Tea corner starter kit

Here's how to set up a small Japanese-style tea corner at home: a tray, a pot, a couple of cups and a kettle that does what it's told. This guide covers culture and craft only.

This is a lifestyle and culture guide. It is not medical or health advice, and we make no health claims about tea.

Build it in three steps

1. Pick your brew style

• Sencha in a kyusu: the everyday green tea of Japanese homes. It's simple and forgiving.
• Matcha in a bowl: powdered tea whisked until frothy, as in the tea ceremony. It's a little more ritual and a little more fun.

Choose one style to start. You can always add the other later.

2. Control the water temperature

Japanese greens prefer water well below boiling. A kettle with a temperature setting takes the guesswork out.

3. Keep the tray small

A pot, two cups and a tin of leaves is enough. A tea corner should take up a corner, not the whole kitchen.

Starter kit checklist

• Kyusu side-handle teapot: the classic pot for sencha. Its built-in strainer keeps the leaves in. Kyusu side-handle teapot on Amazon.ca
• Matcha bowl and chasen set: a bowl, bamboo whisk and scoop. Matcha bowl and chasen set on Amazon.ca
• Variable-temperature kettle that hits 60–80 °C for Japanese greens. Variable-temperature kettle on Amazon.ca
• Yunomi cups: handle-less cups that show off the colour of the tea. Yunomi cups on Amazon.ca
• 0.1 g kitchen scale for weighing leaves with our ratio calculator. 0.1 g kitchen scale on Amazon.ca

Brew notes

These are starting points many Japanese tea shops use, so adjust them to taste. They're about technique, nothing more.

Use the brew ratio calculator in our tea corner (/live-well/tea-corner.html) to work out leaf-to-water amounts.

Where the tea comes from

• Uji, Kyoto is historic tea country south of Kyoto, known for matcha and gyokuro. See Uji matcha in our Kyoto directory.
• Shizuoka is Japan's largest green-tea region, with fields below Mt Fuji. Our Shizuoka page covers its food, omiyage and onsen.