On a kitchen shelf, a small tin of matcha sits beside a bag of hojicha. Lift the lid of the tin and a grassy scent rises. One is whisked with a bamboo whisk, the other steeped in a teapot. They look and smell nothing alike, yet both come from the same tea plant.
This piece follows the paths along which the two part ways: how they are made, how they taste, the caffeine in a cup, brewing, and lattes.
Leaf under shade, and a second fire
The powder in the tin is fine enough to cling to a fingertip, and a deep green. Matcha is leaf grown under shade and then milled; hojicha is finished tea given one more round of fire.
Under the labelling rules, matcha is tencha milled into a fine powder in a stone mill or similar. Tencha is grown under cover for two or three weeks before picking, then steamed and dried without rolling. Hojicha is sencha or bancha roasted over strong heat. Roast a tea that is mostly stems and you get bōcha, or stem hojicha.
The heat also sits in a different place. For matcha, the only heat comes from steaming and drying straight after picking. For hojicha, the fire comes again, later, to tea that is already finished. Nothing limits the raw material to shaded tea, or to unshaded tea.
Ground into powder, hojicha may be as fine as matcha, but under the rules it goes by a different name, “powdered tea”. What the sources settle is where the names and the processes draw their lines. How the names map onto processes is set out in What is hojicha? How it differs from kukicha and genmaicha. After how they are made comes how they taste.
A seaweed scent, a toasty steam
From a cup of hojicha, the scent of roasted leaf rises softly with the steam. Matcha’s taste leans towards umami; hojicha’s towards toasty aroma.
Just as plants in the shade of trees grow tender, new shoots kept from the light form fewer of the compounds behind astringency and bitterness. An amino acid made in the roots moves into the leaf, and the taste turns to a pronounced umami. Public explainers likewise describe tencha as low in astringency, with a seaweed-like “covered aroma” and strong umami.
Hojicha is described as having almost no astringency or bitterness, and a toasty aroma that sits pleasantly in the mouth. The material for that aroma was already in the leaf: compounds that carried umami and sweetness, changed by heat. That change can be read in How hojicha is roasted: amino acids and sugar turning into aroma.
Which is stronger cannot be measured on one scale. What the sources settle is where each one’s flavour is centred. After taste comes the caffeine in a cup.
A cup drunk to the bottom
Finish a bowl of matcha and a faint green film stays at the bottom. Cup for cup, matcha has more caffeine.
With matcha, all the dissolved powder is drunk; with hojicha, only what the water drew from the leaf. In the food composition tables, matcha is higher than hojicha leaf even as dry tea. But hojicha leaf is not eaten; it is the liquid that is drunk. A lower figure for the leaf does not simply become a lower figure for the cup.
With different serving sizes and methods, dividing one figure by the other gives no meaningful ratio. Whisk powdered hojicha into water and the leaf is drunk whole. Why the figures differ from source to source is taken further in Why hojicha caffeine figures differ between sources.
Brew stronger and the figure moves with it. What the sources settle is a cup brewed under set conditions. How to think about a cup at night or for a child is gathered in Hojicha caffeine guidance: an overview.
Figures set beside sencha and black tea are compared in Hojicha caffeine content vs sencha, bancha and black tea. After the figures comes the sound of the kettle.
Cooled water, and water off the boil
When the kettle begins to sing, the kitchen air turns a little damp. Matcha is whisked in cooled water; hojicha is steeped briefly in water just off the boil.
A tea research institute’s guide begins by sifting matcha through a tea strainer to break up lumps. The powder goes into a warmed bowl, and a little water, boiled once and cooled, dissolves it first. The rest of the water follows, and the whisk moves with a quick back-and-forth of the wrist. The finer the foam, the smoother the tea.
Hojicha’s standard is boiling water for about thirty seconds. Boiling water is used, one guide explains, because this is a tea for enjoying the aroma of the fire.
A lightly filled teaspoon can stand in for the scoop, and a café-au-lait bowl for a tea bowl. The water goes slightly cooler in summer and slightly hotter in winter. What the sources settle is the standard form.
