Status Quo of Fresh Ground Matcha

 

 

Ryan and Zongjun (00:00)
welcome to the Specialty matcha podcast. My name is Ryan. This is my co -host Zongjun Hello, hello. And we're the co -founders of Sanko matcha products. Yeah. So we launched this podcast to discuss our learning journey in matcha. I share startup stories and interview experts. And sometimes we some interesting conversations during the day that we wanted to really enlarge that into a real episode.

Yeah, so this is a less filtered, less structured discussion that we were having and we realized it was continuing to evolve and it might be interesting to share. we don't have any conclusions yet. I'm not sure if we will at the end of the episode, but it is also important to say that we are maybe a little bit biased because we're in the process of creating a machine that can mill matcha a fresh. this is a discussion on the status quo.

of fresh -milled matcha both some in -person dialogue that we've learned over the past, I don't know, a year or so talking to people who've been doing it or have experience with it some of the commentary that's going on online more and more entrance to the fresh ground matcha space voicing their opinions and we find some of the perspectives really quite interesting. So

of today's episode is the status quo of fresh -ground matcha we see it So you can almost view this as an opinion piece So wanna sort of tell everyone what sparked this conversation? Yeah, so guess like by talking to a lot of people and their opinion or their preference towards fresh -ground matcha We've been really thinking about this problem space lately

And by seeing some of the newer people trying to develop a similar solution to Fresh Ground Matcha and seeing their posts getting commented by potential or not potential consumers, we really sparked this thinking of, know, is it? Fresh Ground just better or is it like really debatable?

compared to pre -ground or stored, well stored matcha. Yeah. Cause some people who say that are some very prominent tea vendors that were what looked like trying to get rid of last year's stock, everyone that the flavors are balanced and harmonized and really they've reached their peak after one year of aging. Sounds like a convenient excuse. the only other end you see very similar Western vendors saying,

our fresh -milled matcha is in. It's amazing. There's nothing like it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But if you make a, you know, horizontal comparison to, know, like for example, Chinese tea, like Yan Cha, it's freshly roasted, it doesn't taste good at all. Like it has this very strong roasted burn notes. And if you let it sit for a while, flavor does become more balanced. also on the other hand, you know, in the wine industry,

you have, you know, new wine from Beaujolais and people really like the fresh, juicy, fruity notes coming from it. Beaujolais Nouveau. Yeah. So like, the French. I've, my girlfriend is French and I've been spending a lot of time with her friends. And I think there is no more universal dispreference for wine than Beaujolais Nouveau. It seems like they've done an excellent job selling this to Americans. the Chinese, I guess.

a perfect dessert wine. It's almost like juice drink with some glassing of I think it's a totally fine drink. it applies back to matcha, you make the same argument about fresh ground is just better, it's fresher, the flavor is more pungent?

Or if we let it sit for a while, it turns into a more balanced flavor. What do you think? It depends on how the tencha is stored. A lot of the tencha is very cold stored, some is even frozen. I it's called the global Japanese tea group or society. I forget what it's called.

conference. They recently put out two YouTube videos of their conference, which they hold in both English and Japanese. They did one in Tokyo, they did one in Kyoto for 2024. And one of the keynote speakers was using what's basically a freezer, freezing technology to preserve matcha.

Ryan And Sam (04:31)
And we learned from Ian that the amino acid components in the L -theanine degrade much slower at low temperatures than the catechins. So basically what that does is the sweet natural sweetness and savoriness of the Tencha or of the Matcha is more preserved and will remain. And then the bitter and astringent catechins will slowly

degrade And you know, this is well known, accounted for historically with the holiday of Robi Rocky, which happened in the fall. I think it happens in November that the tea ceremony practitioners practice. It's the tea new year. It's about six months after harvest. The Tencha is stored in a jar. And on the outer part of the jar is all the Usachcha tea.

There's another jar within the jar sitting in the tencha of the koi cha tea. And then part of the ceremony is they mill it fresh and then they consume it. So fresh milled matcha was, they might've been drinking better matcha way back in the days before you had electricity in a motor to strap on an ishi usu to make this matcha. So fresh ground matcha is

actually more historic and has been done for a longer period of time, but there's a difference between, I guess, aging tencha and aging matcha. So, you know, is there a change? Absolutely. I think things are going to degrade at different rates. Whether or not it harmonizes it, I don't know. But also, you know, the blending skill is around this methodology, right? The baseline assumption now is that best case scenario, a consumer is going to consume the matcha within three months.

