Without a teapot

Follow the time on the packet. Longer steeping is assumed to mean stronger, but in Japanese tea astringency rises before strength does. Do not adjust with time; if you want a stronger cup, use two bags.

Do not bob the bag hard or press it against the cup with a spoon. That releases fine particles, clouds the cup and brings muddiness with it. A few gentle lifts is all it needs.

Take the bag out rather than leaving it in. Left in, it keeps extracting, and the cup turns astringent before you finish it.

You can brew loose leaf without a kyusu. Put the leaf straight into the mug, pour, and when the time is up strain it into another cup. Use the same timings as any other method: 60 seconds at 70–80°C (158–176°F) for sencha, 30 seconds off the boil for hojicha or genmaicha.

Deep-steamed sencha breaks down fine and will block a close mesh. Standard-steamed sencha, hojicha or genmaicha are easier to start with.

Four to six grams of leaf serves two — roughly two heaped teaspoons.

Cold brewing needs no kettle at all. Put 10 g of leaf and a litre of water in a jug and refrigerate for three to six hours. The compounds behind astringency dissolve poorly when cold, so a long steep stays comparatively smooth.

Drink it the same day, and take the leaf out. Left in, it will turn harsh before you finish the jug.

Caffeine is reduced, not removed. It simply dissolves slowly at low temperature; given hours it still comes out.

Powdered green tea is stirred into hot or cold water. Nothing to strain, no spent leaf to deal with. It is the same family as the powder sitting on the counter at a conveyor-belt sushi place. Being ground leaf rather than an instant, it disperses rather than dissolving, and settles if left.

Powdered green tea is sencha or similar leaf ground fine, and it is not matcha. Matcha is ground tencha — shade-grown leaf dried without rolling — so both the raw material and the growing differ. That is why the prices are so far apart.