Interview with My Matcha Addiction, Cole

 

 

 

Ryan A (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the Specialty Matcha podcast. My name is Ryan. This is my cohost, Zongjun

and we're the co -founders of Sanko Matcha Products.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (00:06)
Yeah, so we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey in matcha, share startup stories and interview experts. And today we are happy to have Cole from My Matcha Addiction.

Ryan A (00:17)
Welcome Cole

Cole (00:18)
Hello, thank you for having me. It's very weird to be on a podcast. Usually I'm just behind the scenes, faceless on my Instagram page. So thank

Ryan A (00:28)
Yeah, same

too. At least before we launch this. It's weird. There's quite a community of matcha people on Instagram. It's like, really like a really cool, positive space for the most part. And it's interesting watching it grow too. I noticed in the last year, just like the number of people that are posting about specialty matcha.

and like all the drinks that they're creating and where they're sourcing stuff from is, it's really felt very different like two years

Cole (01:00)
I completely agree. And the amount of people that have popped up that aren't necessarily just focused on tea, but they're more lifestyle content creators. But yet somehow matcha is a big part of their channel. I find it very interesting.

Ryan A (01:15)
It's really positive. And the lifestyle too, I feel like they're bringing more people into a category. Like whether or not it's more like vegan focused or health food focused or like general wellness or Japanese like specific content, it's really helping spread the word. And like, I feel like the whole ecosystem has responded to it. And like now we have these new like single origin, single cultivar matcha companies. It feels like everyone's starting a matcha company now.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (01:32)
Yeah.

Ryan A (01:43)
we're just getting more and more options, is great. Because when we first started our tea journey, I don't know, like tencha years ago, there were very few choices.

Cole (01:50)
Yeah, you guys started much before me. I only started really in 2021. So I've only seen, you know, three -ish years of the matcha scene grow. I assume it was much different before that, even fewer options.

Ryan A (02:05)
I like it's just the big old traditional companies. I don't know if that's how you felt.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (02:10)
yeah, a couple years ago, it's really just all the traditional houses with the very obscure poetic names on their label. And you really do not see that as some sort of daily drink in people's life. People who are probably Chanoyu practitioners will end up purchasing them online.

It's really not like for people to drink daily, know, back in 2010, 2011, 2012.

Ryan A (02:42)
Yeah, it's grown a lot. So, Cole, could you tell us a little bit more about my matcha addiction, how both your matcha addiction, I guess, and how you fell in love with matcha and how you decided to start the channel?

Cole (02:55)
Yeah, it's kind of an interesting story. So the Instagram page was really born in 2021. During the COVID lockdown, I was a senior in undergrad at the time, and I had managed to snag a single dorm room, which I guess, thank God, because it was COVID, but it meant that I was pretty much locked up in my room all day.

You know, COVID did a lot of weird things to people. And for me, that was getting into matcha. So it really originally actually started as a theme page. And I don't know if you've heard about theme pages, I kind of know what they are, but what they're supposed to be is you essentially curate content about a certain topic or niche. So like think about a dog theme page or maybe like an outdoor.

vacation theme page, right? And I originally picked matcha because I thought, this is an interesting, under saturated, but seems to be growing niche. And I kind of enjoy tea. At the time, I never drank matcha before, actually. And I was gifted my first matcha around the same time. It was actually the Rishi Tea House blend or matcha, I believe it was called.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (03:49)
Mmm.

Cole (04:14)
And that got me more into matcha. So that's what I did actually reposted other people's matcha content for probably a couple months, but, I started feeling bad, you know, reposting other people's content and I am a photographer myself. So I definitely felt like I was kind of ripping off other people's work. so that's why I started

tried to move away from the whole reposting theme page idea and decided to try to start making my own content. And yeah, that was very interesting because immediately I saw that I was not able to keep up with a regular posting schedule. It's just I was previously posting every day and at best I was probably like posting once every two weeks. So yeah, it was very challenging from that aspect.

But I really got into it because my coursework in undergrad was very analytical,  focused. So I was majoring in computer engineering with some interest in finance courses sprinkled in. So this was really my creative outlet. And because I did come from kind of a self -taught photography background, the focus was really on kind of like visuals and aesthetics at first. so it kind of pushed me

into the world of learning a little bit more about videography. I know social media and videography might not be considered true cinematography or anything like that, but it is.

Ryan A (05:39)
It's hard.

It's from what we've been doing. It's really hard.

Cole (05:45)
Yeah, I learned a lot about lighting for sure. I still am far from expert, but yeah, it was difficult for sure, especially in a dorm room where you have limited space, not a huge budget.

