Comparison
Hojicha and matcha come from the same plant and end up as almost opposite drinks. One is steamed, shaded and ground into a vivid green powder with a serious caffeine load. The other is roasted over charcoal until it is brown, nutty and low enough in caffeine to drink at ten at night. Knowing which you want is mostly a question of what time it is.
The short answer. Matcha is shade-grown green tea ground to powder: vivid green, grassy and umami, roughly 38 to 88mg of caffeine in a 2g bowl. Hojicha is green tea roasted until brown: toasty and caramel-like, around 7 to 20mg per cup. Matcha in the morning, hojicha after dinner.
Both are Camellia sinensis. The divergence is roasting. Matcha leaf is shaded for weeks, steamed to halt oxidation, destemmed and stone-milled into powder, all of which preserves chlorophyll and amino acids. Hojicha leaf, usually later-harvest and often including stems, is roasted at high temperature in a porcelain pot or drum until it turns reddish brown. That roast is what changes everything downstream.
| Matcha | Hojicha | |
|---|---|---|
| Processing | Shaded, steamed, stone-milled to powder | Roasted over high heat until brown |
| Colour | Vivid jade green | Reddish brown to chestnut |
| Flavour | Grassy, vegetal, umami, some astringency | Toasty, nutty, caramel, almost no astringency |
| Caffeine | 38 to 88mg per 2g bowl | Around 7 to 20mg per cup |
| How it is made | Whisked, whole leaf suspended | Usually steeped as leaf, also sold as powder |
| Leaf used | Young first-harvest leaf, destemmed | Later harvest, often with stems |
| Price | High, and rising with the global shortage | Considerably cheaper |
| Best time | Morning and early afternoon | Evening, and with food |
Caffeine degrades and partly volatilises at roasting temperatures, and hojicha is additionally made from more mature leaf that carried less caffeine to begin with. Between those two effects, hojicha lands at roughly 7 to 20mg per cup against 38 to 88mg for a 2g bowl of matcha. Depending where each falls in its range that is anywhere from roughly twofold to more than tenfold, and it is the single most practical reason to keep both in the house. The per-gram numbers for matcha are set out on our matcha caffeine page.
Roasting also breaks down catechins, the compounds responsible for most of green tea's astringency. Hojicha is therefore very hard to make taste bad. It tolerates boiling water, it does not turn bitter if you forget it, and it needs no special equipment. If somebody has told you they do not like green tea, hojicha is the one to hand them. Matcha, by contrast, punishes every mistake, which is why the method matters.
Not in any way we would assert. Roasting reduces catechins, including EGCG, which is the compound most of matcha's health marketing is built on. If you believe that marketing, hojicha comes out worse. If you are sceptical of it, as we broadly are, the comparison does not mean much either way. What can be said plainly is that hojicha has far less caffeine, which is a real and useful difference with no interpretation required. Our benefits page grades the individual claims by evidence strength rather than ranking the teas.
Hojicha is much less available in India than matcha and much cheaper where you find it, since it uses leaf that would otherwise be low-value. It comes in two forms: loose roasted leaf, which you steep like any tea, and hojicha powder, which you whisk like matcha and which is what cafes use for hojicha lattes. Buy the loose leaf first. It is cheaper, it keeps far better than powder, and it is the version that shows you what the roast actually tastes like. We have not yet reviewed hojicha brands to the standard we apply to matcha on our India rankings, so we are not going to recommend specific tins here.
Ordering hojicha somewhere that roasts or sources it seriously is a better introduction than a first attempt at home. Several cafes in our city guides run hojicha alongside matcha, including in Tokyo, Kyoto, Seoul and a growing number in India.
FAQ
Both come from Camellia sinensis, but matcha is shaded, steamed and stone-milled into a green powder you whisk and drink whole, while hojicha is green tea roasted at high heat until brown, then usually steeped as leaf. The roast is the decisive step. It removes most of the astringency and most of the caffeine.
Considerably less. Hojicha sits at roughly 7 to 20mg per cup against 38 to 88mg for a 2g bowl of matcha. Roasting degrades and volatilises caffeine, and hojicha is also made from more mature leaf that started with less.
Toasty, nutty and faintly caramel or roasted-grain, with almost no astringency or grassiness. It is much closer to a light roasted coffee or a barley tea than to green tea, which is why people who dislike green tea often like it immediately.
Most people can. At roughly 7 to 20mg per cup it carries a small fraction of the caffeine in matcha or coffee, which is exactly why it is the traditional after-dinner tea in Japan and is commonly served to children. It is not caffeine free.
Not in any way worth asserting. Roasting reduces catechins including EGCG, the compound most matcha health marketing is built on, so by that logic hojicha would be worse. The one clear, uncontested difference is that hojicha has far less caffeine.
Only hojicha powder, which is what cafes use for hojicha lattes and which you whisk exactly as you would matcha. Ordinary hojicha is loose roasted leaf and you steep it, and unlike matcha it tolerates boiling water without turning bitter.
Health claims about matcha are graded by evidence strength on our benefits page, and anything we have got wrong and fixed is logged on our corrections page. We do not sell matcha and we do not sell rank order, which is explained in our editorial policy.