Realistically, it's closer to six months to a year, if you're lucky in a good supply chain with good vendors that aren't taking on a ton of inventory that they can't move through. And because we don't have mill dates, we really have no idea how long that thing has been set as powder. But I bet those blenders take it into account. I don't know if I was a multi -generational blender.

there's probably things you can do to understand the degradation path of Tencha to make a better product after it's three months aged, six months aged or degraded, your term. So maybe that's just the reality of the world we live in with the continuous improvement that's being done in Japan.

Yeah, also if you really try to wrap your mind around all these criticisms about fresh -milled matcha, I think people are, I don't know if it's intentional or unintentional, trying to fuzz the line between Tencha and matcha. Like aging Tencha and aging matcha, totally two different things. An old Tencha and an old matcha is totally two different things.

That's true. And fresh -milled is fresh -milled. You can fresh -milled new Tencha or you can fresh -milled old Tencha or well -stored Tencha. And the result doesn't change the nature of the tea or the matcha being fresh -milled. Kind of like in the coffee world, right? You can have green coffee that is two years old. It's considered very old usually.

and fresh roasted and like, it's degraded. Although weirdly there's some exceptions to that in Japan in particular. In Ginza, there's a cafe called Cafe Dombra and they have some green coffee that's like dating back to the 80s, some back to the 60s that they roast fresh on premises.

zooming back into the topic, what is the status quo of fresh ground matcha? I would say in Japan it's nearly non -existent. You don't see anyone advertising this. You don't hear about it. No one puts mill dates on it.

We're going to travel there. We'll re -look and see if that is indeed the case. But I haven't heard of it. I haven't heard of anyone talk about it. So basically, I think there's about three or four ways. And we've been hesitant to name any companies by name. But I think in this case, we should. It wouldn't be doing this topic justice.

So the first method is to import an ishi usu which is a traditional granite stone mill that weighs a lot. It's basically an industrial piece of equipment. And a couple of people have them. And there's basically two types of ishi -yusus that get exported. There's ones where the motor is strapped to the bottom and it can operate. And it usually operates in this beautiful glass box or plastic box.

that you can put around it because the motor is underneath it. The problem is that motors get hot, it transfers heats to the stones, heats degrade matcha, so they can't be run commercially all the time. You can do small runs, but I think after eight or ten hours, and please excuse if my numbers are slightly off, that's what I've heard, I've never operated one, after around eight or ten hours the whole system gets too hot.

So you can't run it continuously. The other type, so that's kind of what kettle has. I know Setsugekka, excuse my pronunciation, on 7th Street in the East Village in New York, they have one. And I believe there are some others in the United States that have this type. It's more for demonstration and show than like really commercial milling. Then you have the commercial milling machines where the motor is strapped on top.

very far away from the stones and those you can run quite a bit longer because there's no heat being transferred here, so I've been told. And someone like Marc from Ooika he has them in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.

And there's one in Minnesota called River and Stone Tea and I believe they have one as well. And there might be others that I'm just not aware of. So that's really the first method where you import this hardware.

And on the very cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap end, and I don't think I've heard of anyone importing these in the States, it's around $2 ,000. And then like the price for the actual equipment goes up to 10 ,000 and then you have to account shipping. And I know that a lot of the good ones are made to order. So if you can't get it used, it's not like people have inventory of these. So it might take a long time to get one. Yeah. And also after some usage, they need to go through this process called

Metate

which means.

the stone needs to be resharpened to continuously provide the same quality from the beginning. So it's quite a hard work to maintain these things, especially outside of Japan, because a lot of these specialties are really only can be found in Japan. Yeah. And it's quite a miracle that people are willing to do this. I really take my hat off to everyone who has imported an ishi usu

to bring fresh milled matcha to their country. In this case, we're talking about the US, but to everywhere else as well. I mean, it's a big risk. If you're milling all of your matcha fresh ground and you drop a millstone, if say you have two stones, you just lost half your capacity to make product. So it's really a huge risk. And plus the devaluation.

of the machine, the asset itself over time, because it has to be shipped back to Japan to get refinished every once in a while, especially if you're using it basically in a very heavily commercial way, really, you're running the machine all the time. So that's a modern miracle that can exist, and really shortens the supply chain to bring a much fresher product to consumers.