Ryan A (05:57)
yes.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (06:00)
Quite an investment to upgrade yourself for a lot of these gadgets.

Ryan A (06:05)
It's a dangerous ladder. Like it's like You need the microphones and you need the lights and then you want the gimbal like

Cole (06:05)
⁓ completely.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (06:07)
Good.

Cole (06:12)
Yeah, the gear addiction is real.

But yeah, so I saw that it's kind of a creative outlet and coming from a kind of an engineering background. also saw the algorithm as kind of a fun problem to try to solve in an experiment with. Yeah. And as I continued, I realized that, you know, people started to view me as this subject matter expert, which I.

Ryan A (06:28)
Cool.

Cole (06:41)
still feel like I'm not really an expert. I'm just a guy that likes matcha and has been drinking it for a couple of years. But because of that, I felt responsible to learn a bit more and try to help educate. So I started a series where I did like fun fact Fridays, which I don't do anymore. cause the more I learned, I just realized how much misinformation is out there.

And just naturally from having this page, it kind of evolved into. matcha reviews, because that's honestly the most common question I get asked. Like, what matcha do you recommend? Right. so yeah, and then that's kind of where we are today. I really have this page now to just, it's kind of like a mind dump. just share matcha discoveries. I try to share my experiences and tasting notes with different stuff and, yeah, just sharing interesting,

discoveries or innovations I see in this space.

Ryan A (07:31)
When you went around doing the educational content, where were some places you went to learn and to build knowledge structures to sort through good and bad information? Because I can definitely relate looking through the internet, whether it be blogs or Instagram. It's very obvious that some people are just clearly over -marketing or it's just flat out really stretching the truth.

And then like some of it's good. And then there's this lot of gray area where you kind of have to use your own judgment. So how'd you go about like the self -education you needed to do to start putting out the educational content yourself?

Cole (08:11)
Yeah, it was definitely difficult because I find there's some decent surface level information about matcha online. But if you really want to go deep, that's still where I struggle today. But it started, think my first real exposure to what I would consider reliable matcha information was really through kettle.

they really first introduced me to this scene of specialty matcha. And from there, I was able to kind of develop a filter to be able to sort through some information online. And so, you know, I naturally just Google information, like, right? Like how is matcha made? And there's some websites that, you know, talk about the steaming process, the drying process. I also found Zach's book from Kettle.

Ryan A (09:02)
read

that too. It's a great book.

Cole (09:04)
Yeah, and that was very interesting. It introduced me to the different regions of Japan and kind of the different teas profiles that come out of each region, which before reading that book, I had no idea about. Like I had no idea that, Yame is known for having more maybe nutty tease versus, you know, Uji. So that was really interesting.

Ryan A (09:30)
Yeah, that book had some really good knowledge structures and I like the way it broke it down by region. It's really a page turner.

Cole (09:38)
I hear he's potentially writing another one so I'm looking forward to that.

Ryan A (09:42)
cool, I haven't heard

Zongjun (Sam) Li (09:42)
Cool

Did the book inspire your travel plans in Japan? When you want to go to places and sample different teas?

Cole (09:50)
For sure. Yeah, I think he had a little page or two at the end about recommendations of teahouses. I definitely took those to heart.

Ryan A (09:57)
That's right.

Yeah, that was cool how they put the list at the end. I remember it, but right before I left to go, I've been on the road for a little while, so I don't want to carry books around. It's just too much weight. It's like, got to grab a photo of that page before I leave in case I end up in Japan before I get reunited with that book.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (10:14)
hahaha

Ryan A (10:18)
It's cool.

what's your review philosophy? You do a lot of reviews, like how do you approach sharing your experiences tasting a new matcha for the first

Cole (10:27)
Yeah, it's definitely evolved over the years. I said, the first match I ever tasted was that Rishi tea house. I can't even remember what it tastes like because my, was so not focused on actually picking apart the taste. was more so just, this tastes, tastes not too bad. It's pretty good. so that's all I remember about it, but

Ryan A (10:51)
Ha

Cole (10:52)
Yeah, I mean, since then, it's definitely evolved a lot. I get sent a surprising amount of matcha. And yeah, the first thing I've learned how to do is weed through some of the matcha that I get sent, because I'll be honest, a lot of it is just not very good. And

When I post reviews or share content about matcha, honestly, at baseline, I have to find it interesting in some way, whether that's the taste, the story, if it's just not enjoyable, almost 99 % of the time I don't post about it. So I guess that's baseline criteria. I have to find it tasty or interesting in some way. And I totally...

understand that my taste preferences aren't what other people like in their matcha. So like I personally prefer umami rich, low astringency but I know a lot of people also don't like those heavy Marine notes and they just like to have their matcha and lattes. So they want something, you know, a bit more punchy or potentially nutty. So I always try to keep that in mind as well.

