Japanese tea FAQ — choosing, brewing, buying

A reference site for Japanese tea — matcha, sencha, gyokuro, hojicha, genmaicha and teaware — researched from Japanese primary sources and written in English, with a brew timer, a cupboard to save what you drink, and a shelf for the teas and teaware we write up. We don't sell anything ourselves: buy links go to the vendors.

No. We link to established vendors (several per product where possible) and may earn an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. The disclosure sits right above every buy box, and our selection rules are public at /how-we-review.

No. We describe tea itself — origin, cultivar, processing, taste, brewing — and deliberately avoid health or medical claims. For anything health-related, ask a qualified professional, not a tea site.

There is no public, industry-wide definition of “ceremonial grade” — it is a term each vendor applies on its own. More reliable signals are the producing region, cultivar, harvest, how it was milled and the price per gram: verifiable facts a maker either states or doesn't. Those are the fields our product pages are built around.

Mainly shading: gyokuro is grown under cover for weeks before harvest, which deepens sweetness and umami; sencha is grown in open sun and tastes brighter and brisker. They are also brewed differently — see the ranges on /brew.

Because tin and bag sizes vary, the sticker price hides the real comparison: a 30g tin and a 100g bag only line up per gram. Where a vendor publishes a per-gram price we show it next to the price — we don't calculate one ourselves, since pack sizes are often approximate ("about 30g") and a number we divided out would look just as authoritative as a stated one.

It depends on the tea, and ranges are guidelines rather than rules: roughly 70–80°C for sencha, 50–60°C for gyokuro, and near-boiling for hojicha and genmaicha. Your tea's own packet instructions win — the /brew timer carries these presets.

No — matcha is whisked, not steeped. The powder is suspended in water (typically around 70–80°C) and whisked to a fine foam, so there is no steeping timer to run.

Tea is a freshness product: aroma fades with air, light, heat and moisture. Rather than one number, check the packaging date, keep it sealed and cool, and finish an opened pack sooner rather than later — our product pages note harvest/lot reading where the maker publishes it.

Yes — several established Japanese vendors ship overseas. Where a buy link records which region it serves (JP / US / EU / global), the buy box shows that label next to it. Shipping terms and customs vary by country, so check the vendor's own page at checkout.

Because a price with no date is a price nobody can check. Our rule: we don't publish a price without the date it was checked — if a figure can't be dated, the page says so on its face instead of showing a bare number that reads as current. Prices and stock change constantly, so the vendor's own page is the live truth; a page here is a snapshot, never today's price.