And later on we'll talk about to what degree we think that that's better. We do think it's better. Really mad respect to these pioneers. Absolutely. The second method is a couple years ago, the owner of Stone Mill Matcha Cafe in the Mission District in San Francisco, which I've walked by many times, but never went in. I'm a little sad about that now.

Apparently it changed owners recently, but it was really the place to get matcha. Unfortunately, it was right across the street from Dandelion chocolate, Bean to Bar chocolate, which always just drew my eyes in. I was like really into Bean to Bar chocolate at the time. So I always - making chocolate nips infusions. Yeah, the drinking chocolates. It was so good. That's great spot. Anyway, never managed to go.

is very sad, one day.

That gentleman started a company called Cuzen or the product is called Cuzen, I think the company's different name. And Cuzen is a small countertop, all in one device. And the basic description is push a button and get matcha. And it has their proprietary tencha. And if you use any other tencha, I believe you avoid the warranty, or they won't guarantee that the machine works.

And there's a little very small ceramic millstone inside that mills the tea. It drops into a cup that has a little magnetic stirring rod, just like you saw in my chemistry class in high school or university, that they've modified to make it froth a little more. The one thing is though with that machine is that you can't put in hot water because the steam goes up and can clog and make all the matcha gum up.

And you get basically a shot of matcha product that you can add to water to make an Americano or to a latte or whatever.

And they've been very pioneering. was reading online they sold 10 ,000 units and really putting the idea and value proposition of fresh ground matcha in the minds of consumers.

Ryan And Sam (13:59)
And this cousin has really made a splash. mean, you're starting to see it at coffee shops a little bit. I know Haley Bieber has one, right? So it's caught the attention of celebrities. So it's a, I mean, a really pioneering product as well. And I think one thing that they've really gotten right is the idea that people will drink more matcha if it's less complicated

It is a big mess. It takes a lot of time. And it's really nice if you can afford the time and money to indulge in a moment to make matcha a traditional way, in a mindful way. It's a wonderful practice. The reality of most people's lives, especially when you have a daily routine, depending on whatever your obligations are, time constraints or cost constraints are, there is a real value proposition.

to pushing a button and getting fresh -milled matcha, and not even fresh -milled matcha, freshly prepared matcha, ready to consume in a way that's as easy as Nespresso. So I think it's something that they've really gotten right that's very inspiring. It's not necessarily the direction we want to go in at first. We want to really focus on overcoming all of the technical challenges you need.

to have fresh -milled matcha that is a very similar quality to what's coming out of an ishi usu but as a first product, I think what they've done is very inspiring. Yeah, for 300 bucks, you can have everything compact in such a small box. It's pretty impressive. Yeah, but on the critical side, it's the particle size. They claim it's 20 microns. We've measured it.

it can be quite a bit larger. And some of the particles are, in my experience, above the perception threshold. So the human perception to distinguish two particles from one another or to anything from one another is around 30 to 40 microns in size or micrometers in size. And in that case, I would say it's not as performant as an ishi usu. But I don't think that surprises anybody.

Yeah. And like, do the users of such product really need that much granularity? Like most cases, they probably just, you know, dump that cup of matcha straight into a cup of milk and mix it with some sort of fruit, marmalade or sugar. Yeah. You don't need like fine grind matcha for that kind of use case. Yeah. Maybe finer would be better from a texture perspective.

and arguably a flavor extraction perspective. So I mean, there are lot of limitations. I mean, there's a lot of limitations when you're just whisking with cold water, unless you're dumping that in and doing some type of hot extraction. And there's a lot of aromatics that you're missing out on. you know, it is not a perfect device, but you know, nothing is. Yeah, but the really pay the path of, you know, fresh ground being a

thing that consumers want. And it's something that can be done and can be achieved and can be loved by people. Yeah, absolutely. And it's gotten a fair bit of criticism and quite a bit of love. I think the most, I don't know, reductive in a great way, a great generalized comment of the criticism of this is that it was a controversial pitching gadget.