And I also feel responsible to, you know, write these reviews with an open mind because I realized that this started as a small passion project, but now I do have a real audience. And what I say really actually does matter and it influences people. So I try not

bash or smear any company or brand. If I really don't dislike it that much, I just won't post about

Ryan A (12:33)
Makes sense.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (12:34)
Yeah. Have your preference over matcha change over time? Did you like the very heavy amino acid umami notes from the very beginning?

Cole (12:45)
I'd say yeah, it definitely has changed.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (12:49)
really did not enjoy it. It tastes almost like a seaweed soup for some of the very umami -rich matcha. So it was really not my preference in the early days. But I don't know if that's the case for you.

Cole (13:02)
Sure.

you know, in the early days, probably the first year of drinking matcha, I hadn't really even discovered the very umami rich side of matcha. suppose I was still on the very kind of white label US, US brands. but yeah, Zongjun what was your first matcha that you tried that gave you that umami experience?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (13:26)
wow, it was a kumpayashi that I had with Koike -sensei, of Omotesenke who based in New York. And we had some sort of a tea gathering and I was served that tea in a koicha form. And that was such a umami bomb. I was definitely overwhelmed.

But in retrospect, it was probably a fantastic tea. Even though it's really condensed, I can remember it's really not bitter at all. It's just really umami and very pungent.

Cole (13:59)
Yeah, I'd say my first real experience with what I would consider a very rich tea was probably when I went to Kettle's Tasting Bar. That was really the first experience I had. And then honestly, ever since Ooika started and I tried one of their matcha, I feel like

really, it's really raised the bar on what I thought umami rich matcha could be and everything else I've tried before. It's crazy. It just took a big step down in terms of umami. So yeah, I find that going back through tasting notes and looking back at stuff that I tasted maybe a year and a half ago, I almost have to recalibrate

I don't know if you guys have had a similar experience, but.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (14:43)
Ryan likes umami notes from the very beginning that I do now.

Ryan A (14:47)
yeah, I do. Although it took me a long time to develop a preference for Koicha So it's also my first time having any umami experience was also with the koi keis. And they had a tea room in New York. And...

They invited a big group of Penn State students to come up and we got to do the whole thing, like the longer form temai, and they passed around the koicha. And they seated us five at once. And the person who's at the end has to finish whatever is in the bowl. So I had to share this with four of my fellow Tea Institute members who all didn't like koicha.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (15:20)
Yeah.

Ryan A (15:27)
And for whatever reason I was on the end and you take three tiny little sips and then the person at the end, it's very impolite if you don't finish it. So I think I was left with more than half the bowl. And it's like, wow, one, this tastes very weird. And two, I gotta drink all of this. I'm pretty sure I didn't sleep that night.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (15:46)
was quite an experience.

Cole (15:48)
I tried Koicha in Japan at one of Ippudo's locations. I believe it was their Tohoku location. And I don't know how much matcha they put in there, but it must've been like tencha grams because I had such a headache after that for many hours. It was rough.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (16:04)
my

Ha ha.

Ryan A (16:06)
Koicha is intense.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (16:06)
That was stout.

Yeah, we were playing a very interesting game throughout the event too. Like we need to drink three different sets of koicha and remember the taste and then they will swap the order of the tea and then they will add an additional tea into the set and we will all taste that set again and we need to guess the order and we need to guess the new tea. It's called Chakabuki

And so not only we need to drink the tea, we also need to have our brain working the whole time trying to figure out the taste profile.

Ryan A (16:45)
And out of all the people,

Zongjun you were the one who won. I was impressed. They all tasted pretty similar, at least to my taste at the time. I was like, what, like eight years ago now.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (16:55)
Yeah,

Cole (16:57)
yeah, I was just going to say, I'd imagine if you drink a lot of these really strong teas back to back, they start to all blend together. At least that's what I found when I tried to do side -by -side tastings.

They all start to taste the same.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (17:09)
Yeah, yeah, I'm not gonna brag my tasting skill, but there was definitely some luck involved in that game. Totally agree.

Ryan A (17:20)
When you were in Japan going to all the different matcha places, what were some things that surprised you? Both I guess in Tokyo and Kyoto Uji area.

Cole (17:30)
⁓ yeah, there's a couple things. the thing I found most surprising,

was just the tea catalog at some of these places. So I guess going into this, I was expecting like a kettle -like experience where you sit down and you have this huge catalog of tea to choose from, where you have all these different blends and cultivars with notes about flavors or potentially farmers. But it was

Not like that at all at the lot of places I went to. was usually, the focus was never really on matcha. It was more so on loose leaf tea. Maybe they'd have two or three senchas and then one or two gyokuros and then one matcha, at best two. And it was usually not much information about the matcha either.

