How to Make Iced Matcha the Way We Do at the Roastery (the Recipe That Beats the Café Version)

Most iced matcha in cafés is wrong. Not wrong in a hostile way — wrong in the sense that it's been calibrated for speed and consistency, and the parameters that make it fast and consistent also make it bitter and grassy. We made the same compromises in our first six months of serving iced matcha. Then we changed the recipe. This is the version we landed on.

The recipe below is what we serve at the roastery on hot days and what we make at home in the summer. It's not the fastest recipe. It's the recipe that tastes good.

Why iced matcha usually tastes bad

Three things go wrong with most iced matcha recipes:

1. The water is too hot. Standard practice is to use boiling water (100 °C) to dissolve the matcha powder quickly. At 100 °C, you extract the bitter compounds from the leaf fast. The cup ends up tasting grassy and astringent.
2. The ratio is wrong. Standard café recipes use too little matcha relative to water. The cup ends up tasting like green water — not enough matcha character to balance the cold.
3. The ice melts unevenly. Most café recipes pour hot matcha over ice. The top is hot, the middle is luke-warm, the bottom is cold. The temperature range across the cup is 30 °C, which means you taste different versions of the cup as you drink.

Our recipe fixes all three.

The recipe

This is for one 12-oz glass of iced matcha. Scale linearly for larger glasses.

Ingredients:

• 5 g of ceremonial-grade matcha (or a good culinary-grade if you're not drinking it straight)
• 60 g of water at 75 to 80 °C
• 150 g of cold water (or cold milk, if you prefer)
• Plenty of ice
• (Optional) 1 to 2 tsp of simple syrup, dissolved in the cold water before you add the matcha

Steps.

1. Make the matcha concentrate. Sift 5 g of matcha into a small bowl. Add 60 g of water at 75 to 80 °C. Whisk with a bamboo chasen or a small kitchen whisk in a zigzag motion for 15 to 20 seconds until smooth and slightly foamy.
2. Prepare the glass. Fill a 12-oz glass to the rim with ice. Pour 150 g of cold water (or milk) into the glass first. If you're using simple syrup, dissolve it in the cold water before adding ice.
3. Pour the matcha over the back of a spoon. Hold a spoon just above the cold water surface, with the back of the spoon facing up. Pour the matcha concentrate slowly over the spoon so it cascades gently onto the cold water. This makes the iced matcha show the layered color — the deep green of the matcha on top of the clear water — and it prevents the ice from cracking.
4. Stir gently. Take a long spoon or a straw and stir once, gently, to combine. Don't stir aggressively — you want the color gradient to stay visible.
5. Drink it within 2 minutes. The cup is best when the ice is mostly intact and the temperature is just above freezing at the bottom and around 5 °C at the top. If you let it sit too long, the ice melts and the cup gets watered down.

That's it. The whole process takes about 2 minutes once you have the water at the right temperature.

Why this ratio works

Most iced matcha recipes use 2 to 3 g of matcha per 8 oz of water. We use 5 g per ~7 oz of finished drink, which is roughly twice the standard. The cup has more body and more of the umami/sweet character of the leaf.

The reason we can use more matcha is the lower water temperature. At 75 °C, you extract the sweet and umami compounds quickly without over-extracting the bitter ones. At 100 °C, the same 5 g of matcha would extract both the sweet and the bitter compounds, and the cup would taste harsh.

The lower temperature is not intuitive. Most people assume that matcha needs the hottest water to dissolve properly. It doesn't. Matcha is a fine powder; it dissolves at any water temperature. The issue isn't dissolution — it's extraction. You want the water hot enough to extract the compounds you want, and not so hot that it extracts the compounds you don't want.

Why we shake (sometimes)

We make a shaken version at the roastery when we're serving larger batches. The shaken version is different from the stirred version:

• Shaken version. Matcha and hot water (75 °C) go into a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake hard for 10 to 15 seconds. Strain into a glass. The cup is colder, more aerated, and more consistent across the glass.
• Stirred version. Matcha concentrate is poured over cold water and ice without shaking. The cup has a layered look — deep green on top, paler green at the bottom — and the temperature ranges from cold at the bottom to slightly warmer at the top.

