Latest / Specialty Matcha Podcast / Mini Update & The Science of Matcha Whisking Repost

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Mini Update & The Science of Matcha Whisking Repost · Specialty Matcha Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to the Specialty Match Podcast.
• 0:02
  My name is Ryan, this is my Coho Zhongjun.
• 0:04
  Hello. Hello.
• 0:05
  Who also goes by Sam and we're the cofounders of Sanko Matcha
• 0:08
  Products. We launched this podcast to
• 0:10
  discuss our learning journey in Matcha, Usher, startup stories,
• 0:13
  and interview experts. And today we're doing a very
• 0:16
  mini update. We've been very busy this week
• 0:18
  and didn't have time to completely edit a podcast
• 0:21
  episode, so we wanted to repost one of our favorites.
• 0:25
  It was the second one we ever recorded, The science of matcha
• 0:28
  whisking. So Zhongjun want to give give a
• 0:30
  little update on what we've been working on.
• 0:32
  Yeah. So we've been working on the
• 0:34
  mill for this is already like a year.
• 0:38
  Full nine months, I think. Nine months a mil.
• 0:40
  To mil matcha fresh anywhere and everywhere.
• 0:42
  Yeah. So we spend a lot of time trying
• 0:45
  to get the output to meet the same standard as a traditional
• 0:50
  Ishi usu in terms of the how to find this and the flavor.
• 0:54
  So right now we are getting pretty close in terms of the
• 0:59
  flavor and the granularity of the matcha powder.
• 1:02
  We're. Really at the point.
• 1:03
  Where like. We would be proud.
• 1:05
  To serve. This.
• 1:06
  Yeah, it's actually tastes pretty good, but the only
• 1:09
  problem is it's incredibly slow. We're still trying to increase
• 1:13
  the motor speed, but that means that the motor is going to
• 1:16
  generate a significantly more heat, so we're installing a
• 1:20
  cooling system to cool the matcha down so that it won't
• 1:23
  essentially cook the matcha and it won't taste good again.
• 1:26
  Yeah, all these variables are fighting each other.
• 1:28
  If you want speed, you generate heat.
• 1:30
  If you want fine particles, you need more pressure.
• 1:33
  Have more pressure, you get more heat and you need more power.
• 1:37
  It's really a vicious cycle, fighting against each other.
• 1:41
  And I think we've gone through the cycle now three or four
• 1:43
  times of just like upgrading the motor and beefing up the the
• 1:47
  cooling system. But it's really tasting good and
• 1:50
  we keep comparing it to benchmarks.
• 1:51
  And another thing that I think people listening to this might
• 1:54
  be generally interested in is very few people have the
• 1:57
  opportunity to taste Matcha on the day one of shelf life like
• 2:01
  right after it was milled and taste the transformation.
• 2:04
  So we've been tasting it from day zero and through about a one
• 2:09
  week. Cycle every day.
• 2:11
  And the flavored transformations are.
• 2:13
  Drastic. Incredible.
• 2:15
  Yeah. They they're very different
• 2:17
  products, actually almost every day.
• 2:19
  Honestly, even after the powder gets milled and you know gets
• 2:24
  sit for a couple hours it starts to.
• 2:27
  Change. Yeah, it tastes very different.
• 2:29
  And that arc is pretty different when we run Oku Midori through
• 2:34
  it, or if we run Samidori or if we run through something like
• 2:38
  Yabukita. These degradation, I don't even
• 2:41
  want to call them degradation because it's even.
• 2:43
  One week it. Transforms actually even after
• 2:46
  one week. It tastes still pretty good, but
• 2:49
  it tastes very. Different and they go through
• 2:51
  these kind of different cycles especially around creaminess,
• 2:54
  especially around astringency and bitterness in particular
• 2:58
  those. Variables.
• 2:59
  Really change? Honestly, they all taste very
• 3:02
  good in their different time interval.
• 3:05
  I personally really like when it's really just fresh out of
• 3:08
  the mill. I mean, it has a very
• 3:10
  interesting, I think we melt a salmidori and it has a very
• 3:14
  interesting like floral, like white flower notes that I really
• 3:19
  have never experienced in other salmidori.
• 3:21
  So that's that's very interesting characteristic and
• 3:25
  that flavor just disappeared. It's a totally different matcha.
• 3:28
  We had a very similar. Experience with Maruq's higher
• 3:32
  end matcha blend. It was called tenju.