I know I went to one tasting experience where they were just using a Marukyu Koyamaen blend, not even near the top of their line. was kind of just a mid -tier. But that was very surprising to me. I really thought I was gonna be able to get closer to the matcha, in a sense be able to understand the farmer and get this really...

fresh, interesting experience with like, okay, this is the cultivar, this is the farmer, this is where it was grown, but yeah, I found it was not like that at

Ryan A (18:51)
Yeah. I've had similar things. I remember walking down that famous retail street in Uji and someone would hand me this English list with prices. like, I have no idea what I'm looking at. I don't know.

but no one was really able to describe the difference between the products to me, other than like Koicha versus Usacha suitable.

Cole (19:13)
I completely agree. I was in a Horii Shichimeien store and I was asking about their Narino because that was particularly interesting because from my reading that was a cultivar that they had actually created themselves, if I'm not mistaken. And they had two different Nerinos there. It was like a Narino.

Ryan A (19:19)
yeah.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (19:24)
Yeah

Cole (19:38)
basic I'll say, and then a premium. And I was asking you about that, like what's the difference? And yeah, all they could really give me was they're grown and processed in different ways. So, it did really inspire confidence.

Ryan A (19:50)
Okay.

haha

Zongjun (Sam) Li (19:54)
And they didn't offer you any detail about the processing differences?

Cole (19:58)
I'm honestly, I don't think they knew. The person I was talking to was an English speaker, which was really helpful in that regard, but I don't think she just knew that much.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (20:02)
Well, ⁓

Interesting. Amazing tea though, we had the luck to try. Was it a premium or a basic version, right? That we opened?

Ryan A (20:16)
No, was just the basic one. Because I was in

that same shop and I was like, okay, I'm just going to pick some stuff at random here. And I picked this tin looks interesting. And it was complete accident that I discovered Narino. It's like, whoa, what is this? When I got home and was trying it. And then I read the backstory that they developed it. To my knowledge, I haven't seen any other vendors carry it. I've seen tea dealers in New York carry it, but I assume it's white labeled.

Cole (20:44)
Interesting.

Ryan A (20:44)
It's also like $80

from them, which is crazy.

Cole (20:49)
Yeah, I'd love to learn more about the process of kind of creating a cultivar. So like, does Horii have a, I don't know, a patent or there's something on this cultivar? I don't know, because I know they created it.

Ryan A (21:01)
I don't know.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (21:02)
could be a trade secret.

Ryan A (21:02)
I wonder how that works. Is that protected? I've never heard of that. Have you ever heard of a tea cultivar being protected, Like in China? Or Japan?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (21:13)
Well, in mainland China and Taiwan, a lot of these cultivars, they're kind of like Monsanto. they would, you know, seed propagate a lot of these new cultivars, give them a name, and then they will only distribute the seeds or the cologne branches to farmers. And they will not tell you.

the specific detail. Well, they might tell you what other mother trees, but they will not really tell you how they genetically mix the mother trees and what other portions from each trees.

Ryan A (21:51)
That's interesting. I know that the government does some of the work too. Both in Japan and Taiwan, they have a research center. I think it's been around since like the 80s. They developed a bunch of different cultivars through like hybridization and different seed propagation techniques.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (22:07)
Yeah.

Ryan A (22:07)
Well, they really have discovered something with Narino. For people who love umami, it'd be awesome if Mark could get his hands on some Narino tencha and we could all have it fresh -milled in the States. That would be crazy. Probably the biggest umami bomb ever.

Cole (22:22)
Yeah, that'd be incredible. For sure.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (22:25)
Was that your first time in Japan, Cole, doing your tea travel?

Cole (22:30)
It was. It was.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (22:33)
What expectations did you have before going to Japan? Was it very different

How did you plan your trip?

Cole (22:39)
It wa -

Yeah, so I went with my family. So as much as I would have liked it to be a hundred percent tea, it sadly was not. You know, I had to give and take a little bit. But we, I did manage to get a full day in Uji, which I honestly wish I could have spent longer there. Cause I feel like I can only drink so much matcha in a day and there was definitely more to try.

yeah, it was, I was surprised at how many people were able to discuss matcha and tea in English, which was very nice. I was able to have kind of surface level conversations and ask about teas. But yeah, just the whole experience of

depth of their matcha catalogs were just very interesting. Besides, you know, going to the, to the big tea brands like, Ippodo and Marukyu Koyamaen and Horii, the smaller places really usually only had one or two. It was very different from what I expected.

