Specialty Matcha Podcast

Ryan and Zongjun talk to John O'Connor, founder if Johnny Matcha. We discuss John's experience working in Major League Baseball, his path to founding Johnny Matcha, building direct relationships with Japanese farmers, and his philosophy of "know the source".

Ryan and Zongjun discuss the fact that when a consumer or a business purchases matcha, it's still an unfinished product. Preparation skill and care are the last mile in determining resulting matcha quality.

In this episode, Ryan and Zongjun explore how a brand influences the perceived quality of matcha. They also outline key criteria that can be used to evaluate matcha quality based on the information provided on its label.

Ryan and Zongjun discuss the very open ended question of "what is high quality matcha?" and the roles of subjective preferences, expert consensus, how quality standards have changed in different industries, and how important consistency is in creating a high quality product.

How can you trust what's a label? In this episode Ryan and Zongjun attempt to unpack how objective truths are labeled in matcha, gray areas in matcha labeling, and the use of subjective claims that can adorn matcha labels.

On this episode of the Specialty Matcha Podcast, Ryan and Zongjun interview Marc from Ooika. We discuss sourcing tencha in Japan, milling matcha in the US, and the new wave of single origin and single cultivar matcha companies.

Matcha labeling is confusing, perhaps more confusing than any other specialty product. Pick any two random matcha powders from most Japanese or western vendors and it will be very difficult to differentiate them. They’ll use vague language, poetic names, and unclearly specified product details.

In this episode, Ryan and Zongjun deep dive into a multi-part series discussion about matcha labeling.

A technical deep dive into water chemistry and how it forms the foundation of tea flavor and flavor extraction with Founder of Empirical Water, Arby Avanesian.

If you're interested in learning more about water chemistry optimization for tea, check out Empirical Water: https://empiricalwater.com/

The future of matcha is specialty. Matcha isn’t matcha isn’t matcha—there will be a future where consumers from Dubai to Paris and from Bangkok to LA will have acquired preferences for Uji vs. Yame matcha, or Asahi vs. Yabukita cultivar, or fresh vs. preground matcha. As the mystery and mastery of producing matcha becomes better understood by mainstream non-Japanese markets, demand for specialty products will follow.

Ryan and Zongjun discuss designing and manufacturing, Obsidian, the one-dimensional matcha whisking bowl, as well as other products on their roadmap.