DIY Matcha Latte: How To Make This Delicious Healthy Coffee

So often in life, the least healthy things are also the most delicious. Most of the time, anyway. But today, this homemade matcha latte recipe is the exception.

Earthy, sweet, vibrantly green, and creamy, this homemade matcha latte recipe is the perfect way to indulge and protect your health. Keep reading for our homemade matcha latte recipe.

You’ll also need:

• Bamboo matcha whisk
• 475-ml mug
• Milk frother or French press
• Tea sifter, optional

How to Make a Matcha Latte

In Home Grounds’ roundup of the best Starbucks drinks and Dunkin’ drinks, the matcha latte appears a few times. Whether it’s a Starbucks iced matcha latte or a hot matcha latte, these matcha green tea drinks are popular alternatives to coffee.

Just like Starbucks’ Honey Citrus Mint Green Tea, DIY Cotton Candy Frappuccino, and Strawberry matcha, these coffee alternatives contain less caffeine than coffee or are entirely caffeine-free. This makes them great for a mild afternoon pick-me-up without the jitters.

Whether you like your matcha green tea hot or as an Iced matcha latte, it’s always important to start off with high-quality ingredients.

What Is Matcha?

Matcha green tea powder is made by grinding processed green tea leaves into a fine powder. But contrary to popular belief, there is a difference between regular green tea and matcha.

Unlike regular green tea leaves, tea leaves used for matcha are shade-grown to increase their chlorophyll levels, which gives matcha powder its characteristic bright-green colour. Also, while green tea leaves are harvested by machinery, matcha is harvested by hand and ground by stone (1).

As with shade-grown coffee beans, matcha tea leaves are also sweeter and richer in flavour than their conventional green tea counterparts. Likewise, matcha also comes in several different grades.

Grades of Matcha Powder

There are two major grades of matcha powder: ceremonial-grade matcha and culinary-grade matcha. Its colour and texture set apart a good quality matcha powder from a high-quality matcha powder (2). In short, because ceremonial-grade matcha is made with the youngest ground green tea leaves, it will be the mildest and cleanest flavour.

Ceremonial Grade Matcha

Ceremonial-grade matcha green tea powder uses the least mature green tea leaves. Moreover, all the stems and veins are removed, leaving only the greenest parts of the plant.

Because ceremonial-grade matcha is made with just the blades of the tea leaves, This refined matcha yields a vivid green cup, a clean-tasting and sweet cup.

Culinary Grade Matcha

There are five main classifications of culinary-grade matcha:

• Classic
• Kitchen
• Ingredient
• Cafe
• Premium

While you can enjoy culinary-grade matcha as a stand-alone drink, you’ll immediately notice that it’s a bit more bitter and astringent when compared to ceremonial-grade matcha.

This is because of how it’s processed. While ceremonial-grade matcha green tea powder exclusively uses young tea leaves, culinary-grade matcha blends more mature tea leaves, stems, and veins into the matcha mixture. So, it produces a less vivid green colour and a slightly more astringent taste.

But this astringency isn’t all bad. This added robustness allows the matcha to stand up to heavier flavours and textures — like the creamy milk in the matcha latte we’ll be making today.

Tools of the Trade

Though it’s tempting to buy ceremonial-grade matcha powder for this latte, it’s not necessary. Because it’s the mildest of all the matches, you won’t even taste it over the creaminess of the milk. Here, you can save a little money by going with the premium culinary-grade matcha or the cafe culinary-grade green tea powder.

While the ingredient, kitchen, and classic grades of culinary matcha are fine for baking and other green tea desserts, their more pronounced astringency can leave a harsh bitterness that isn’t always pleasant on the palate.

Finally, if you can get a hold of it, a matcha whisk — also known as a chasen — is the best tool for incorporating the fine powder into your hot water (3).

The chasen has many more tines than a regular whisk and is specifically designed to whip the suspended matcha powder into a thick froth quickly. These extra tines also lessen the chances that the green tea powder will clump together in your mug.

How To Make Matcha Latte At Home (Our Way)

We first started by comparing ceremonial and culinary matcha grades for a DIY matcha latte. You do this by mixing each teaspoon into a tablespoon of 82-degree Celsius water. Once whisked, we added 180 ml of milk, and heated to 65 degrees Celsius.

While the ceremonial grade matcha produced a drink with a clean, sweet flavour, it didn’t cut through the fat in the whole milk.

Next, we experimented with maple syrup and honey. Two teaspoons of sweetener added some depth to the drink without making it cloyingly sweet.

While we prefer to keep it simple, you can add different flavoured syrups to this hot matcha latte. To keep the matcha the star of the show, be sure not to exceed two teaspoons of syrup per 475 ml.

And with that, let’s make a Starbucks Matcha Latte copycat.

1. Measure and Sift the Matcha Powder

Sift 1-½ teaspoons of fine matcha powder into the bottom of a 475-ml mug. Gently tap the mug to ensure the matcha is evenly distributed across the cup’s bottom.

2. Brew and Whisk the Green Tea Powder

Next, add one tablespoon of 82-degree Celsius water into the mug and incorporate it with a bamboo matcha whisk. Whisking in a W pattern across the bottom of your mug will help to produce the frothy matcha foam you’re looking for.

3. Froth the Milk

Once your matcha mixture is well-incorporated, use a milk frother, a steam wand, or a clean French press to froth the milk.

Though we’ve used whole milk in this recipe, feel free to substitute it with unsweetened almond, coconut, or oat milk.

4. Assemble the Matcha Latte

Tap out the larger bubbles in the frothed milk and gently pour it over your matcha mixture. At this point, you’re done.

If you’d like, feel free to garnish your drink with coconut sugar, an extra drizzle of maple syrup, or vanilla syrup.

Matcha Latte Variations

This matcha latte is delicious, iced, or hot. To keep the robustness of the hot matcha latte in the iced version of this drink, brew some extra matcha ahead of time following steps 1 and 2 above.

Then, cool the matcha to room temperature and pour it into an ice cube tray. Chill until frozen.

Once chilled, add these matcha ice cubes to your iced matcha latte.

Lastly, feel free to experiment by adding different extracts, like vanilla extract, into your matcha mixture before pouring the frothed milk.

Final Thoughts

Matcha lattes are a deliciously healthy way to incorporate antioxidants into your day. Earthy, sweet, rich, and frothy, this matcha latte is best enjoyed with a mild dessert, like an almond financier.

So, how about you? Did you make this latte? What’s your favourite way to enjoy matcha green tea?

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