Ryan A (23:44)
surprising

Cole (23:45)
But honestly, after having tried so many single cultivar matchas, I personally find it hard to get excited about these just standardized blends from the big Japanese tea companies. get excited about the seasonal blends because I feel like those vary a little bit.

from year to year. So like the fall editions, the spring editions, and maybe some shinchas. yeah, although I went to and visited a lot of the big Japanese tea brands, I found myself not walking away with a huge amount. I just usually buy the top of their lineup just to say I've tried it. But yeah, I'm not necessarily excited or inclined to.

to repeat purchase a standard blend. But I don't know, how do you guys feel about that?

Ryan A (24:41)
Yeah, I agree. It's sometimes I crave consistency and you know a lot of for the like the content that even that we make we just try to pick one blend and keep it very consistent and we don't like to change it up and someone's got to consume it after you've shot the Instagram video. So a lot of my magic consumptions not by choice.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (25:03)
Yeah.

Ryan A (25:04)
But

no, I think the single origin, single cultivar stuff is so much more interesting. Also, I've noticed with a lot of the, especially the fresh milled stuff, like a lot of the stuff that I've had from Mark, I feel different. And I don't know if there's just like more L -theanine that just hasn't degraded or whatever.

But like, I get like this body feeling. don't have a good, like in Chinese tea, like when they talk about drinking really old, Pu-erh really special teas, they call it like cha chi or chi energy. I don't really believe in that exactly. I don't not not believe in it, but like there is some definite like bigger feeling of wellness I've noticed with these really carefully produced and like heritage matcha.

where it's not even just about the taste, but I felt like amazing for like an hour after drinking it. I don't know if you've had a similar experience.

Cole (26:01)
I agree. And in my experience, it always has felt like that great feeling always seems to come with super high umami. So in my mind, I've kind of pieced together, okay, super high umami equals this great feeling.

Ryan A (26:19)
I must just be a massive dose of L -theanine or something. I don't know. Or maybe there's some other like health benefit, like psychologically active compounds that kind of make you feel like have a sense of wellness. I don't know.

Cole (26:33)
Yeah,

it must be. I'd love to learn more as well. We need more scientists to their hands on matcha.

Ryan A (26:39)
for sure. That'll be great. More nutritional studies too. There's a couple around degradation, but one of the big things that we're interested in is out how to get fresher matcha out to the world. As soon as we start developing some samples, maybe some of our revenue can go towards helping someone at some university research lab. Just run some basic tests.

Let's actually learn how much nutrition is getting degraded because most people drink matcha that's at least three months old, probably. Most people, it's closer to six months to a year. The sad part is the vast majority of them are probably drinking it. Maybe they like the taste and it's healthy and it's some mixture of those two things. You lose out on both of those components when...

you know, it's sitting in a powdered form for so

Zongjun (Sam) Li (27:32)
really just a waste.

Cole (27:33)
And it always blows my mind how much I feel like the flavor of matcha changes, even for me, from just the first day of opening a tin to maybe the end of week three, because I know I was traveling here recently, so I wasn't able to really consume a lot of matcha for maybe like a week and a half. And I feel like the matcha that I came back to after traveling that had been opened had definitely changed quite a bit.

So it's, yeah, it's just always so interesting to me how much the flavor seems to change in such a short period of

Ryan A (28:07)
Yeah, I think it's just an incredible surface area. I did a really horrible back of the napkin calculation of how much surface area I thought was in a 30 -gram cam of matcha, and I had to make a bunch of assumptions around relative density or specific density. But I calculated, which might be wrong, about 2 ,000 square feet of surface area in 30 grams.

which is crazy. Weirdly enough, just yesterday, I have a very good friend that's getting his PhD in the Netherlands and we got to meet up in Belgium. And he just got his PhD in food engineering and he has access to a machine that's usually used to do particle analysis on cereals that have been milled, like wheat or barley or millet or rice.

to determine surface area. So he's down, I'm going to send him a can of matcha, and he's actually just gonna directly measure it, because I have not been able to actually figure that out in the literature, just to help everyone visualize the surface area in a can and why it goes bad so fast.

Cole (29:17)
Yeah, I'd love to know. That's super interesting.

Ryan A (29:20)
like weird. don't know, that everyone in coffee, fresh grinds, there's even like a movement among like people who mill their own flour. There's a really cool product called the mock mill. For like 300 bucks, you can mill your own flour and you can select different wheat cultivars and apparently preserves a ton of nutrition too. Cause you know, wheat has the same problem after it sits or mill it or you know, any of the

So it would be cool to see that hit the mainstream for matcha in the same way that it has for coffee.