Both are good. The stirred version is more visually striking (the green gradient looks great on camera and in person). The shaken version is more consistent and more cold. We serve the stirred version when we want to show off the matcha, and the shaken version when we want the cup to stay cold for longer.

Common problems

A few things that go wrong and how to fix them:

The cup is grassy or bitter. Your water is too hot. Drop it from 100 °C to 75 to 80 °C. If you've already brewed and it's bitter, you can't fix it — start over with cooler water.

The cup is weak. You haven't used enough matcha. Bump from 4 g to 5 g per 12-oz glass. If you want a stronger cup, go to 6 g, but be careful — at 6 g per 12 oz, the cup can get astringent even at 75 °C.

The matcha clumps. Your water temperature is too low (under 70 °C, the matcha can clump because the powder won't fully hydrate), or you sifted poorly. Sift the matcha into the bowl first, then add the water.

The cup is watery when you finish it. The ice has melted. Add more ice, or use larger ice cubes (1-inch cubes melt more slowly than standard cubes).

The cup is bland. You're using culinary-grade matcha and expecting ceremonial-grade flavor. Culinary matcha is fine for lattes and sweetened drinks, but for drinking straight, ceremonial-grade has the umami and sweetness that justify the higher price.

What kind of matcha to use

We use ceremonial-grade for the recipe above. The bowl, plain, no milk. If you're adding milk or sugar, culinary-grade works fine — most of the differences between grades are masked by the milk.

For ceremonial-grade, look for:

• Origin. Uji (Kyoto) or Nishio (Aichi) in Japan are the most established regions. Both are good.
• Color. Bright green. Dull green or yellowish-green matcha is usually older or lower-grade.
• Aroma. Sweet, marine, slightly vegetal. Not grassy or hay-like.
• Price. Genuine ceremonial-grade matcha is rarely under $25 for 30 g. If the price seems too good, it's probably not ceremonial-grade.

A few specific points to watch for:

• "Ceremonial-grade" is not a regulated term. There's no official body certifying matcha. Trust the producer's reputation and your own cupping. We've been disappointed by high-priced ceremonial-grade and impressed by mid-priced ceremonial-grade.
• Matcha loses its bright character within 2 to 4 weeks of opening. If you're buying matcha and not using it fast, buy smaller tins.
• Refrigeration extends the life of opened matcha. Most producers recommend storing opened tins in the fridge and using within a month.

Variations

A few versions we make often:

Iced matcha with oat milk. Replace the 150 g of cold water with 150 g of cold oat milk. The cup is creamier and less vegetal. Oat milk works better than dairy here because the natural sweetness of oats pairs with the umami of the matcha.

Iced matcha lemonade. Replace the 150 g of cold water with 100 g of cold water and 50 g of cold lemonade. The cup is sweet-tart and refreshing — a good summer afternoon drink. Use a good lemonade (we make ours with 1 part lemon juice, 1 part simple syrup, 2 parts water).

Iced matcha with a shot of espresso. Add a shot of espresso on top of the iced matcha for a matcha espresso. The espresso sinks through the matcha concentrate and creates a layered drink. Stir before drinking.

Iced matcha with coconut cream. Replace 50 g of the cold water with 50 g of cold coconut cream. The cup has a soft tropical character that pairs well with the vegetal matcha. Use unsweetened coconut cream.

What to take from this

If you've been disappointed with iced matcha from cafés, the recipe above is what they're usually doing wrong: too hot water, too little matcha, and uneven temperature. Fix any one of those and the cup gets noticeably better. Fix all three and it gets significantly better.

You don't need a special bamboo whisk for this recipe. A small kitchen whisk works. A milk frother works. A cocktail shaker works. What you need is the temperature control and the ratio.

If you have a kitchen thermometer, use it. If you don't, "just off the boil" (about 30 seconds after the kettle whistles) is usually close to 80 °C.

See our current matcha catalog.

See our matcha brewing guide.

P.S. If you make this recipe often, invest in a small tin of ceremonial-grade matcha that you actually like. The difference between bad and good ceremonial matcha is bigger than the difference between different brewing parameters. Good matcha forgives a lot of brewing mistakes; bad matcha doesn't.

— Seraphina