Have you tried making coffee using matcha brewing methods? What country does matcha originate from? How do you make matcha coffee?

Matcha lattes seem to be having a moment again lately — they've been popping up so often that FrontStreet Coffee couldn't help remembering a particularly distinctive coffee brewing method we shared years ago. The technique is a lot of fun, so today FrontStreet Coffee is sharing it again. If you have some free time at home, give it a try!

Since the matcha brewing method is central to the process, let's briefly cover matcha first. Matcha traces back to the Diancha (whisked tea) method of China's Song Dynasty, which evolved into Japan's unique tea ceremony culture after localizing there. Unlike Diancha, matcha places heavy emphasis on the tea ceremony spirit of "harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility." The traditional method uses a small amount of matcha powder with a little warm water (70°C~80°C) in a bowl, first blended with a chasen (bamboo whisk), then more warm water is added in a fixed amount and whipped into a thick, delicate foam.

The method FrontStreet Coffee is sharing today borrows that whisking motion from matcha preparation and applies it to coffee. Whisking builds a dense, thick foam on the coffee that amplifies its aroma and enhances its mouthfeel. Interestingly, the creator of this method isn't a professional barista at all — it's Hiroshi Fujioka, whose main profession is acting. According to reports, what first sparked his interest in coffee was traveling the world for work and volunteer activities: in most places he visited, people shared their local specialty coffees with him, giving him the chance to taste coffees of wildly different characters and gradually igniting his passion. So after returning home, he began thinking about how to create a coffee with distinctly Japanese character.

Eventually, inspired by his mother's tea ceremony, Fujioka thought of applying the matcha whisking method to coffee — improving the texture while giving the drink a Japanese identity. Two birds with one stone. So, without further ado, here's how this distinctive brewing method works!

Brewing Method

First, extract the coffee. In his video, Mr. Fujioka uses a traditional Japanese dark roast with drip brewing — as you can imagine, that cup has serious concentration and body. FrontStreet Coffee instead uses a method that also produces a rich, mellow coffee (the drip method is too fussy for us) and chooses Blue Mountain beans with a relatively lighter roast, because Blue Mountain's aroma is more outstanding. The parameters are as follows:

Coffee Parameters

• Coffee dose: 15g
• Coffee-to-water ratio: 1:12
• Grind: Ek43 setting 10.5, 75% pass-through rate on a #20 sieve
• Water temperature: 88°C
• Dripper: Kono

First, bloom the coffee with twice the weight of the grounds in water, for 30 seconds.

After the bloom, use a small water flow for the rest of the brew. Divide the remaining 150ml of water into three equal segments of 50ml each, and pour the next segment only after the previous one has fully drained.

Once extraction is done, pour the coffee into a wide, deep bowl. FrontStreet Coffee doesn't stock professional matcha bowls, so we reached for the ever-versatile cupping bowl as a substitute.

How much coffee you pour depends on the bowl's size. Since the cupping bowl isn't very large, FrontStreet Coffee poured just 80ml. Then it's time to whisk with the chasen.

One thing to note: don't stir the coffee in circles. To build foam, you need to whisk back and forth — front to back or up and down — to drive air into the coffee. That's how the foam forms. Once the foam layer fully covers the coffee and you feel real resistance while whisking, you're basically done. Of course, you can keep going — the longer you whisk, the thicker and denser the foam becomes.

FrontStreet Coffee tasted the unwhisked coffee first. Because the concentration was high, the flavor was intense — for anyone not fond of strong flavors, it would probably need diluting. With that first impression in mind, we approached the whisked version rather warily. And unexpectedly — hey! It was actually quite good. The concentration was still high, but the coffee didn't taste as intense; instead it was remarkably smooth. As mentioned earlier, the aroma was rich, the body mellow and full, and the texture exquisitely fine — a genuinely pleasant experience. So if you have some free time at home, definitely try it! Fair warning, though: it's hard on the hands. If FrontStreet Coffee made it again, we'd definitely bring in some technology (an electric milk frother)!

(This coffee is not available at our coffee shop)

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FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If whisking coffee by hand sounds like too much of a workout, a good espresso-and-milk bean will do half the work for you. FrontStreet Coffee's Premium Blend combines washed Colombian beans with pulped-natural Brazilian beans, delivering nuts, dark chocolate, and caramel in espresso — and smooth cream, almond, and cocoa in milk drinks. Whisked or poured, it makes a latte with serious body.

Prefer a fruitier match for your milk? FrontStreet Coffee's Strawberry Candy is a popular fruity espresso blend whose Arabica beans from multiple origins recreate the vivid sweetness of strawberry soft candy. Low in bitterness and endlessly versatile, it turns any milk coffee — matcha-inspired or otherwise — into a dessert-like treat.