Cole (29:53)
Yeah, and I know there's some products that exist currently that are supposed to be able to allow you to mill matcha fresh at home. I haven't tried any of them actually. But I know there's one that just popped up like this week on Instagram, which it was really interesting to see.

Ryan A (30:06)
yeah.

Yeah, we saw that too. Seems super new. it'd be cool to learn more about that one. It seems like one of those like hand grinder mills, like the smaller ones, is with the motor on it. It looks cool.

Cole (30:22)
Yeah, when I saw it at first, thought, this is the guys over at Sanko Cause I know, I know you guys said you were working on a tabletop mill, but I guess not yet. Very interested to learn more about

Ryan A (30:34)
yeah, we're mid -prototype. Our first version works. It's a little slow and it's a little hot. So V2 is going to have a much stronger cooling system. So the next version will be ready in like middle of August that we hope will be fingers crossed.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (30:51)
Most likely. Fingers crossed.

Ryan A (30:55)
Both, like, feels like things happen really fast in China until, like, until they don't. And then, it's it's a, it's it's it's it's

Zongjun (Sam) Li (31:05)
It's a difficult problem to

Ryan A (31:07)
It does. It produces so much heat. To have it go faster than an Ishi Usu that heat's gotta go somewhere, and there's so much friction. So we really underestimated the degree to which we needed to pump or pull heat out of those millstones.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (31:07)
you know, people.

Yeah, it really needs a strong motor to propel the millstone because they are physically touching each other. So it's generating a lot of friction.

Ryan A (31:35)
Yeah, because the high -end coffee burrs usually don't make contact. So the torque considerations for a motor and all that kind of mechanical stuff needed to be beefed up pretty considerably so it doesn't make that awful screeching noise that our first one made.

Cole (31:53)
without giving away your secrets. How are you actually cooling this thing? it like water coils on either side of the stone or?

Zongjun (Sam) Li (32:02)
Yeah, well, once it's out, you will be able to see it. But the mechanism is closer to how you cool down a CPU. Because water cooling is... Yeah, there are a lot of corrosion considerations you need to consider. And you are working with very fine powder. So, you

Cole (32:01)
about

okay. Just lots of fins.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (32:25)
If there's some certain failure point, it will really make a mess.

Cole (32:29)
Makes sense.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (32:29)
Yeah. So.

Ryan A (32:30)
The nice thing

is that this industry is pretty mature. We can borrow a lot of computer, the way they cool computers and stuff, and using similar techniques. And we're going to have it be so that the user can set the temperature. So if you want to mill it 40 degrees Celsius versus 70, you can kind of make your own compromise. If the cooling system's maxed out, you'll just have to go slower.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (32:56)
Yeah, or sometimes people would prefer a little bit of a toasty notes to want to set the temperature a little bit higher.

Cole (32:56)
Hmm, I like

Ryan A (33:03)
Yeah, we learned that recently from Ian from Yunomi. He's the founder of Yunomi, a big Japanese tea supplier. He was telling us that the art of Ishi Usu making, one, they don't really know why their best millstones are their best millstones. Like it's really an art. But they do know that some are better than others. And apparently the really good ones that they save for really the best tea, they run them dry.

for 20 minutes because they don't want to run them so cold and that the match is pretty boring unless there's a little bit of heat generated in that friction which we found very interesting.

Cole (33:44)
That is really interesting, running it dry. That's so counterintuitive to everything I usually hear about motors.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (33:51)
Yeah.

You want to heat it up first. I guess it makes sense. You want the heat to kind of, you know, stimulate the expression of matcha a little bit. Make it more aromatic.

Ryan A (34:05)
Jared from Jaga Silk talks about that too in his mills and that they've tried lower temperatures because they have like this retrofitted matcha milling machine that's not an Ishi Usu. It's by some Japanese company, I forget the name of it. But they have a, it's like a beer wort chiller heat exchanger thing hooked up to it that's water -based cooling system. And he said they've tried really low temperatures and it just comes out

And they kind of dial it in for each tencha

Cole (34:34)
That's very interesting. I did not know

Ryan A (34:38)
This stuff for creating this mill has been shockingly difficult to find. If it weren't for Mark and Jared and for a couple other people we've talked to, I'm not sure if we could have even learned the fundamentals to figure out where are the problems and what should the options be. It seems like a very traditional industry in its current form

Actually, I don't even think we're replacing Ishi Usus. I think Ishi Usus will probably always be the Rolls Royce of matcha milling, at least until our technology gets very, very mature. But just even getting the quality of matcha that everyone's drinking radically better. Because either it sits for six months or you can fresh mill

and get a very close approximation to what an Ishi Usu has. And I would wager that the latter is probably higher quality, at least in terms of people's preferences.