• 3:35
  Tenju. It was called Tenju where it had
• 3:36
  this beautiful like high end olive.
• 3:39
  Oil. Note that.
• 3:40
  Disappeared one day later. It's.
• 3:42
  This this stuff is extremely fragile, but it's really
• 3:45
  interesting tasting those differences and kind of
• 3:47
  understanding the different granularities of matcha.
• 3:51
  It turns out you really, really want clumps.
• 3:53
  When matcha comes out of our machine and it's acting like
• 3:57
  sand it it, we know that we have not quite enough pressure.
• 4:01
  But now. It's like.
• 4:02
  Floating around everywhere, like it's producing these chunks that
• 4:06
  attach to the ceiling of the machine and where it's just so
• 4:09
  fluffy and so fine. It's like snowflakes.
• 4:13
  When it comes out in the machine, it kind of snows.
• 4:16
  Out. Which makes a gigantic mess,
• 4:18
  which is another problem we need to solve.
• 4:20
  But that's when we really knew that we were milling to a fine
• 4:24
  enough granularity. Happy headache.
• 4:26
  Happy headache. Happy headache.
• 4:27
  Good headache. Milling matcha is a mess.
• 4:31
  So. That's our mini update.
• 4:33
  We are going to now link to the episode The Science of Macho
• 4:37
  Whisking, which is one of our favorites.
• 4:39
  If you haven't listened to it, please enjoy.
• 4:41
  If you have listened to it, we do have a mini update.
• 4:44
  We've actually learned some things that probably should have
• 4:47
  been included in that episode that we just didn't know at the
• 4:49
  time. A big thank you to Ian from You
• 4:52
  Know Me, who sent me a research paper, who told me that Macho
• 4:56
  foam stability and macho foam foaming ages.
• 5:00
  Are actually more than. Just surfactants primarily some
• 5:03
  a compound called T cepponins, but also pectin.
• 5:07
  When you mill matcha in these natural plant tissues, you
• 5:10
  actually get quite a bit of pectin which really helps foam
• 5:13
  stability. And there was a research study,
• 5:15
  I believe it was when you removed the pectin you lost a
• 5:18
  lot of foam stability. Or if you added.
• 5:20
  More it in conjunction with the surfactants add to the foam
• 5:23
  stability. So that was a detail that was
• 5:25
  missed in the previous recording.
• 5:27
  Do you know the degradation rate of surfactants and pecta being
• 5:30
  different or about the same? I have no idea.
• 5:32
  I bet pectin. Is relatively stable, but.
• 5:35
  For surfactants like T saponin, I have no idea.
• 5:38
  It's a good question. I don't know we.
• 5:40
  Can look into it. And I bet the finer the.
• 5:42
  Matcha particle. Size, like the finer you mill
• 5:45
  it, you get more like free pectin floating around because
• 5:47
  you've really broken down those plant tissues.
• 5:50
  The other thing that I was researching that belonged in
• 5:53
  this that I didn't learn until after this was recorded was
• 5:56
  evaporative cooling. So.
• 5:59
  So if you have. The.
• 5:59
  Hotter. The matcha the more water is
• 6:03
  going to evaporate off the surface, which can be net
• 6:06
  destructive for foam. But it turns out the higher the
• 6:10
  temperature, typically the better extraction you get for
• 6:13
  surfactants and pectin. So.
• 6:16
  You at really high temperatures you're getting more cooling,
• 6:19
  which can destroy foam, but you're also getting better
• 6:21
  extraction of a. Lot of these of a lot of.
• 6:24
  The things that help with the foam stability.
• 6:27
  So it turns out that that that destruction is about equally
• 6:31
  compensated with better extraction of things that
• 6:35
  stabilize that foam. Interesting.
• 6:37
  So whether or not it's a seven degrees, 80 degrees, 90° or
• 6:40
  100°, it those about kind of equal out, which is interesting
• 6:44
  that I that I didn't know it's a fairly old, old research paper.
• 6:46
  I believe it was from the 90s, but that also kind of should
• 6:49
  have belonged in this because I wasn't thinking about that
• 6:52
  evaporative loss at the time playing into foam degradation.
• 6:56
  So with that, please enjoy and we'll.
• 7:00
  Or if you post. It if.
• 7:01
  You post it, we're about to wrap up Season 2 of the podcast and
• 7:05
  we're excited for season. Three and have some.