Magic community. This was like, what a fine way to put in a concise box a lot of the criticism I've heard of this machine. But you know, on the other side, I don't see anyone else doing it. Like it's, and now that we're designing a countertop mill, it is an incredibly difficult technical problem. Yeah, you know, like, you know, being users for so many gadgets over

so many years. Like, it, it has always been easy to criticize a until we actually tried to make a product of self. Now I just have mad respect, mad, any products, know, bad products, mediocre, mediocre products or good products. Like they all probably spend equivalent amount of effort and time and probably development, budget, into.

you know, making all of these and turning something like turning a idea into a physical reality is hard. It's very difficult. absolutely. Extremely difficult. And, yeah, mad respects to anyone and everyone that's entering this field because it's, very challenging. so, that's the second way, that you can have fresh milk matcha. a new machine has just come out. We haven't seen it.

called the Tenji, which looks like a motorized version of a hand -milled size ishi usu So a much smaller diameter of grind surface or grind phase compared to a commercial ishi usu. I'd say it's about half the diameter by estimating it. And it produces less fine tea

So there was an exhibition at Penn State University and Marc from Ooika brought one of the hand mills and everyone got to try it and we got to taste it too. And we got to compare it to his industrial full size, full grind phase ishi usu product. And there were two completely different things. The good ishi usu, the big one, produces much finer particles and much more interesting tasting tea.

than the smaller ones. But, you know, the smaller ones are also very historically traditional. And these are the that people have consumed matcha. Like, when people were doing their Robi Rocky tea ceremony, know, grinding fresh the previous springs, tencha, I mean, that was being done on smaller units like this. So basically, we've retrofitted this to have a motor onto it. We have not. The industry, the founders of Tenji.

have retrofitted a motor onto it to mill it fresh. And we were reading through some of the comment threads. We're a little bit grateful that they launched before we did because it was a pretty harsh criticism. Some harsh criticism that was a little surprising to see. But some of the criticism had some good points, which really got us thinking. And one of the threads that someone meant or one of the threads of an idea that someone mentioned we found inspiring

was this concept of a professionally crafted product. And they were making the argument that tencha is hard to blend and it's hard to get a specific flavor profile outcome, which we completely agree with. And that it's not going to be the same product as a quote unquote professionally crafted product versus when you're doing it at home. And we had a couple of reactions to that. And you had...

more sharp reactions than I did. Yeah, first of all, you know, the argument about Blender's expertise, I think doesn't necessarily establish because matchup blends are essentially tencha blends. Yeah. You feed into a blend tencha into the machine, you get blend matchup.

I don't necessarily think... Of course, can feed into single origin, single cultivar, tencha into the grind and it produces something else. But the usage, it's totally dependent on what you feed into the machine. one thing I disagree with the spirit of is the desire for and the perceived necessity

of consistent specific flavor profile outcomes. I actually think the variation for the home consumer market would be super interesting. Yes, you can buy blends from established houses and have it taste the same, but I think people want to taste this estate, this year's harvest, this cultivar, whatever, and have it taste completely exactly as that product is or

people can try their own blends. Why is blending such a gated art? With experiment, with people trying, with the available technology and available tencha everyone can start their own experiment and try to find their own consumer path towards the product that they love.

Is that not stepping on the toes or stepping on the feet of tradition? Where you have, mean, that'd be like someone trying to say, like, I'm going to try to blend my own champagne when there's people who've been doing it for hundreds of years. It's like, okay, yeah, go ahead. But, you know, on the other side, it's, you know, the preferences of people in Japan are very different.

And I hesitate using the word weird, but having done consumer testing in, I think, 18 different countries ranging in South America, North America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, I can say that Japanese taste preferences are some of the most unique than any other country that I've ever done consumer testing in. And even it's baked into the language.

I believe Japanese has double the number of texture terms as it relates to food than we have in the English speaking lexicon. Just in sheer resolution of terms to describe a product's texture and across different flavor they have

their own unique vocabulary ranging from things like ooika and there's others as well. And they're perceiving and appreciating very different sets of attributes. Now you could make the argument that people love Japanese food outside of Japan. I think that is absolutely true. But there's also a lot of Japanese preferences that do not translate or get exported. think natto is a fine example.

I mean, that's a particularly polarizing one, but I think a lot of these umami teas in general, and we've seen this as well, they don't translate necessarily. And it's so interesting to me. I was watching the video with the founder of tea drunk, Mark, and they had an hour long one about Mark from Ooika. They were tasting Mocha, their version of Mocha, also some matcha.