Cole (35:31)
Yeah, and Ishi Usus are so interesting because they're so not modern. And like you said, they're crafted by hand, like someone's chiseling these lines and these stones. Like you said, some Ishi Usus are better than others. It just feels so, yeah, old school and just inconsistent. I'm not into coffee very much, but I'd imagine that in coffee,

the drying and like roasting and grinding is done in a much more modern fashion.

Ryan A (36:00)
Oh yeah, and it's gotten very advanced very quickly with the rise of specialty coffee movement. Even like, I think it was in 2005, the main grinder that you see everywhere, the EK43, was actually a spice grinder And it was discovered that it

gave a ridiculously good grind size distribution for coffee and they started using it and then they just pivoted their business that way. But like even the history of that grinder, which now almost everyone uses, it's 15 years, 20 years, it's like all still super new, but it's exploded. So it'd be really cool to see that in matcha where everyone can be their own matcha miller. And then you don't have the freshness

I one of the most annoying things, and I'm just purely talking as a consumer now, like the most annoying thing about being into matcha is the urgency to drink it once you open it. And it's very hard to buy a bunch of stuff and keep it around. And then like you have all this pressure to move through it. And if you opened one thing and then you open something else three weeks later, you can't even really compare it anymore because one of them has been open for too long. I don't know if you have that frustration too.

Cole (37:12)
Yes, I completely agree. And I find too, usually I'll take my matcha out of the fridge because I keep it in the fridge after being opened to try to preserve that freshness. if I forget and then I decide, I want some matcha. Then I'm, then I'm torn. Do I take it out of the fridge and, potentially get condensation in the matcha and then it's totally ruined or do I, do I wait? yeah. So it's a constant battle.

Ryan A (37:36)
you compare and contrast all of these single origin, single cultivar new matcha companies against these very traditional matcha houses that have been around

Both as a consumer, I guess, and the way that you've reviewed these, but also what's your feeling of the way they present themselves and their brand and their products.

Cole (37:59)
Yeah, I find that the newer, usually, you know, not Japanese based, but, us based, brands that focus on single cultivar. They tend to be, of course, much more transparent, but also a lot more focus on, on education, which I really enjoy. cause like I mentioned earlier, I just don't find this standard blends to be.

that exciting from the traditional Japanese companies because I want to be able to feel like I can understand the matcha in some way. And yeah, you just don't get that from the big Japanese companies because it's just this standard blend. I was on one of Ippodo's

Zongjun (Sam) Li (38:33)
Yeah.

Cole (38:43)
live streams the other day where they were talking about their new Shincha matcha

you know, someone had asked, you know, where's the matcha from? Like, is this matcha from Uji? Because I guess everyone loves Uji matcha these days. And yeah, they couldn't really answer that. They said that was, you know, secret proprietary knowledge and that they, all they could say was it's in the Kyoto area and that their, you know, team masters

have a special skill set to blend these matchas year to year to what they deem to be good tasting

Zongjun (Sam) Li (39:22)
Yeah, I mean, like other than the flavor and I guess the story of the poetic name that they coined to the matcha, you've learned surprisingly little about what it is after drinking it. Like they don't tell you like because you see blending in like other things too, like like wine, like they will tell you exactly how much cab is in the wine, how much merlot is blended into the bottle.

but they don't necessarily tell you in these traditional blend matcha. So you really don't learn anything and you don't progress as a more experienced taster by tasting or drinking all these blends.

Ryan A (40:03)
I'm just surprised to have a live stream.

Cole (40:03)
Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, I loved it. They should do more of them.

Ryan A (40:08)
Cool. I don't know why they don't show off the skill of these blenders more. It'd be interesting if they were like characters that are part of this story that like you learn about and like they talk about what their intentions were with the blend and how they took a little bit of this and a little bit of that and like they don't even need to give away like their IP like this like some probably some really interesting storytelling they could

and like they hide behind this wall.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (40:36)
definitely.

Because these blendhouse exist for generations, like hundreds of years. I bet there are a lot of interesting things that just not like being told to the public.

Ryan A (40:46)
Yeah. And it doesn't even feel like luxury. Like doesn't even feel like you know if you know. It's just like, I don't even know who would know. very insular community. I don't know.

Cole (40:57)
Yeah, I'd love that. Cause I know we sometimes get profiles on tea farmers, but that's probably the next step, right? You get some interesting profiles on tea blenders.

