Matcha Latte Recipe: How to Make a Matcha Latte, Hot or Iced

Your home matcha latte tastes bitter and grassy, and the coffee shop's does not. The gap is rarely the matcha itself: usually it is water too hot, too much or too little powder, or matcha stirred into cold milk with no concentrate first. This recipe gives exact grams and millilitres for an everyday hot version, a stronger one, and an iced version, so you know why each works.

A matcha latte is made by whisking powdered Japanese green tea into hot water to form a concentrate, then topping it with steamed or cold milk. You drink the whole leaf rather than a steeped infusion, so matcha carries more flavour and colour than an ordinary cup of green tea. Every recipe here starts with that concentrate - getting it right, not the milk, is what separates a smooth matcha latte from a clumpy one.

Wikipedia records Starbucks introduced a matcha latte in 2006, and it now sits on most UK café menus, made the same basic way: concentrate topped with milk. UK interest in matcha has grown sharply, a trend our matcha UK statistics report covers in full.

The three ratios below cover an everyday hot latte, a stronger one for when two grams tastes thin, and an iced version needing slightly more matcha, since cold milk and ice mute sweetness and aroma. Weigh matcha where you can rather than measuring by teaspoon - density varies by brand, so a coarse matcha delivers noticeably less per teaspoon than a fine, dense one, often why two people follow "the same" recipe and get different results.

For reference, Ippodo Tea's own method uses 3g of matcha to 90ml water at 80°C, and BBC Good Food's uses roughly one teaspoon to 250ml of milk. Our everyday row sits between the two, closer to a café latte than either alone.

Water too hot is the most common cause. Matcha is delicate, and water near boiling scorches it, pulling out bitter compounds 80°C water leaves behind. Ippodo Tea's own method uses 80°C for this reason - no thermometer needed, boil the kettle and let it stand a minute before you pour.

Too much matcha, or low-quality matcha, is the second cause. One matcha drinker on r/Matcha described a café latte as coming out "dark green" and unpleasantly bitter - a sign of overloading the cup, or of dull, yellow-brown powder rather than a fresh, bright green one. Good matcha should look vivid, almost like fresh grass, not khaki.

Clumping is almost always a step problem, not a powder problem. One reader on r/Matcha said they were "struggling with getting the powder to become frothy" and stuck with clumps - the fix is nearly always the same: sift the matcha, whisk it into hot water until smooth, then add the milk. Stirred straight into a mug of milk, matcha will not properly incorporate however hard you froth it.

Whole dairy milk is the richest option, tasting sweetest against your latte. It has enough natural sweetness and fat to soften matcha's grassiness, and froths reliably with a steam wand or handheld frother.

Oat milk is the closest texture match to a café matcha latte, and what most UK coffee shops default to. Barista-style oat milks foam like dairy, so your coffee favourite works here too. Our best oat milk for coffee guide covers the options.

Soy milk froths almost as well as dairy and adds more protein than any milk here, worth knowing if you want your latte to feel like a meal. Almond and coconut milk are lighter, their flavour competing with matcha, so use the stronger ratio if you choose either.

Heat whichever milk you choose until steaming, not boiling - boiled milk changes the foam's texture and can make a well-made concentrate taste flat. Our best alternative milk for coffee guide applies just as well here.

Your matcha latte needs less sweetener than most assume, because milk is naturally a little sweet. Honey, maple syrup, golden syrup and simple syrup all work, and vanilla syrup is the closest match to UK cafés. Dissolve it into the warm concentrate, not the cold milk - it will not dissolve well once cold.

The NHS recommends adults have no more than 30g of free sugars a day, roughly seven sugar cubes, and honey and syrups count toward that limit while your milk's natural sugar does not. The 0-5g sweetener above keeps your matcha latte well inside it, even with more than one.

Starbucks UK lists a Matcha Latte and a Vanilla Protein Matcha Latte, evidence matcha is now a permanent UK menu fixture. To match that sweeter café taste, start with 5g of sweetener or a dash of vanilla syrup. We have not verified Starbucks' own calorie, sugar or caffeine figures, so this guide does not repeat them.

"Ceremonial" and "culinary" are marketing labels, not a regulated grade, so a higher price does not always buy better matcha for a latte. Buy matcha sold for drinking, not baking, and save ceremonial-grade powder for plain matcha, where its flavour is not competing with milk. Our explainer on ceremonial vs culinary matcha goes further into what the labels mean.

One reader on r/Matcha asked whether they were wasting expensive matcha in a latte - the honest answer is milk and sweetener mute the subtlety a top-tier ceremonial matcha is built for. A mid-range, bright green matcha tastes better here than an expensive one, at a fraction of the cost.

Our roundup of the best matcha brands and guide to the best ceremonial grade matcha cover specific recommendations, and our matcha starter kit guide covers the equipment worth buying first.

Matcha measures roughly 18.9 to 44.4mg of caffeine per gram, per a 2020 review in the journal Molecules, so your 2g everyday latte contains roughly 38 to 89mg of caffeine - against the NHS's 75mg in a cup of tea and 100mg in a cup of instant coffee, anywhere from noticeably less to roughly the same as a coffee.

A stronger or iced latte, made with 3g of matcha, is not automatically gentler: it can reach roughly 57 to 133mg on the same measurements, more than the NHS figure for instant coffee. Our guide to caffeine in matcha covers the full range across every matcha drink.

Matcha's caffeine is paired with L-theanine, an amino acid credited with the calmer feeling many associate with matcha over coffee. A 2008 study of 27 participants found 50mg of caffeine combined with 100mg of L-theanine improved speed and accuracy on attention-switching tasks - the closest evidence for why your latte can feel focused, not wired. That describes alertness, not evidence matcha gets you high.

Milk may work against one reason you drink matcha. In a study of 24 women, adding skimmed milk to green tea extract cut absorption of the catechin EGCG to 68% of the no-milk amount, though two other catechins increased.

An earlier study on black tea found milk blunted its effect on blood vessel dilation, and a 2017 review calls the evidence on milk and tea conflicting. If catechins matter to you, some cups should be plain.

The bigger health lever in a café matcha latte is usually sugar, not matcha. Caffeine also adds up across a day of anything caffeinated: EFSA sets 400mg a day as the ceiling for healthy adults and 200mg during pregnancy.

Neither figure is a reason to avoid a well-made matcha latte, but both are worth knowing before a second cup. Our fuller guides to matcha benefits and matcha side effects cover the wider evidence.