And she mentioned the exact same tasting note that you mentioned, Sam, when she tasted some of the more umami rich matcha. To her, it tasted like seaweed soup. No, not just seaweed, seaweed soup. And I believe she's from mainland China. You're from mainland China. Your friend in Shanghai, who's really into tea that hosted that Thai and matcha event with a bunch of mainland Chinese consumers who are tea people, seaweed soup. it's a, it's a very

interesting reference that people just cannot unsee. Yeah, I mean, like you can deconstruct seaweed soup into a lot of, you know, more granular flavors. But when you have the reference flavor for that notion, you just cannot unsee or untaste it. Like, it's so strong of, you know, reference that it's really hard to break it down into smaller pieces.

and develop more granular reference. I wonder if Koreans have the same because they have that whole like what is that called? A milguk, seaweed soup. I wonder if they have that same reference and they wouldn't like... Yeah, very likely. But you know, going back to the topic, know, it's... I think people can and will blend their own tansha and make it taste good.

and the notion and arbitrary social construct that is quality, It might be completely awful to anyone who does matcha in a ceremonial context, in a Japanese context, that has been working in the industry for tons of years, but it might just be something that someone in Spain loves, or that someone in the States loves, or that would fit

mainland Chinese preferences or what people in Indonesia would love. Yeah, it's like how people, you know, trying to speed up pu'er aging and, you know, accidentally created shou pu'er from, you know, artificial aging or they call it wodui. From wet fermentation. From wet fermentation, like from a like a traditional sheng pu'er or raw pu'er perspective. It's a bastardization. It's not a good product.

But people like it nowadays, especially people in Guangdong, they cannot have Yang Cha, morning breakfast style dining in Guangzhou without Shou pu'er You can almost see it as a different product. And someone, we don't know who yet.

specialty matcha artisan somewhere in the world when they have access to this fresh ground matcha equipment and can buy different tencha and source different tencha might do something that would be considered equally absurd and just stumble upon something that is fantastic. It's like the difference between having a few perfect artisans perfectly focused on their craft and their own little bubble, which we totally respect by the way, love these traditional arts, versus

Letting a million flowers bloom and seeing what happens. I think the availability is high for blending or self -creating new tencha plant in -house. Because previously, Ryan, you made a comparison of you trying to blend your own champagne. But I don't think it necessarily equates to a scenario like this. Because blending champagne, making champagne.

takes a lot of other steps, other than just blend. That are not isolated. They're not isolated. But for blending Tencha, creating your own blend of matcha, you have already abstracted a lot of other process away. there's too many dependent variables in that analogy. Exactly. And the Tencha itself is almost a half -finished product. So when you're two or more different types of

two or more tencha's together and trying to create your own plan and trying to build it with technology in the future. I will not necessarily see it being inferior than the matcha blend that we have nowadays on shelf. Yeah, that's a great point. One of the other things that he said too is that fresh ground isn't always better. And think the company that makes the stone mill

reached back out and says, we source tea directly from Japan. But this idea that fresh ground isn't always better, mean, of course. If you start with horrible tencha and fresh ground it, you're not going to necessarily get a better product than if you start with high quality tencha and it sits for six months in extreme powdered form. I mean, let's revisit this. We talk about this a lot. Matcha is incredibly unusual.

I believe someone was speculating in the food science world that it might be the finest particles that is a normal food stuff that gets consumed. I believe fine chocolate is around a similar particle size, around three to five microns. It may be even a little finer for really fine chocolate. But there's very few things that we consume that are that small that they can be suspended.

10 times finer than coffee. Just the amount of surface area is almost unfathomable in these products in matcha.

So yeah, garbage in, garbage out for sure. But the question is, if you can get the quality high enough, is fresh ground matcha better than six month old matcha? Or even if it's milled slightly worse, is it better or worse than something that would be quote unquote professionally crafted? Which is a very interesting concept.

And you know, maybe not at first. I bet like the first power home users of a machine like this, of a very super easy automated, you know, stone mill that was usually a hand grinder level. Yeah, it's probably not going to taste very good first. You have very limited supply of tencha that you can buy at the moment. You know, it's people have no blending skill.

