Hojicha: The Roasted Cousin Coming to Our Lineup

The short version: hojicha is not a matcha variant — it is a separately made Japanese tea, usually rolled bancha or kukicha that gets roasted over heat at 180-200°C until it turns from green to a reddish-brown, with a toasty, nutty cup instead of a grassy one. The common belief that roasting "burns off" caffeine is mostly a myth; caffeine survives those temperatures intact. What actually lowers hojicha's caffeine is the leaf itself — later-harvest, less-shaded material that starts lower to begin with. It brews hotter than matcha, tastes nothing like it, and it's coming to our lineup.

What is hojicha, exactly?

A roasted Japanese green tea, and a genuinely different process from the one that makes matcha.

Matcha starts as tencha: leaf shaded for weeks before harvest, steamed to stop oxidation, dried flat without rolling, then stone-milled into the powder we've written about in what tencha actually is. Hojicha usually starts as bancha or kukicha — later-season leaf, or the stems and twigs left over from processing finer teas — rolled the way ordinary sencha is rolled, then roasted in a rotating pan or drum, typically at 180-200°C, until the leaf darkens and the smell shifts from green and vegetal to toasted and nutty. The technique dates to the 1920s in Kyoto, where roasting turned lower grades of leaf, previously considered too coarse to sell well, into a tea with its own following.

The result is a different plant part, a different process, and a different drink. Hojicha is not "matcha, but roasted."

Does roasting actually lower the caffeine, or is that a myth?

Mostly a myth, and worth correcting rather than repeating.

Caffeine is a stable molecule. It survives ordinary cooking and roasting temperatures without breaking down in any significant way — you'd need conditions well beyond a tea roaster to meaningfully degrade it. So if hojicha reliably tests lower in caffeine than sencha or matcha, and it does, the roasting itself is not the reason.

The real reason is upstream: hojicha is typically made from bancha (a later, coarser harvest) or kukicha (stems and twigs), rather than the young, heavily shaded first-flush leaf used for matcha and gyokuro. Caffeine concentrates in young shoots and rises with shading, since the plant produces it partly as a defense response. Later-harvest leaf and stem material simply start with less of it. Roasting changes the smell and color of what was already a lower-caffeine leaf — it doesn't strip caffeine out of a high-caffeine one.

How is hojicha different from matcha in the cup?

In almost every way except that both come from Camellia sinensis.

Matcha is a fine powder suspended in water — the whole leaf, whisked, drunk in full. It's green, slightly vegetal, and carries the L-theanine story we've gone into in why matcha's caffeine feels different. Hojicha is reddish-brown, roasted, and closer in profile to a light coffee or toasted grain than to any other tea most people have had. Where matcha rewards a controlled ritual — the right water temperature, the right whisking motion — hojicha is more forgiving, which is part of why it shows up as a latte base, in desserts, and as an evening tea for people who want warmth without much stimulant.

That lower caffeine load is exactly what we pointed to when we wrote about afternoon focus and sleep arithmetic: if a 3pm bowl of matcha is a genuine question for your bedtime, an evening hojicha is a way to keep the ritual without the caffeine load.

How should hojicha be brewed compared with matcha?

Hotter, longer, and with much less technique required.

Matcha is whisked with water around 80°C — hot water risks pulling out bitterness from a leaf built for a fast, full-immersion prep. Hojicha's roasted leaf is sturdier and wants closer to a full boil, 90-100°C, steeped for one to two minutes rather than whisked at all. That's not an arbitrary difference; it follows directly from the process. Roasting drives off some of the more delicate, heat-sensitive aromatics that make matcha temperamental, which is exactly what lets hojicha take water hot enough to extract properly without turning harsh.

What does "coming to our lineup" actually mean?

That we're building the same standards into a second tea before we put it in front of anyone.

Everything in the tin today is second-harvest matcha, single farm, stone-milled in small lots with a harvest date and lot number on every one — we're not shortcutting that discipline just because hojicha is a more forgiving leaf to work with. We'd rather take the time to get the roast, the leaf grade, and the sourcing right than rush a version onto the shelf. Have a look at what's currently available, and check back — hojicha will be added there, not somewhere separate, when it's ready.