One other interesting thing they said on that, on that live stream was that this, so it was actually a, a, Ippodo U S, live stream. wasn't their global account. They said that the Shincha was actually only being released in the U S and Canada, and that it would not be available in Japan, which I thought was very interesting. Cause what, I guess, what does that tell you about the consumer's preferences in Japan about matcha?

Ryan A (41:25)
⁓

Cole (41:35)
that they just, not, it will clearly it doesn't seem as popular, but yeah, if the Shincha isn't being released in Japan, what does that mean?

Ryan A (41:43)
Yeah,

that's weird. I don't know. Yeah, it's... I ordered some Shincha too this season and I have reaffirmed my previous belief that I don't like it. It's really grassy. I don't know what your experience... It wasn't like a super expensive one either, but what's your opinion of Shincha in general, like in the flavors?

Cole (42:04)
I find it varies. I've only had two ever. I had one last year and I've had one this year and the one this year was from Ippudo. But it definitely tends to be more on the astringent side, I feel, just because you don't like that aging. But yeah, I'm

a huge fan, but I like it because it makes me feel like I'm tasting something different and unique to that year or that harvest.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (42:35)
Okay.

Ryan A (42:35)
It's true. And it's nice that the one point, like, they do have a very unique offering versus just like the standard stuff that everyone knows.

Based on everything you've seen in the industry and all these new companies that are coming on the scene, what are some, like, if you were king for a day, like, what would be some changes that you would want to make or new companies or new products or, like, what would you find very exciting? Like if you were to look back in five years from now, that that's going to happen in the next couple of years, where are like the exciting white spaces that you see where

Basically a product or a service or a company doesn't exist

Cole (43:14)
That is a great question. And if I had a great answer, I'd probably start my own matcha company. But alas, I do not. But no, think the really exciting parts are like we've been talking about, just bringing freshly milled matcha home. And I'd really love to learn more and have more transparency on

Zongjun (Sam) Li (43:25)
Hahaha

Cole (43:40)
more the scientific aspect of

because I am analytically minded. Yeah, I'd love to just know more about the polyphenol content or the L -theanine content, for example, because I know that exists with a lot of other foods. Like with olive oils, you can learn about how many...

What is it? Amino acids or content in the olive oil. But you just don't get that with matcha. And yeah, just love to know more about

Ryan A (44:13)
Yeah, totally agree. feel like you've seen that in coffee. Interesting you mentioned olive oil too. That's true too, that the education for that sort of thing. I also noticed that happening and like leading to real changes, like people using more metal packaging where it's not exposed to light and general consumer education that it needs to be consumed quickly.

That would be great to see. Yeah, totally agree. Apparently there's a lot in Japanese, but it's just very hard to find. Or it's old. A lot of them are really old studies. A very good friend has sent me a couple that I've been reading through on Google Translate image thing. And they're like from the

Zongjun (Sam) Li (44:44)
word

Yeah, not translated.

yeah, very old papers.

Ryan A (45:04)
Yeah.

But now, more nutrition -based research and flavor -based research too would be really cool. It'd be cool too if everyone has a pretty standardized vocabulary for talking about matcha flavor and what attributes are important. I feel like everyone's getting pretty close,

Having a, like even like earthy, like the ambiguity around that word among like the matcha community can mean like really different things to different people, I've noticed.

Cole (45:30)
Yeah, I agree. And the reason I mentioned olive oil is because that's somewhat popular with the health wellness community at the moment, just because of some of the studies that have been surfacing in the news and becoming mainstream about drinking a couple tablespoons of olive oil a day.

promote longevity or whatever. And I feel like with olive oil, it's really become, or at least in this community, it's become, you look at the number of active amino acids or components in the olive oil, and then you pay up depending on that. It would be very interesting to get something similar. And I don't think it's too far out of the question to think that matcha...

at least some branch of matcha could kind of move towards that direction because I know it's a very big in the health community. So I could see a very similar thing happening where there's certain brands that will test and publish the active components levels in their matcha. And they would have a catalog that ranges from like low to high and the most active.

of matcha would have the highest price point, especially just for this health and wellness community, because I think it's becoming bigger every year.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (46:49)
Sounds like a great business idea, Cole. Maybe you should consider it.

Ryan A (46:51)
Yeah

Cole (46:54)
Who knows? Maybe, maybe.

Ryan A (46:57)
Well, I think that's all we have time for. So thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider giving us five stars or sharing it with a friend and be sure to follow Cole at MyMachaAddiction on Instagram.

I will see you on the next one. All right, thanks.

Zongjun (Sam) Li (47:12)
See

Cole (47:13)
Thanks guys.