It's like you're just learning how to walk. Like it's going to take time for people to acquire this skill. And that guy will probably be right for the first three or five years that these machines are on the market where people can mill their own matcha. There's no skill and there's no way to learn the skill or learn about it because it's all so protected. But I think in the long term,

it won't run out. And I know that's one area we really want to focus on. Part of what we see in the broader vision of in the countertop matcha mill that we're making with a cooling system, because the number one reason why people like ishi usu is because heat degrades the product. So we know that's incredibly important, which is being engineered from the very beginning using technologies that we're borrowing from the CPU cooling industry.

and having, being very aware of particle morphology or particle shape and different, creating different patterns on the grindstones themselves to make sure that we have very high surface area particle morphology, which means it forms a higher quality suspension. And we're working with food scientists in the Netherlands to help compare our particle morphology. We want to do sensory testing to show that it can do, that the flavor is

It's performant from a flavor perspective. And we're also allowing all of the users to change the RPM, which effectively changes the heat that it's being milled at with an active cooling system. So that brings a whole lot of craft to however is using this. Maybe if you run it a little hot, you can create really interesting flavors that people would really love. Or you can run it very cold, preserving more of the inherent taste.

that is in the tencha What we learned recently is that the heat doesn't necessarily... It's not necessarily a bad thing. Like some level of heat at some stage will have very interesting impact on the overall flavor profile of matcha. So like for some ishi usu users, they would even like grind the ishi usu dry without any tea inside.

to create some sort of a baseline heat or temperature before start dumping Tencha into the grind surface. Yeah, that was very surprising. So I mean, what the whole world will slowly learn as the specialty matcha movement grows is how our flavor profiles transform. How do you go from a sensory profile, an evaluation of Tencha to the end matcha? And how do different blending components create different flavors? And how do

process parameter changes, such as temperature, affect the way flavor profiles get transformed. And this is the craft that can create some incredibly unique products in our industry that are better fit to consumer preferences where they are and maintain quality standards. There really is this really high barrier of quality standards in matcha because not only

because it's degraded with time, it degrades with ambient temperature quite a lot. So even if you're just arguing based on nutrition for matcha, you should consume it fresh. There's less L -theanine degraded, fewer catechins degraded. Even at two months at room temperature, you will lose 40 % of the EGCG in a matcha. That's incredible. I guess one of the primary reasons why people drink it and why it's healthy.

let alone six months, let alone if you don't have a perfect cold chain, which by the way, almost no one has a perfect cold chain. And the degree of heat stress and degradation that can happen, especially if you live in a warm country, it's a huge problem with the chocolate industry actually is that the product will get basically destroyed if it gets too hot. And imagine you're someplace like, I don't know, like Bangkok, like Guangzhou, like Japan in the summer, it's incredibly hot.

And these things do not travel on the cold chain one. It would be incredibly environmentally unfriendly It's very energy intensive to have things travel on the cold chain and it's probably too expensive for what most people are doing anyway So you don't even know what kind of heat stress your matcha has by the time you've opened it even if it was Produced three months ago. know we left some matcha in the car the other day, you know, we just tried it It's a different product

It's set for three days in the Cantonese hot August summer. Well -seasoned, well -matured. Color changed, right? And the problem is consumers don't know if they should blame the product or if it was degraded in some way. So really pushing this end processing step to the edges makes the most sense even if, let's say, instantly milled matcha doesn't

taste as good as after it's set for a week or a month, which also we're hearing a little bit is that some graceful aging might help. And I believe that that's true anecdotally. Yeah. But the fact is that they know how long their matcha will be, you know, set or aged for that graceful amount of time. Yeah. Like they can control that component. Because they know, because they were the one, they either know the miller or they milled it themselves. Yeah. Or like, yeah.

Exactly. And they can experiment. Asahi will taste better if you let it sit for like two weeks. Or like Samidori will taste the best when you let it sit for like just one week or 10 days. But maybe Yabukita tastes fantastic, like really right off the mill. Yeah, like you just don't know. But now you have the possibility to discover this gated secret for centuries. Yeah. No, absolutely.

I think all of these macha milling technology really opens the possibility for regular consumers to be able to experiment and experience something that was once just not available for anyone else. I think for this movement to be the most successful as we project out a future for what specialty macha can be, I think it's very important

that the traditional players come along for the ride. And the reason I think that is the universe of possible flavor profile and quality options is enormous. And a lot of people experimenting will, I think, allow this industry to flourish in the long run and to let a thousand flowers bloom is the right model. However, we don't want that to be at the expense of the perception of whether or not

Fresh ground matcha is good or bad in the eyes of consumers. Because if you let that trial and error out into the world, people might make preemptive judgments about whether or not it is good or bad. And the reality is, if we can get the buy -in of the traditional players in the Japanese tea industry, they can give guidance. They can pre -blend tea to be milled. They can do experiments with this machine to allow it to have different temperatures and basically give a suggested recipe.

for the way that these things are going to be made. And then from there, we can have this. But without the seed crystals of the principles of creating quality product from people who have been empirically doing it and improving it for decades, it's going to be a very long learning curve that I don't think we should take consumers along for the ride. Yeah. mean, by the end of the day, people still need to drink matcha.

