Hōjicha Powder: What It Is and How to Use It

Hōjicha is the tea Japanese households pour after dinner. It is green tea that has been roasted until it turns russet-brown, and the roast changes almost everything about it: the colour of the cup, the smell, the taste and the way it sits at the end of a day. Hōjicha powder is the same tea ground fine, so that, like matcha, you drink the whole leaf. This guide covers what it is, why it tastes the way it does, what the caffeine really is, and how to make a cup, a latte and an iced version at home.

It is written by Taka Kaneko, founder of EdoMatcha and one of only two Japanese Tea Instructors in Australia certified by the NPO Nihoncha Instructor Association. Where a figure is given, it comes from the association's course texts or from the published table named beside it.

What Hōjicha Is

Every Japanese green tea starts as the same steamed leaf. Sencha is that leaf rolled and dried. Bancha is the same process on later, coarser leaves. Hōjicha is a re-processed tea: sencha, bancha or kukicha (the stems) roasted over strong heat until the leaf browns. The Japanese tea industry classifies it that way, as a re-processed product alongside genmaicha, rather than as a type of leaf.

Two kinds exist. Leaf hōjicha is roasted from whole leaf. Stem hōjicha, roasted from kukicha, is lighter and sweeter, and it is the one many Kyoto roasters prefer. Some producers now roast first-harvest leaf, which is why the quality range is wider than the humble reputation suggests.

Why the Roast Changes the Taste

Roasting at high temperature, in the region of 160 to 200°C, does three things to the leaf. The amino acids that give green tea its savoury umami are almost entirely lost. The catechins, which give green tea its astringent bite, fall and change form. And a family of aroma compounds is created, the same ones that make toast and roasted nuts smell the way they do; the course texts single out one pyrazine as the compound that carries hōjicha's roasty note.

Put those together and you have the cup: amber rather than green, toasty and naturally sweet, almost no astringency, and a clean, dry finish. It is why people who are sure they do not like green tea will drink hōjicha and ask what it is.

The Caffeine, Honestly

Hōjicha is often sold as almost caffeine-free. It is not, and the instructor course is blunt about it: hōjicha's caffeine "is not as low as people assume", and it is higher than bancha's. What the roast removes is bitterness and body, and that gentleness is easy to mistake for an absence of caffeine.

The figures in the deck we teach from (Goto et al., Chaken Report, 1994, per cent of dry leaf) put caffeine at about 1.8% for hōjicha against 2.6% for sencha, 3.3% for matcha and 3.5% for gyokuro. With the powder you drink the leaf, so the arithmetic is simple: a cup made with 1 g of hōjicha powder carries roughly a quarter to a third of the caffeine of a 2 g bowl of matcha. Lower, and a sensible evening choice. Not zero.

Powder or Leaf?

Loose-leaf hōjicha is brewed like bancha: a big spoon of leaf, boiling water, thirty seconds, everything poured out. Aroma-first teas are brewed hot on purpose; the heat is what lifts the roast. Our loose leaf comes from Yame in Fukuoka: Organic Hōjicha Loose Leaf, Yame.

Hōjicha powder is the whole leaf ground fine. It whisks into hot water like matcha and, more to the point, it behaves like matcha in milk. That is the reason it has become popular: a hōjicha latte tastes of toast and caramel with none of the grassiness some people find in a matcha latte. Ours is made for us by our partner tea company in Ujitawara, Kyoto, from organic tea grown in Japan, roasted and then ground: Organic Japanese Hōjicha Powder, in a 40 g tin or a 100 g bag.

How to Make a Cup of Hōjicha Powder

1. Put 1 g of powder in a cup. That is about half a teaspoon.
2. Boil the water. Unlike matcha, hōjicha wants it hot: 90 to 100°C.
3. Pour in about 100 ml and whisk until it froths. A chasen works; so does a small hand frother or a fork.
4. Drink it straight away. Roasted tea gives its aroma to hot water instantly, and it fades just as quickly.

There is no bitterness to manage, so there is no wrong temperature. The only mistake is letting it sit.

Hōjicha Latte, Hot

1. Put 2 teaspoons of hōjicha powder in a cup.
2. Add a splash of hot water and work it to a smooth paste. This step is the one people skip, and skipping it is where the lumps come from.
3. Top with about 150 ml of hot milk, dairy or oat. Both suit it; oat milk leans into the caramel.
4. Sweeten if you like. In Japan, hōjicha lattes are usually sweetened lightly; a teaspoon of sugar or honey is plenty, and the roast supplies most of the sweetness itself.

Hōjicha Latte, Iced

Make the paste as above, stir it into a glass of cold milk over ice, and taste before sweetening. Cold mutes sweetness, so an iced hōjicha latte usually wants a touch more than a hot one.

Beyond the Cup

The powder folds into anything milk-based: custard, ice cream, a cheesecake base, a simple pudding. The association's own tasting notes pair hōjicha with rich Western sweets, pumpkin pudding and apple pie among them, and the powder makes that pairing a one-step job. Dust it over vanilla ice cream and you have a dessert.

For the loose leaf, one trick worth knowing: tea that has gone stale can be brought back by toasting it in a dry frypan over medium-low heat, shaking until it smells fragrant, and stopping just before the aroma peaks. You have made your own hōjicha. Roast only what you will drink now.

When to Drink It

In Japan hōjicha is the after-dinner tea, the one grandparents and children share, and the tea that goes with oily food. In the workshop we put it at two points in the day: with or after meals as the reset, and in the evening brewed light. Morning belongs to sencha, and deep work to matcha or gyokuro. If you want the ritual of a whisked bowl later in the day with less caffeine than matcha, hōjicha powder is the traditional answer.

Keep Reading

• What Is Matcha? A Beginner's Guide to Choosing Matcha Powder
• Matcha Benefits: What the Research Actually Shows (and What It Doesn't)
• How to Make Matcha: The Ratio, the Temperature and the Technique
• All our organic Japanese teas, shipped Australia-wide and worldwide from our Sydney studio, free Australian shipping over $100.