How far brewing guides spread can be traced in Hojicha at 90°C for 30 seconds: where it began. After the kettle comes the milk warming in a small pan.
Milk in a small pan, a brown powder
Milk warms in a small pan, and fine bubbles gather at the rim. A hojicha latte uses either a strong brew or hojicha powder.
A tea shop’s published recipe dissolves the powder with sugar and hot water into a syrup, then combines it with warmed milk. Set published recipes side by side, and milk makes up anything from a fifth to more than four-fifths of the cup. How to settle that ratio is covered in The hojicha latte ratio: decide the milk first.
When buying powder, the first thing to check is whether it is an unsweetened baking powder or a mix with sugar already added. Swap one for the other at the same weight and the sugar changes along with the tea. What to look for is set out in Choosing hojicha powder for baking and lattes.
What the sources settle is the shape of the method. Places that serve a hojicha latte can be found on the café map. After the latte comes the moment at the shelf, deciding which to reach for.
At the shelf, which to reach for
At the shelf, the green tin and the brown bag sit side by side. Three things guide the choice: where the flavour is centred, what is drunk, and how much time there is.
Umami points to matcha, toasty aroma to hojicha. They also part on whether the powder is drunk whole or only the liquid from the leaf. Whether there is time to whisk a bowl, or only for a quick pot with boiling water, is another guide.
On a day when caffeine is on the mind, the conditions behind a figure come before its size. With matcha, the powder used is what is drunk; with hojicha, the figure moves with the ratio of leaf to water and the time. What the sources settle are the axes for choosing, not which is better. The figures and sources are gathered below.
The numbers in detail
- Names and definitions
- The Japan Tea Central Association’s Labelling Standards for Green Tea define matcha as “tencha milled into a fine powder in a tea stone mill or similar.” Hojicha is defined as tea “made by roasting sencha, bancha or similar over strong heat.” Tea ground in a mill goes by a separate name, “powdered tea” (funmatsucha). That stems and leaf veins are removed when tencha is made comes from a MAFF explainer.
- Shading period
- The labelling standards give the shading periods separately: about two to three weeks for tencha, about 20 days for gyokuro. The cover is made of reed screens, straw mats, cheesecloth or similar. That shading slows the formation of astringent and bitter compounds, and that theanine made in the roots moves into the leaves, comes from MAFF’s explanation of gyokuro.
- Taste
- The taste descriptions come from MAFF explainers. Another MAFF page calls hojicha’s finish light.
- Caffeine in matcha
- The caffeine values are from the Standard Tables of Food Composition in Japan 2020 (eighth revised edition). Matcha is 3.2 g per 100 g of powder, and a bowl of 1.5 g dissolved in 70 mL of water has 48 mg. Whisked with about 2 g of powder, it has about 64 mg [calculated].
- Caffeine in hojicha
- Hojicha’s 20 mg is per 100 mL of liquid brewed from 15 g of leaf in 650 mL of water at 90°C for 0.5 min (30 seconds). That works out to about 2.3 g of leaf per 100 mL of water [calculated]. A 150 mL cup comes to about 30 mg [calculated].
- Powdered hojicha
- Hojicha leaf is 1.5 g per 100 g. The tables give no value for the powder, so estimating from the leaf figure, 2 g of powder comes to about 30 mg [calculated; varies by product].
- Whisking matcha
- The matcha steps are from Kyoto Prefecture’s Tea Industry Research Institute. Two scoops (about 2 g) go into a warmed bowl, with 70 mL of water that has boiled and cooled to 70–80°C.
- Boiling water and 30 seconds: The boiling water and 30 seconds come from a school-lunch tea menu collection hosted by the Japan Tea Central Association, which cites a 1973 report by a tea-brewing study group. The reason for boiling water is from “How to brew good tea” on MAFF’s website, which treats bancha and roasted tea as teas for enjoying their roasted aroma rather than for savouring their taste.
- Lattes
- The syrup method is from the recipe published by Kurasu in Kyoto. Across published recipes, milk makes up anything from about a fifth to more than four-fifths of the cup.