And for people to drink matcha, they need to buy Tencha. And for these traditional houses, they are still going to sell their Tencha. It's really just a change of mentality and mindset of viewing the consumer narrative or consumer demand in the ever -changing world. Yeah. No, absolutely. So just to review, there's different ways you can get fresh -milled matcha.

One is by buying matcha fresh in Japan, knowing exactly when it was milled and having it immediately shipped to you, which I think is about 0 .00, I don't know how many zeros percent of the industry, because no one in Japan that I'm aware of gives a mill date. Some people give guarantees and maybe have a relationship with the producer. They'll tell you when it was milled, but very few consumers can pay a 200.

300 bucks of their shipping fee on the cold -chain. Or to make it worthwhile ordering enough products. And then when you order a couple cans of matcha, like when you're to place an order like every two weeks, like if you're ordering a couple cans of matcha at once, it's still not going to be fresh. that's number option one. Option two is you order from a vendor who's brought in an ishi usu. Basically very similar or identical process. It's done in Japan.

And it's just in a more distributed way where it's much closer to you. Very innovative companies doing that, which are very cool. So that's option number two. Very grateful that those trailblazers have imported these Ishii Usus in the past couple of years. You can have countertop machines like cuzen which can deliver a fresh ground experience at home, but definitely does not replicate the same product that you get from an ishi usu, but certainly will give you the health benefits for sure.

because it's better preserved in Tencha than it is in Matcha. So from a nutrition perspective, it's certainly the case from a sensory or flavor perspective. You know, only have so many options when you are forced to buy Tencha from one supplier, proprietary Tencha, some of which is not even first harvest. So that's the second option, or third, excuse me. And then we have these hand grinders where you can mill it yourself.

By either buying one, I think the retail price is around $2 ,000 for a hand one when you buy from some of the Japanese places online. And then pretty soon, we don't know exactly, Tenji, that was Tenji. Really cool to see that on the scene. Very grateful that they exist.

and also trailblazing for us a little bit. And then ours is going to be much more similar to a high -end coffee grinder, but specifically suited to meet the performance metrics that you would need to mill matcha fresh. So a very different engineering problem actually, because coffee grinders, the burrs don't touch each other, so it produces significantly less friction, which means you very different torque requirements and very different heat generation that's going on.

Ours are millstones that touching each other. So completely changes the game from an engineering perspective. But engineering all the features that we need to kind of reverse engineer what's going on in an ishi usu and put it using new materials, new technology to have a much more contemporary approach for the way that matcha can be milled, the way it can be ground. It would be very interesting in the future to see how the morphology. of the powder

coming from our machine compared to traditional issues. How does it necessarily impact the way it tastes and impact the way it performs in a matcha drinks? And even within the first version of this machine, you can swap out the spring that's creating the pressure. You can change the pressure and the force that's being had on these matcha leaves. The millstones are completely removable. You break one, no problem. We'll send you a new one or maybe we'll send you one with spares.

So you don't have to ship 25 kilos back to Japan to get resharpened. They're much smaller. And you know in the future, right now we only have one design of the millstone. But you know in the future there will be other patterns, other groove patterns that can be made suitable for other kind of use. Yeah. Or other cultivars. Or other use cases. There might be some that just grind much faster than others but you...

you're sacrificing on particle morphology. I know the very spiral pattern, ishi usu design, produce very round particles, but they're much faster. So it won't suspend as well, but if you're dumping into a latte, maybe you don't care. Or if you are a hojicha lover like me, I recently discovered my great love of hojicha powder. Fresh milled hojicha powder. Fresh milled hojicha, there we go, Ryan. That will also be a future project

And yeah, so it's having these different millstone plates. You can completely change the parameters around heat, around pressure, and around pattern, which is very exciting to us and the future that we'd like to see. And you're slowly trying to bring that to life.