• 7:06
  Pretty epic interviews, either recorded or on the way and more.
• 7:11
  Epic updates of the machine. Yeah, with the machine for more
• 7:14
  launch details coming soon. All right.
• 7:16
  All right, enjoy it. See you.
• 7:18
  So today we're going to talk about the science of whisking.
• 7:20
  Matcha Ryan, since you are the main author of this article, can
• 7:25
  you give our audience a very short summary of where you're
• 7:28
  talking about? Sure.
• 7:30
  So the article which is on our blog is titled The Science of
• 7:33
  Matcha Whisking, and we deep dive into what exactly is matcha
• 7:39
  from a food science perspective and talk more about the
• 7:42
  mechanisms that help make it that way.
• 7:45
  And I start off the article saying that matcha is
• 7:48
  scientifically unstable, like it really shouldn't exist.
• 7:51
  It's a very weird beverage from a food science perspective
• 7:54
  because you're drinking a suspension.
• 7:57
  So unlike coffee or other types of tea, you brew some type of
• 8:01
  solid material, there's an extraction, and then you decant
• 8:06
  it or remove the solids in some way, and then you drink the
• 8:10
  resulting liquid. And matcha is not like that at
• 8:13
  all. There is extraction going on,
• 8:15
  but because the tea is powdered so finely, those solid particles
• 8:20
  will mix into the hot water and form a suspension.
• 8:24
  So that suspension is actually unstable.
• 8:28
  So those tiny microscopic matcha particles, which are technically
• 8:33
  imperceptible to the naked eye. And if they're milled fine
• 8:36
  enough, you shouldn't really be able to feel them with your
• 8:38
  tongue either. They're they range anywhere from
• 8:41
  5 microns to 15 microns. And they're kind of dancing
• 8:45
  around in the water. You have these forces of
• 8:48
  Brownian motion or these random movements that happen in a
• 8:51
  liquid. And these, you know, you have
• 8:54
  particles and molecules bumping into each other and they're kind
• 8:57
  of floating around like a bunch of smoke in a room.
• 9:01
  And because the matcha still has mass, gravity will eventually
• 9:05
  bring it and settle it to the bottom.
• 9:07
  But the finer you mill matcha and the more surface area it
• 9:11
  has, the longer it will dance. So it turns out that matcha
• 9:14
  milling has a huge impact on the stability of a matcha
• 9:18
  suspension. Some milling methods like ball
• 9:20
  milling or industrial milling gives really round or spherical
• 9:24
  particle shapes, particle morphologies, and those will
• 9:28
  sink faster than those milled with the traditional Japanese
• 9:31
  millstone called an ishiusu, which produce very jagged
• 9:35
  particles. So the article goes into that
• 9:38
  and the science behind why that creates a better suspension.
• 9:42
  And then it also details the other really interesting fact
• 9:48
  about matcha is that it contains all three states of matter.
• 9:51
  Not only do you have these solid particles floating around in
• 9:54
  water, but you also have this fantastic foam, which is really
• 9:57
  important to the sensory experience of matcha, much like,
• 10:01
  you know, micro foam is and a latte or a cappuccino.
• 10:04
  And we discussed how that foam is created, how it's made, how
• 10:08
  stable it is, and potential brewing improvements that you
• 10:13
  could do to make even better matcha foam.
• 10:16
  So, Zhongjun and your opinion, how might have the cultural
• 10:20
  significance of matcha, particularly in Japanese tea
• 10:23
  ceremony, influence the way we approach its preparation and
• 10:28
  consumption in modern times? How do we take example from the
• 10:32
  past about whisking matcha today?
• 10:34
  Well, that's a very interesting questions.
• 10:37
  I mean, today, like how we drink matcha is very different from
• 10:42
  what people drink matcha, you know, hundreds or thousands of
• 10:46
  years ago. You know, matcha has been
• 10:48
  consumed since Sung dynasty in China, although in a very
• 10:52
  different format. And then it was later on evolved
• 10:57
  into a Japanese tea ceremony, first in Kyoto and then spread
• 11:01
  across the entire Japan. And then nowadays we have all
• 11:06
  these kinds of matcha drinks in different specialty cafe shops
• 11:11
  that people consumed from day-to-day basis.
• 11:13
  You know, like the way people ultimately consume matcha and
• 11:18
  treat matcha as a either a element in a ceremony or a shot
• 11:25
  of caffeine before they go to office.
