FAQ
Answers to your Questions
QUESTIONS ABOUT MATCHA TEA
Discover Matcha tea on the ” What is Matcha tea? ” page.
Matcha tea is probably the easiest tea to make. In powder form, you don’t brew it like other teas but instead simply mix it with hot water. Once you have the necessary accessories, it only takes you 2 minutes to prepare it.
Discover Premium Ceremonial Grade IRO Matcha tea and its preparation ritual on the “My Ritual” page.
Matcha tea can also be used in the kitchen to make biscuits, cakes, ice cream, milkshakes, smoothies and even savoury dishes. In this case, you don’t need any accessories.
Discover IRO Matcha tea for Cooking and all our recipe ideas.
For Matcha tea for Cooking, you don’t need any accessories. You just add the required quantity of Matcha tea to your favourite recipes.
To make Matcha tea to drink, it is highly recommended that you use the traditional accessories. These accessories not only enable you to prepare your tea in the best possible way, they also form part of the ritual that accompanies your enjoyment of IRO Matcha tea.
The bamboo whisk (Chasen) is an essential accessory for mixing the Matcha tea powder properly with the hot water. No other tool can beat the results of a traditional bamboo whisk. The only option that can work if you haven’t got a Chasen is to use a battery-powered milk frother to mix your Matcha tea with the water.
The bamboo spoon (Chashaku) ensures you take the right amout to prepare your IRO Matcha tea (2 Chashaku per bowl with 10 to 15cl simmering water at 70-80°C). If you don’t have one, you can replace the 2 Chashaku with 1 level teaspoon of Matcha tea.
We don’t talk much about the Matcha tea strainer but it is nonetheless a very important part of enjoying your tea. In fact, it enables you to eliminate the little lumps that are created by the static electricity in the powder, preventing the unpleasant sensation that these can give when you drink your tea.
The bowl (Chawan) is essential to the preparation of your IRO Matcha tea. Any medium-sized bowl can do to start with but you will soon want to add a beautiful Matcha tea bowl to your Matcha tea experience! Drinking your IRO Matcha tea from a Matcha tea bowl is a totally different experience. Discover our selection of bowls in our store .
The whisk holder (Kusenaoshi) is an optional accessory that extends the life of your whisk and maintains its very unusual shape as long as possible. It is also a way of putting your whisk on display at home.
There are 4 ways of heating the water to to 70-80 degrees to prepare your Matcha tea:
- Use an electric kettle with adjustable temperature. This is the easiest and most accurate solution because you adjust the desired temperature directly on your kettle.
- Heat the water in a pan and check the temperature using a cooking probe thermometer or a kitchen thermometer.
- Bring the water to the boil, then let it cool. If you bring water to the boil in a pan and take it off the heat to leave it to cool, it will take approximately 3 minutes for the temperature to fall to 80 degrees and 5 minutes to reach 70 degrees.
- Bring the water to boil in a pan, then pour it into your bowl. This will immediately reduce the water temperature to 90 degrees. Put the water back into the pan, then pour it back into the bowl again. The water temperature will now have fallen to 80 degrees. Put the water back in the pan; wipe the bowl and put in 2 Chashaku of IRO Matcha tea. Now, pour in the water that will by now be at 70-75 degrees, the ideal temperature for preparing Matcha tea. The advantage of this method is that you will have pre-heated your bowl for an even better result!
Take care to seal your tin or bag of IRO Matcha tea after every use. Keep your IRO Matcha tea airtight and away from light, heat and humidity because all these elements will oxidise your Matcha tea.
You can also store your Matcha tea in the fridge. In this case, check that the condensation doesn’t run into your Matcha tea (which would lead to mould) and that it isn’t exposed to the odours of other foods in the fridge. Avoid taking it out of the fridge for too long to prevent it suffering severe changes in temperature, which could also generate condensation.
Once it is open, your IRO Matcha tea can be kept for several months in good storage conditions (in its sealed packaging in a cool, dry place or in the fridge) but we recommend using it as quickly as possible (in 1 or 2 months) to ensure optimal aroma and flavour.
IRO Matcha tea is made exclusively in Japan. Japan is unquestionably the country most specialised in Matcha tea cultivation and that produces the best Matcha tea in the world.
We compared numerous Matcha teas from a vast range of different producers to find the best organic Matcha tea producers in Japan and offer the tea to you under the IRO brand.
Discover more about our Premium Ceremonial Grade Matcha tea and our Matcha tea for Cooking on the dedicated pages.
Yes! IRO Matcha tea is 100% organic.
Our Matcha tea is cultivated in lush green countryside by farmers who have over 20 years’ experience in farming organic Matcha tea. It is cultivated in a totally ecological and environmentally friendly manner, free from the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides.