So I think the ability, I think one of the conclusions that I come to at the end of this around the status quo of fresh -milled matcha is that it's very much an infrastructure problem. You can have all these very clever solutions around shortening the supply chain or importing Ishii Usus, which are all great, these at -home use motorized hand grinders, but to do this more commercially at scale so that the average person when they order a matcha is getting a fresh ground matcha.

Or a recently ground macho with a transparent mill date. It's largely an infrastructure problem Yeah, not everyone can buy an issue So it probably is not profitable for most people to buy any issue So or have the expertise to run it into source, etc. It's just it's too protected in industry So yeah, my take is that you know, by solving this technology problem. We are really offering a regular customer of freedom to

create something that can just not imaginable in the past. We are giving off this creativity to the consumer, which are the end users of these products. businesses. Or businesses. know, it's like back in the days, you can only go to a photograph booth to take your photos. Nowadays, you know, you can have your iPhone, can have your digital camera. You are giving this ability to create something.

to the end users. Yeah, absolutely. And we're not beholden to the limitations of this infrastructure deficit and add on to it. I mean, what we're doing is very different to that in ishi usu. In some ways, it's not even comparable when you can control the amount of weight or the temperature or the pattern design. It is a completely new feature set that can allow people to do things that are even beyond our current imagination.

The first versions are definitely going to be more for businesses because it's going to be very expensive to make this. We're not going to make a ton of inventory. We're not the large enough size of a company to take on that kind of risk. Much more made -to -order type model, like the history of like La Marzocco and the espresso machines. So in the beginning, everything's going to be made to order.

the possibilities that can be done with this. I'm very excited to see what happens when we can get something like this in some people's hands to create some very different products. So I think fresh -grown matcha is the future for sure and have the ability to people to make their own craft. And this idea of professionally crafted matcha is going to change for the better. And in the beginning, yeah, it's probably going to be worse.

That guy is completely right. In the long run, I think what we get is a much more diverse and thriving industry with interesting viewpoints from interesting people all over the world doing really cool things that their consumers absolutely love. While preserving Japanese traditional heritage at the same time, we will still be consumers of traditionally stone ground ishi usu made matcha.

We still love it. This is not in competition at all. you know, the fact that it will still be professionally craft matcha but the sheer meaning of professional will just change. The people who can be called professional will change. And offering this infrastructure, there will be other people become power users, become professional users in the future.

That are not inside Japan. Yeah Absolutely. Well even let's say for example, it's your life dream to be a matcha blender and to create Fresh -milled matcha to open your own matcha brand where you are the one doing the craft part. That's your dream your life's dream as a Chinese person who spent up moved to the States in middle school

but almost all of your time in the States, move back to China to work professionally with limited Japanese capability. There is a 0 % chance that your dream can come true. Zero. absolutely not. This is not an industry you can break into. All for you, Ryan. Zero for me as an American that's half Korean that has almost no Japanese. Zero percent chance if that is my dream. Or even if you're in Japan, if you're a woman.

It's probably close to zero percent chance that that dream can come true for you. It's a very male dominated industry. Very sad. Very sad.

These institutions are very old world model of the past, which I don't think fully belongs in the mainstream in the future. And that these opportunities need to be opened up for other people. I think it deserves to be preserved. It deserves to be honored for the art and the craft that it is, but it's not the future for all specialty matcha.

the future of specialty matcha belongs to everybody. Yes, it does. Equal opportunity for everybody. All right. I think it's a fine place to stop. And it's a bright future to look ahead. Well, we're very excited. I'm very excited to hear from you, our listeners too. So if you have an interesting perspective or disagreed with anything we'd say, we'd love to talk with you. We don't believe in a like a gotcha podcast.

We're not going to invite people on to say something, to disagree with them immediately and try to bait them into saying something. It's not our style. So very interested in hearing your perspective.

We genuinely want to celebrate all these different perspectives and find matcha so fascinating, not from just the product itself, but how that the values that people put on matcha are really a reflection of different parts of humanity and their values. That's what's so fascinating about matcha as a specialty product. So it's really a element for us to reflect as we are members of the society and members of

this community and we are members of this culture that we all enjoy together. absolutely. So hopefully the future is bright green or in the case of hojicha powder,  bold and Brown, bold Brown. But, ⁓ yeah, we, ⁓ we look forward to, ⁓ what the future holds. So thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this, please consider, sharing with friends.

And we'll see you on the next one. See you in the next episode.