• 11:28
  The intention of consuming matcha has changed a lot, but
• 11:33
  that doesn't necessarily translate into the preparation
• 11:37
  method. Like nowadays you still see
• 11:39
  people like trying to whisk matcha in a matcha bowl with a
• 11:45
  bamboo made chassen. That doesn't necessarily have
• 11:48
  any difference with, you know, tools being used 100 years ago
• 11:53
  in Japan where matcha was meant to be consumed maybe once a day
• 11:58
  or once a week. And the tools are very carefully
• 12:02
  maintained, painted and prepared and used and then, you know,
• 12:06
  cleaned again with this very set up ceremonial procedure.
• 12:11
  Whereas nowadays same tools has been used in specialty coffee
• 12:15
  shops maybe like 100 times a day.
• 12:19
  You see all these very sad looking trucks and sitting
• 12:22
  around and you know, it's, it's a really weird retrofitting of a
• 12:26
  pastor into, you know, this modern consumption habit.
• 12:31
  Yeah. And I see a really interesting
• 12:33
  reason for this, and I think it it goes back to the article, is
• 12:37
  that Mancha preparation is difficult.
• 12:39
  It will clump on you if you do things wrong.
• 12:42
  If the water temperature is, you know, too hot or too cold, you
• 12:47
  can have various problems with taste and texture.
• 12:52
  You know, it's a lot of people have a lot of trouble getting
• 12:55
  very good matcha foam. It's like a difficult thing.
• 12:57
  It's a very technique driven thing.
• 13:00
  And even like tea ceremony practitioners can spend a
• 13:03
  lifetime getting perfect foam, perfect whisking technique.
• 13:07
  And when someone who's really good, it's like, wow, like I
• 13:10
  know both Sam, you and I have seen some really impressive
• 13:14
  matcha whiskers out there and you're like, Oh my God, that
• 13:17
  must have taken decades. That's right.
• 13:20
  That's right. I mean like it takes a lot of
• 13:23
  practice just to get the macho film up when you I mean like
• 13:27
  both you and I have been professionally trained in macho
• 13:31
  ceremony schools. You know, me in Omoda Senke
• 13:34
  doesn't really care about macho film that much.
• 13:36
  But you know, in other schools like ODA Senke film is very
• 13:40
  important. And also like if you go back to
• 13:43
  Song dynasty, like have much or mortar at a time, you know, foam
• 13:49
  up is considered to be a competition.
• 13:52
  Like people actually compete against each other about how
• 13:55
  thick the foam and how long lasting the foam is.
• 13:57
  Yeah. For certain.
• 13:59
  Yeah. You know, like you, you hand the
• 14:02
  ball to a barista who has been probably signed up a week ago
• 14:06
  and tried to ask him or her to, you know, prepare a perfect bolt
• 14:11
  of matcha with perfect foam. I think that's a big ask.
• 14:14
  That's a big ask. And what you've been seeing is
• 14:17
  that people sometimes they just give up trying.
• 14:22
  They don't really try to whisk a good bolt of matcha or produce
• 14:27
  nice thick thumb. They just, you know, mix matcha
• 14:31
  with water and then pour that into a shot of milk and then you
• 14:35
  know what a matcha latte is ready.
• 14:37
  Or you know, if they do have any interest, there's really only
• 14:40
  one place to look and it's to look to tea ceremony, right?
• 14:43
  Like some of the like earliest missionaries, so to speak, for
• 14:47
  the spread of matcha popularity in the world were Japanese tea
• 14:51
  ceremony practitioners. Like Arasenke in particular has
• 14:55
  done a fantastic job going from, you know, country to country,
• 14:59
  city to city, where there are practitioners that have been
• 15:02
  doing it for decades and all across the world in many
• 15:05
  different languages. These schools exist and
• 15:10
  naturally, you know, they, they are the experts.
• 15:13
  So, you know, when matcha became more and more popular in
• 15:16
  specialty coffee shops and other form factors, you look to where
• 15:20
  people who have experience are. And I think that's why we see a
• 15:24
  lot of this retrofitting. And it would be interesting to
• 15:27
  see is new tools be invented that kind of take much of
• 15:31
  science and functional design and merge the two to create to
• 15:36
  help remove some of this lifetime of skill that it
• 15:40
  requires to get a perfect sensory outcome.
