SHOP NOW $299, cuzenmatcha.com
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If I told you how much money I spend on caffeinated drinks, your jaw would drop. I’ll let you do the math—two per day, every day, at around $8 (thank you, New York City prices) a pop. According to my bank account, my mother, and my local baristas, that shit adds up. So, a little while ago, I decided to start making my drinks at home. Coffee? Not a problem. Chai? Perhaps the easiest thing in the world; milk, chai concentrate, enjoy. Matcha? Well—that’s where things got complicated.
To make matcha incorrectly is easy. To make matcha the right way—the delicious way—takes a good number of more steps and patience: You have to find the right powder, fresh and full of flavor; you have to acquire a special wooden whisk and bowl to perfect it; your ratio of matcha to water needs to be just right, lest you end up with a watery cup of green muck. Matcha, tragically, was formerly my least favorite drink to make and my most favorite drink to drink. Enter stage left: The Cuzen Matcha Maker.
The sleek and elegant machine always attracts questions by newcomers to my apartment. I can’t blame them—it looks like a piece of a futuristic aircraft, fallen from space into my kitchen. The minimal design pairs well with the minimal effort the machine requires; these days, with just a click or two, I can get my matcha fix at home. The Cuzen does everything for me, every step of the way—the whisking, the water mixing, the perfectly finished tea, ready to be mixed with oat milk or water or ice. A click of a button, and boom—matcha.
SHOP NOW $299, cuzenmatcha.com
It’s authentic
With an automatic matcha machine, I worried I’d be sacrificing the parts of a matcha that make it so good—doesn’t the powder need to be finely ground and whisked, and doesn’t it need to have the right amount of water, and doesn’t it need to come from matcha leaves that are grown well? My fears, in the face of the Cuzen, were instantly resolved; all of the above were answered via the machine’s insanely in-depth and well-rounded knowledge of how to make the perfect matcha.
For starters, the Matcha Maker Kit comes with three packets of Cuzen Matcha Leaf Blends. These are matcha leaves which, when poured into the machine, are ground with a ceramic mill and magnetic whisk (in the place of a wooden whisk or traditional stone mill) into an ultra-fine, ultra-fresh powder. So, even though the machine does all the hard work for you, you aren’t sacrificing any of the said flavor that comes from that hard work you or your most beloved barista once did.
SHOP NOW $299, cuzenmatcha.com
It’s ridiculously efficient
Before you get the hang of the Cuzen, it takes maybe four minutes to make a cup of matcha. Less time than you’d spend waiting for one in a store, certainly, and definitely less time than it takes to make one at home the traditional way. After you get the hang of the Cuzen (like, two uses in), matcha can be made so fast that you won’t even have time to scroll mindlessly through your phone before it’s ready.
It’s delightfully simple to set up, even simpler to use. The steps are easy: Pour your matcha leaf into the chamber atop the machine, fill your whisking cup with water, select how strong you want your matcha to be (it’s customizable!), and enjoy your matcha shot once it’s made (I put oat milk and ice in mine; you can also add frothed milk for a true matcha latte).
SHOP NOW $299, cuzenmatcha.com
It goes the extra mile
Sure, the Cuzen makes the perfect matcha drink every time, basically on its own. But if you’re someone like me who likes to use matcha powder in baking, too, I have good news for you: The Cuzen has you covered. You can put your matcha leaves into the aluminum chamber without making a drink; grind them and save them for later, when you can pull out a fine, fresh powder for baking, or if you’re feeling nostalgic, to make matcha the old-fashioned way. I've done this (not to brag, but I make the most delicious matcha cream cheese frosting you'll ever taste) and can see a considerable difference in the Cuzen matcha powder, produced by the ceramic mill, and the store-bought matcha powder I used previously, larger in each granule and less fresh in flavor. Really, at the end of the day, no matter how you're consuming matcha—there's really only one way to do it now.
SHOP NOW $299, cuzenmatcha.com
