to people to make
45:14
their own craft. And this idea of professionally
45:17
crafted matcha is going to change for the better.
45:21
And in the beginning, yeah, it's probably going to be worse.
45:24
That guy's completely right. In the long run, I think what we
45:28
get is a much more diverse and thriving industry with
45:32
interesting viewpoints from interesting people all over the
45:35
world doing really cool things that their consumers absolutely
45:39
love while preserving Japanese traditional heritage at the same
45:44
time. We will still be consumer of
45:47
traditionally stone ground Ishiyusu made matcha.
45:51
I mean, we still like, we still love it.
45:53
Yeah, Yeah, we love it. This is not.
45:55
In competition at all? But you know the fact that.
45:58
Is you know, it will still be professionally craft matcha, but
46:02
the sheer meaning of professional will just change.
46:05
The people who can be caught professional will change and
46:09
offering this infrastructure, you know, like there will be
46:12
other people become power user, become professional user in the
46:16
future that are not inside Japan.
46:19
Yeah, absolutely. Well, even let's say for
46:22
example, it's your life dream to be a matcha blender and to
46:26
create fresh milled matcha, to open your own matcha brand where
46:29
you are the one doing the craft part.
46:32
That's your dream, your life stream.
46:34
As a Chinese person who spent moved to the States and middle
46:39
school, spent almost all of your time in the States, moved back
46:42
to China to work professionally with limited Japanese
46:45
capability, there is a 0% chance that your dream can come true.
46:51
Zero. No.
46:52
Absolutely not. You could.
46:53
This is not an industry you. Can break into Oh for you, Ryan.
46:57
Zero for me as an American. That's half Korean that has
47:00
almost no Japanese. 0% chance if that is my dream.
47:05
Or even if you're in Japan, if you're a woman, it's probably
47:09
close to 0% chance that that dream can come true for you.
47:12
It's a very male dominated industry, very sad, very.
47:17
Sad these. Institutions are very old world
47:20
model of the past, which I don't think fully belongs in the
47:24
mainstream in the future. And that these opportunities
47:28
need to be opened up for other people.
47:30
I I think it deserves to be preserved.
47:32
It preserved it it deserves to be honored for the art and the
47:36
craft that it is. But it's it's it's not the
47:40
future for all specialty matcha the future of.
47:44
Specialty matcha belongs to everybody.
47:46
Yes it does. Equal opportunity for everybody.
47:49
Yep, All right. I think it's a fine place to
47:51
stop and it's a bright future to look.
47:54
Ahead. Well, we're very excited.
47:56
I'm very excited to hear from you, our listeners too.
47:59
So it's if you have an interesting perspective or
48:02
disagreed with anything we'd say, we'd love to talk with you.
48:04
We don't believe in a like a gotcha podcast.
48:08
We're not going to invite people on to say something, to disagree
48:10
with them immediately and try to bait them into saying something.
48:14
It's it's not our style And so very interested in hearing your
48:17
perspective. We genuinely want to celebrate
48:20
all these different perspectives and find Matcha so fascinating,
48:24
not from just the product itself, but how that the values
48:27
that people put on Matcha are really a reflection of different
48:32
parts of humanity and their values.
48:34
That's what's so fascinating about Matcha as a specialty
48:37
product. Yeah, it's really.
48:39
A element to for us to reflect, as you know, we are members of
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the society and members of this community and we are members of
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this culture that we all enjoy together.
48:52
Absolutely. So hopefully the future is
48:55
bright green or in the case of Hoji, chop powder, right, bold
48:58
and brown, bold and brown. But yeah, we look forward to
49:06
what the future holds. So thanks so much for listening.
49:08
If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with friend
49:11
and we'll see you on the next one.
49:13
See you in the next episode. Bye.