• 15:43
  Yeah, that's, I think it's necessary because imagine
• 15:46
  training someone to to to meet that outcome, the resources need
• 15:52
  to be spent from a per person basis probably going to be
• 15:55
  immense. It doesn't necessarily take that
• 15:58
  much resources to train a barista to produce a good
• 16:03
  espresso or a good Americano, right.
• 16:05
  But on the other hand, if you know, with all these current
• 16:10
  tools available, in order to produce a good cup or bowl of
• 16:15
  matcha or even a good cup of matcha drinks, it's going to
• 16:19
  take more time and going to take a lot more resources.
• 16:22
  Exactly. So Zhongjun, also in this
• 16:25
  article we talk a lot about quality or producing a good
• 16:30
  sensory outcome or a good tasting cup of matcha.
• 16:34
  And this question around quality and the characteristics that
• 16:39
  make up a high quality bowl of matcha.
• 16:41
  To what do you degree do you agree with me about the
• 16:47
  objective and subjective interpretations of quality,
• 16:51
  right? So I talked about in the
• 16:52
  article, you don't want it too bitter.
• 16:53
  You don't want any clumps. You want to produce stable foam.
• 16:56
  But if you go to an A multisenke Japanese tea ceremony
• 16:59
  practitioner, right, they're not going to want a lot of foam.
• 17:02
  You go to Song Dynasty Malta, right?
• 17:05
  High quality matcha was a lot of foam.
• 17:08
  Or maybe there's some parallel universe where extremely bitter
• 17:12
  tea is considered very prized and you actually want to express
• 17:16
  those flavors. So what degree is all of this
• 17:19
  arbitrary when we talk about? I mean, like, it really depends
• 17:24
  on what is being valued essentially, right?
• 17:30
  Like in Chano Yu tea is oftentimes not really the center
• 17:37
  or you know, the, the, the main character under the spotlight.
• 17:42
  And if you go to Song dynasty, mocha ceremonies, you know, same
• 17:48
  theory applies. You know, like, it's not really
• 17:51
  about the taste of the tea. It's about all the other things
• 17:55
  that people care about. So I would say that definitely
• 17:58
  in the parallel universe, probably people are competing
• 18:01
  against each other about how bitter their tea can be.
• 18:04
  But you know, from a pure sensory or flavor point of view,
• 18:09
  especially nowadays when people drink matcha for its flavor and
• 18:14
  you know, sometimes for its effect, that's not really
• 18:17
  related to who whisk the thickest foam or who has the
• 18:22
  most elegant gesture in folding the napkin or have the best
• 18:27
  matching theme of a calligraphy and flour to, you know, to the
• 18:31
  tea and to the season. It's about the flavor.
• 18:33
  It's about how nice and how smooth the the tea is, how
• 18:38
  creamy the foam is and how nicely the tea.
• 18:43
  The matcha is mixed with milk or oat milk depending on your
• 18:50
  dietary choices. But it's about the taste.
• 18:53
  Like people care about the taste.
• 18:55
  People doesn't necessarily care about how beautiful you prepare
• 18:58
  the matcha you know, or how well you have been trained and how
• 19:02
  deeply how deep your understanding about matcha is.
• 19:06
  They regular consumer don't care about that.
• 19:09
  They care about how nice the cup of tea in their hand.
• 19:13
  A. Lot of people would judge it
• 19:14
  just based on like their primary sensory experience.
• 19:18
  Like you can imagine someone who's never tried matcha before
• 19:22
  right? If even at the highest end
• 19:24
  matchas that are like very umami, they probably take a sip
• 19:27
  and be like wow that's weird. But you're definitely judging it
• 19:30
  on the taste for sure. Yeah, that's right.
• 19:33
  I mean, like, you know, the same thing happens in in in coffee
• 19:37
  too. Like people spend years trying
• 19:40
  to perfect their skilled of the latte art.
• 19:43
  But nowadays people drink latte mostly in paper cups with a lid
• 19:47
  on it. They don't care about the latte
• 19:49
  art at all or they they don't even have the ability to
• 19:54
  appreciate it because it's covered.
• 19:56
  I think very much the same thing goes on, goes into, you know,
• 20:00
  matcha as well, Like consumers doesn't necessarily care about
• 20:05
  things that, you know, professional matcha ceremony
• 20:08
  practitioners care. Yeah.
• 20:10
  I mean, matcha really belongs to the world now, right?