IRO Matcha tea is certified by Certisys (BE-BIO-01) according to the strict rules of the European Union. It is also certified Agriculture Biologique and certified organic in Japan by the relevant authorities.
Organic farming prohibits the use of chemical products, such as fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, fungicides and weedkillers. Organic farming respects the environment and is based on the recycling of natural organic matter and the use of organic and natural methods to combat parasites, diseases and weeds.
When you enjoy IRO Matcha tea, you can be sure to benefit from a product that is 100% organic, 100% natural and free from additives.
Matcha tea is one of the healthiest drinks on the planet. A true treasure for your health, it is, in particular, one of the most powerful antioxidant foods in the world.
To find out more, go to the page My Health Benefits.
Matcha tea is a natural product full of health benefits and has no major contraindications.
Matcha tea does, however, contain caffeine, like all teas (caffeine is sometime called theine in tea but it is exactly the same molecule).
One bowl of Matcha tea contains around 50mg of caffeine, which is 2 to 3 times less than a cup of coffee.
The European Food Safety Authority recommends a maximum daily dose of caffeine (from all sources) of:
- 400mg for adults
- 200mg for pregnant women
- 3mg per kilo of body weight for children and teenagers
It is also generally recommended to limit caffeine consumption during breastfeeding.
A Matcha tea drinker will usually consume 1 to 2 bowls per day (for example, one in the morning at breakfast and one at lunchtime or in the early afternoon).
If you have health issues, for safety reasons only, consult your doctor before drinking large quantities.
There are 4 main criteria for recognising a quality Matcha tea: its colour, its flavour, its aroma and the froth created on its surface. Achieving the quintessence of these elements is the obsession of our Japanese producers.
Colour: a high quality Matcha tea will be a bright, almost electric green. Matcha tea is so green because it is grown in the shade in its final weeks. In the shade, the tea leaves are forced to overproduce chlorophyll, which gives them this bright green colour. In comparison, a lower quality Matcha tea will not have been appropriately or sufficiently shaded and it will be much less green. A low quality Matcha tea will have a dull colour and may even tend towards yellow or brown.
Flavour: a high quality Matcha tea develops no or very little bitterness because it contains a lot of amino acids (L-theanine), which gives it a sweet, pleasant flavour (we sometimes talk about umami taste). A Matcha tea that is bitter or has an unpleasant flavour is a sign of low quality. IRO Matcha has a sweet, rich flavour full of green and floral notes, making you want only one thing: more.
Aroma: this is probably the element that is the least easily used to distinguish a quality Matcha tea from another. A quality Matcha tea should have a pleasant, sweet and green aroma due to the amino acids it contains (L-theanine). The higher the quality of a Matcha tea, the richer and more complex the olfactory notes it develops.
Froth: a quality Matcha tea, upon whisking, will produce a good, dense froth made up mainly of tiny bubbles (on the condition that you whisk it properly, which takes a bit of practice). On the other hand, the froth on a poor quality Matcha tea will not be dense and won’t last long in your bowl.
Generally, a primary indication of the quality of a Matcha tea is its price. You can find Matcha teas at all sorts of prices but you will find that there is no miracle involved: “you get what you pay for”.
In fact, the lower the price, the later the Matcha tea has been harvested, and the the less care will have been taken in its cultivation, harvest and production. It could also have been produced from older leaves or leaves harvested from lower down on the plant.
In any case, the difference between a good and a poor Matcha tea will be clear to the taste, insofar as the latter will leave a bad memory: unpleasant taste in your mouth, bitter even tart.
A high quality Matcha tea such as IRO Matcha will give you intense pleasure to the taste, offer excellent health benefits and make you want to come back for more and more!
Yes, we also have a range of Japanese loose teas!
If you unsure of how to prepare them, go to the page “Brewing loose tea“.
You can make iced tea with IRO loose teas using the cold brewing technique, which you can find on the page “Brewing loose tea“.
Matcha tea can also be prepared cold; find out how on the page “Cold brew Matcha“.
Our loose teas come from the beautiful mountainous region of Shizuoka in central Japan. This is a very green and sparsely populated area, where the mountains are covered with large tracts of forest.
Like us, insects are very fond of delicious young tea leaves. Our tea is grown in an elevated rural area and this altitude means there are far fewer insects, which is ideal for organic farming, which forbids the use of pesticides.
QUESTIONS ON DELIVERY AND PAYMENT
We deliver to the following countries: Belgium, Mainland France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom.
For all other countries in the European Union, please contact us in advance at info@matcha-iro.com.
Please see our Delivery page for more information.
Delivery is free over a certain order amount, which varies according to the country of delivery.
Please see our Delivery page for more information.
We deliver free to Belgium for all online orders over €48 and to Mainland France over €79 !
Delivery is also free to Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany and to the United Kingdom for all orders over €99, and to Spain and Italy for all orders over €119.
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