When is the best time to drink matcha?
When is the best time to drink matcha?
Morning is the usual answer, and the reason is caffeine rather than tradition. A 2 g bowl carries around 48 mg, roughly half a cup of coffee, so an early bowl will not interfere with that night's sleep. Beyond that, the best time is whichever one you will actually keep.
What matcha is
Matcha is green tea grown and processed in a particular way. The leaves are milled to a fine powder that you whisk with hot water, so instead of steeping leaves and throwing them away, you drink the whole leaf.
What ends up in the bowl
Because the powder is drunk whole, catechins, theanine, caffeine, chlorophyll and the fibre of the milled leaf all reach the cup. A bowl made with 2 g of powder carries around 48 mg of caffeine, based on the 2.4 g per 100 g the USDA database gives for matcha in general, roughly half a cup of coffee. The word "theine" on many labels refers to the same molecule as the caffeine in coffee. They are not different substances, whatever the packaging implies.
Picking your moment
Morning: the most common choice, simply because caffeine early does not follow you to bed. If you eat a big breakfast, note that matcha whisked with water alone tastes noticeably more bitter on an empty stomach than after food.
Before training: a randomised placebo-controlled trial published in Nutrition Journal in 2023 (Shigeta et al., PMID 37403052) gave healthy untrained men a drink with 1.5 g of matcha twice a day for 8 or 12 weeks alongside resistance training, and measured maximal strength, muscle mass, subjective fatigue and salivary cortisol.
Afternoon: caffeine decides. If you are sensitive or you sleep poorly, stop after mid afternoon. A randomised placebo-controlled trial published in Nutrients in 2024 (Baba et al., PMID 39275223) gave Japanese adults aged 27 to 64 two point seven grams of matcha daily for four weeks and recorded sleep by electroencephalography, finding no differences in total sleep time, latency, wake after sleep onset or efficiency.
A practical rule
Our own suggestion is between 7am and 4pm. After that, the caffeine has a fair chance of interfering with deep sleep, and no bowl of tea is worth a bad night. If you already drink coffee, count that in rather than treating tea as a free pass.
Preparation matters more than timing
Water at 70 to 80 °C brings out the umami sweetness of a ceremonial grade, while boiling water sends the bitterness up and leaves a rough finish. With 2 g of powder and 60 to 70 ml of water, whisked in a zigzag with a chasen until a fine foam appears, the bowl comes out balanced at any hour of the day. The kettle is the variable most people never think to change.
Which grade to start with
For drinking neat, use ceremonial grade. Our Matcha Zen Ceremonial is first harvest, shade grown in Jingshan (China) and processed at Zhejiang Camel Transworld in Yuhang (Hangzhou), slow stone milled, 100 g for £19.00, around 50 bowls, so roughly 38p each. Organic certification CCPAE, code ES-ECO-019-CT, plus USDA Organic.
References
- Shigeta M, Aoyama Y, Kokubo Y, et al., Matcha green tea beverage moderates fatigue and supports resistance training-induced adaptation. Nutrition Journal, 2023. PMID 37403052. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37403052/
- Baba Y, Takihara T, Okamura N., Matcha Does Not Affect Electroencephalography during Sleep but May Enhance Mental Well-Being: A Randomized Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial. Nutrients, 2024. PMID 39275223. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39275223/