• 20:13
  Like matcha and tea ceremony or at least some percentage of
• 20:17
  matcha. Large percentage of matcha
• 20:18
  consumption is headed in a separate direction than you know
• 20:24
  than it was 50 years ago where it was very intertwined to to
• 20:28
  ceremony. I think.
• 20:30
  That's a good thing, right? Like, these things need to
• 20:32
  evolve and it needs to exist on its own for the future of matcha
• 20:37
  and to see, you know, a lot more innovation that's not restricted
• 20:40
  by what are very hierarchical institutions, which are Japanese
• 20:45
  tea ceremony schools where very little change occurs.
• 20:50
  And it's optimized for a ceremonial context, not
• 20:53
  necessarily for the average consumer who would really enjoy
• 20:59
  fantastic matcha. Yeah.
• 21:01
  I mean, I'm not trying to talk down on, you know, Chano Yu or
• 21:05
  Sung Dynasty Morcha. I mean, like they are great.
• 21:09
  They are a form of art that need to be appreciated.
• 21:12
  But you know, that doesn't necessarily translate into how
• 21:17
  people drink matcha nowadays. You know, it's becoming more of
• 21:21
  a daily drink, just like, you know, coffee and loosely tea
• 21:26
  with one of her tastes and also with a great, you know, physical
• 21:30
  effect. It has good levels of caffeine
• 21:34
  which I definitely need right now from day-to-day.
• 21:37
  And health theanine. That's right.
• 21:40
  Psychological effects of drinking matcha you know are not
• 21:44
  only. You know.
• 21:46
  Let's say rediscovered by a lot of a lot of modern health gurus.
• 21:50
  But I mean, they've been known for centuries even when matcha
• 21:55
  first moved to Japan, right? Like even in the spread of tea
• 21:59
  within China, a lot of it had to do with the way it made you
• 22:02
  feel, and that cannot be overlooked.
• 22:04
  That's right. So Zhongjun, why do you think so
• 22:08
  many people believe that matcha dissolves in water?
• 22:11
  Because it's actually a suspension.
• 22:12
  And what are there? Are there some things that we
• 22:15
  can do to get people more interested in matcha science?
• 22:19
  Like we see a very rich ecosystem of this in coffee
• 22:23
  around extraction theory and grind science, and you have all
• 22:26
  these different grinders which give you different grind size
• 22:29
  distributions, etcetera. And like all the alchemy around
• 22:33
  espresso, why don't we see the equivalent in matcha and in tea
• 22:37
  more generally? It just doesn't seem the
• 22:39
  specialty tea culture, at least in the English speaking W hasn't
• 22:44
  really spent a lot of focus on this.
• 22:46
  OK. Ryan, you are asking a lot of
• 22:48
  questions here 1st about matcha being a suspension, not a
• 22:53
  solvent. I guess, you know, it's really
• 22:55
  because of how phenomenally matcha can be mixed with, with,
• 23:01
  with water. I mean, it's, it looks like
• 23:04
  matcha is dissolved because how tiny the, the powder is.
• 23:07
  I think just it's just a common misunderstanding from, you know,
• 23:12
  a pure physical appearance of of matcha versus, you know, you see
• 23:18
  how other, you know, loosely teas, you know, like tea is
• 23:22
  still tea and you know the water is Stillwater, although it
• 23:25
  changed the color at the end. Actually, you and I had a very
• 23:28
  interesting conversation a few months ago.
• 23:30
  I was asking if fresh preparing coffee was common in China and
• 23:34
  in Chinese households. Like, you know, every, you know,
• 23:37
  in the US and Europe, everyone has like, you know, a Mr. Coffee
• 23:40
  coffee pot or a mocha pot or something where they're, they're
• 23:44
  interacting with ground coffee to brew coffee.
• 23:47
  Yeah. And you said, you know, the
• 23:49
  average Chinese person, the way they brew coffee in their mind
• 23:53
  when you what comes to mind when you say how do you brew coffee
• 23:56
  is you take a scoop of this powder and you mix it with
• 23:59
  water. For like a billion.
• 24:02
  People like making coffee is where you dissolve a liquid, and
• 24:06
  I think it's kind of the opposite for matcha on this side
• 24:09
  of the world. Yep, Yep.
• 24:11
  I would, I would certainly agree on that.
• 24:13
  I mean, it's not just China, but also, you know, a lot of places
• 24:18
  in Asia and Southeast Asia, the common habit in the house.
