Man, it’s been way too long since I’ve had a good matcha latte! I used to regularly grab a coffee shop matcha latte while out shopping but I’ve been going fewer places since the pandemic started and just don’t want to deal with the on and off of masks to get a snack or drink while I’m out. I have lots of matcha but I never seem to manage to make myself a latte at home.
I think calling this a latte mix is kind of weird because it’s just matcha and sugar. There’s no powdered milk or anything else latte about it until you add your own. I dumped what seemed like a good amount of the powder into my fancypants Capresso milk frother pitcher thingie along with some half & half cream (I didn’t have any milk, I like my creamy drinks creamy anyway) on the hotter of the two warm froth settings. It ended up a good temperature for sipping (too hot for gulping), not so hot that the tea or cream burned. I THINK the maximum amount my frother can hold is 8oz and once it was all warm and frothy it just barely fit in my 12oz glass mug. Green creamy deliciousness. My complaint about coffee shop matcha lattes is that they often don’t have enough matcha in them. My DIY latte was finally matcha-y enough for me. It was definitely sweet from the sugar in the mix but not as sweet as something like the TeaDrops Matcha or a coffee shop matcha latte if I forget to tell them to go easy on the syrup and skip the honey (my local coffee shops like to use at least a coffee latte’s worth of vanilla syrup plus a large squirt of honey and not very much matcha…I don’t think they like the taste of matcha very much and don’t think anyone else does either). I don’t think this is a matcha I’d want to drink made traditionally with just a small amount of water but it’s not really meant to be drunk that way. I have added a little of this mix to other cheap low-grade matchas I thought were too bitter, though. It helps some if you’re really determined to drink the cheap stuff without making it into a latte but it won’t magically transform it into GOOD matcha. I’m not sure if I’d buy the latte mix again. Jade Leaf is one of the few matcha brands I can find locally so maybe if I was all out of matcha and desperate for some immediately…but I could probably find something better and cheaper online and sweeten it myself if I thought it needed sweetening.