• 24:21
  So it's really, you know, instant coffee.
• 24:23
  It's not like, you know, third wave coffee with all these
• 24:26
  equipments like Chemex and V60 is still very much a new thing
• 24:31
  to a lot of Asian countries and Asia culture on the other side
• 24:35
  of the world. So how do we get a rich
• 24:37
  ecosystem of what we see in coffee, like the brew
• 24:41
  differences between a Chemex or in AV 60 or the differences
• 24:45
  among all these iconical burg grinder or flat Burg grinders.
• 24:48
  You see companies like Fellow right creating very accessible
• 24:52
  high end grinders. Like where?
• 24:54
  Where is all of this science based innovation for Matcha?
• 24:59
  Yeah, I think, you know, fundamentally I think it's
• 25:01
  really just a difference between the East and the West.
• 25:05
  You know, in Western culture, like taking a scientific
• 25:10
  approach to a matter is a very common practice.
• 25:15
  You know, trying to deconstruct a subject into theories and
• 25:20
  components that can be understand and can be replicate
• 25:24
  is a very, very important thing. Whereas in, you know, in, in
• 25:30
  China or Japan or a lot of countries in Asia, aesthetic and
• 25:36
  you know, the philosophical kind of appreciation to a subject is
• 25:42
  the key, right? You know, you see, in Chinese
• 25:45
  tea ceremony, it's all about, you know, the, the tea and the
• 25:50
  effect. And, you know, like back in the
• 25:52
  literati times, it's a component of, you know, how tea and
• 25:57
  calligraphy and water ink painting art can all be linked
• 26:01
  together in a coherent, coherent way.
• 26:03
  In South Korea, you know, it's all about meditation with Zen
• 26:08
  Buddhism. And in, you know, Japan, it's
• 26:12
  all about Channel U. It's about, you know, Ichiko
• 26:15
  Ichi A it's about creating a moment that can only be
• 26:18
  appreciated at the time and cannot be replicated in the
• 26:22
  future. Like it's a totally opposite
• 26:25
  kind of approach to to to the same matter.
• 26:29
  So I think the the very origin of these two culture, cultures,
• 26:35
  world is the reason why there's a fundamental difference.
• 26:39
  That's fascinating. Never thought about it that way.
• 26:42
  And you know, even for Japan and Japanese culture, it's probably,
• 26:45
  you see the extreme of what we see in Eastern culture.
• 26:49
  Yeah, yeah, that's right. I mean, it's the furthest from
• 26:53
  the from the West. Fair enough.
• 26:57
  So Ryan, you know, like both in China and Japan, foaming up this
• 27:02
  beautiful powder green tea is a very important component of
• 27:06
  their ceremonies. Can you talk a little bit more
• 27:09
  about the signs of how matcha gets foam up?
• 27:12
  Like how do you essentially create this really interesting
• 27:17
  thick foam in this in this beverage?
• 27:19
  Because, you know, like in in coffee, you don't necessarily
• 27:22
  foam up coffee. You have to have, you know milk
• 27:25
  as addition to be able to produce a beautiful cream or a
• 27:30
  beautiful foam top, But matcha seem to be able to do it by
• 27:33
  yourself. Yeah, for sure.
• 27:35
  Well, you do see it a little bit in Espresso when you have that
• 27:37
  type of extraction. Oh, that's right.
• 27:39
  That's right. Yeah.
• 27:41
  Very stable microphone, but yeah, moreover, coffee would be
• 27:44
  very concerning. Some foam, but actually it's a
• 27:47
  fascinating science. We dug into the literature a bit
• 27:51
  and SO1T naturally has surfactants in it.
• 27:54
  And surfactants are kind of what makes help make bubbles, bubbles
• 27:57
  in chemistry, that's the term surfactant and what's happening.
• 28:01
  So you have those and there was an interesting paper looking at
• 28:04
  the effect of whether or not the actual matcha particles.
• 28:08
  So it's like 5 to 10 Micron matcha particles, whether they
• 28:12
  helped, hindered or were part of the foam.
• 28:15
  And it turns out they're actually part of the foam.
• 28:17
  So they exist within the inner membrane and they actually help
• 28:20
  stabilize this foam. And in foam science, there's a
• 28:23
  concept called drainage rate. So anytime you make any type of
• 28:27
  foam, it will hold part of the liquid that's in the system and
• 28:33
  it holds it like a sponge. And you let let it do its thing
• 28:37
  and let time get involved, right?
• 28:39
  It will slowly drain and the drainage will destabilize the
• 28:43
  foam. And it turns out that there's an
• 28:46
  equation, and it's commonly referenced by a lot of coffee.
• 28:50
  People who are. Trying to optimize textured milk
• 28:53
  and foam that every time you cut a bubble size in half, you
• 28:57
  quadruple the the retention of that liquid.
• 29:03
  So the drainage rate will be have a 4X improvement.
• 29:06
  So really fine micro foam is a very stable foam and the beauty
• 29:12
  of a chasset and one of the reasons why it's considered one
• 29:14
  of the best performing ways to mix matcha together versus just
• 29:19
  putting it in the blender or using one of those mechanical
• 29:21
  stir stirring rods is because it's able to subdivide.
• 29:25
  The bubble so well. When you have 80 to 100 times
• 29:29
  that are nearly parallel with each other, go back and forth,
• 29:32
  you're subdividing these bubbles into small enough pieces that
• 29:36
  they become very stable and reduce the drainage rate.
• 29:38
  The other thing that's really fascinating about there's
• 29:41
  actually two more fascinating things.
• 29:43
  The next is a phenomenon called Oswald ripening and it's a
• 29:48
  phenomenon where anytime you have any foam or froth, the tiny
• 29:53
  bubbles over time will give their air to the larger bubbles.
• 29:57
  So if you want to create a stable phone, you need to create
• 30:00
  very even bubble size. And when you combine even size
• 30:05
  and small size, you get a very stable phone.
• 30:09
  Interesting. Well, mixed bowl of matcha is.
• 30:12
  It's like bubble plane monopoly, yeah.
• 30:14
  They landed on Go and the last one that was very interesting
• 30:19
  that really came out of nowhere is I was looking up what the
• 30:23
  optimizing, what the extraction rate was for a lot of the tea
• 30:28
  surfactants that exist within tea as it relates to
• 30:31
  temperature, right? Because you have very low
• 30:33
  temperature water in general, you get very low extraction,
• 30:36
  right? If you put some random sencha or
• 30:39
  loose leaf green tea and water, right, it's going to extract in
• 30:43
  room temperature water is going to extract very slowly.
• 30:45
  It's kind of like a cold brew. And obviously the hotter you go,
• 30:49
  the faster you hydrate the leaf and then you can extract things
• 30:52
  from it. And it turns out that most of
• 30:55
  the surfactants that are responsible for these bubbles
• 30:58
  peak extraction is 70°C, which is really interesting because
• 31:03
  most people recommend consuming matcha between 70 or preparing
• 31:07
  matcha between 70° and 80°C water.
• 31:12
  But. Primarily for the taste, because
• 31:14
  you know, matcha has an unusually high number of
• 31:16
  catechins, which is a type of polyphenol or antioxidant, and
• 31:20
  those tend to extract into the water at around 80°.
• 31:26
  So there's a flavor argument, but it turns out there's also a
• 31:29
  foam argument why you want to keep your brew temperature
• 31:33
  around 70. Degrees Celsius, very
• 31:36
  interesting. You know, like I never learned
• 31:38
  about all the signs of matcha back when I was practicing Chano
• 31:43
  Yu in Omoto Sanke. This is certainly, you know, all
• 31:47
  of these learning journey has been very interesting to me.
• 31:50
  Yeah. It's interesting because like
• 31:53
  you have, you know, over almost 1000 years or over 1000 years of
• 31:59
  iteration and it really actually has converged and like just
• 32:03
  putting a scientific lens on it and having going through the
• 32:06
  research right, we can explain like why some of those how they
• 32:11
  converged at what the same conclusions, but without
• 32:16
  necessarily. Yeah, it's almost like, it's
• 32:20
  almost like traditional Chinese medicine.
• 32:23
  It's like empirical science. People throughout iterations
• 32:28
  trying to optimize for some goals and they landed on
• 32:32
  something that can be scientifically explained.
• 32:35
  Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you for listening to
• 32:38
  the Specialty Matcha podcast. I think that's all we have for
• 32:41
  today. We're going to be producing a
• 32:43
  lot more content, so please subscribe, follow.
• 32:48
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• 32:50
  Recommend us to a friend. We have very few ratings, so if
• 32:53
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• 32:55
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• 32:58
  Take care. Bye.
• 33:00
  Bye bye.