What Is Hojicha? Taste, Caffeine and How to Brew It

Hojicha is Japanese green tea that has been roasted. The leaf is picked, steamed and dried like any other green tea, then heated until it turns brown and the grassy aroma gives way to toast, caramel and nuts. In the cup it is reddish-brown, naturally sweet and almost without bitterness, which is why we hand it to people who say they dislike green tea.

One cup: 3 g of leaf, 200 ml of water at 90 °C, steeped 30–60 seconds. One latte: 2 g of hojicha powder. Every number below assumes these servings.

This article is only about hojicha: what it is, how it tastes, its caffeine and how to brew it. For the latte, read how to make a hojicha latte at home. To see where hojicha sits next to sencha, kabusecha, genmaicha and matcha, read Japanese green teas explained.

The short answer

If green tea tastes too grassy or bitter to you, hojicha is the Japanese tea to try: the roast removes most of what you dislike.
If you want a warm drink in the evening, leaf hojicha is the gentlest option on our shelf, though not caffeine-free.
If you want a latte without the price of matcha, hojicha powder costs about half as much per gram and takes milk well.

1. What is hojicha, exactly?

The name is written with the characters for "roast" and "tea". Hojicha is not a different plant or harvest; it is a finishing step. A green tea, most often bancha (the mature later-season leaf), sometimes sencha or the stem tea kukicha, is roasted at high heat until the leaf browns. The method is said to have started in Kyoto in the 1920s to use leaf that would not sell green.

Roasting changes three things. The colour goes from green to brown, in the leaf and in the cup. The aroma turns from fresh and vegetal to toasted grain, cocoa and nuts; chemists call these roast aromas pyrazines, the family that also gives coffee and bread crust their smell. And the taste loses most of its astringency, because heat breaks down part of the catechins that make green tea pucker.

Most hojicha is made from cheap leaf, and the roast hides a lot. Ours is unusual: the Morii family roasts first spring harvest leaf from their own fields, and roasts it deeply. The result is fuller and sweeter than a bancha hojicha, with a clean finish rather than a burnt one. The farm's own description is on the hojicha product page.

2. What does hojicha taste like?

Three words cover most cups: toasty, sweet, smooth. The first impression is roasted grain, close to toast or roasted barley. Behind it comes a round sweetness, like caramel without the sugar, and in good lots a note of cocoa. There is almost no bitterness and little of the drying feeling sencha leaves on the tongue. The body is light; a cup of hojicha is closer to a broth than to coffee, whatever the colour suggests.

The roast level decides the rest. A light roast keeps a little green freshness and tastes of hay and nuts. A deep roast, which is what we sell, tastes of dark toast and cocoa and holds its character in milk. A roast taken too far tastes of ash and loses the sweetness, so "stronger" is not automatically better.

At Morii Teahouse the first hojicha latte of the day usually goes to someone who came in for matcha and changed their mind after smelling the open tin. I have stopped being surprised by how often the second visit is for hojicha only.

3. How much caffeine is in hojicha?

Less than most people fear, but not none. The Japanese Standard Tables of Food Composition 2020 (MEXT) list a standard hojicha infusion at 20 mg of caffeine per 100 ml, brewed from 15 g of leaf in 650 ml of water at 90 °C for 30 seconds. A 200 ml cup made that way carries about 40 mg. The same tables give sencha infusion 20 mg per 100 ml, drip coffee 60 mg per 100 ml and matcha 32 mg per gram, so a 2 g bowl of matcha is about 64 mg.

So where does the "low caffeine" reputation come from? Partly from the raw material: bancha and stems hold less caffeine than young spring buds. Partly from the roast, which drives off some caffeine at high heat. And partly from habit: hojicha is usually brewed short and light, which is how MEXT measured it. Brew it strong and long and the caffeine rises with it.

For hojicha powder we have no laboratory figure and will not invent one. In a powder you drink the whole leaf, so a 2 g hojicha latte carries more caffeine than a 200 ml cup of leaf hojicha and less than a 2 g bowl of matcha, because the roasted leaf starts with less. Exact numbers for matcha and coffee are in how much caffeine is in matcha. The EFSA guidance applies to all of them: up to 400 mg a day for healthy adults, 200 mg a day in pregnancy.

4. How to brew hojicha

Hojicha is the most forgiving Japanese tea to brew, because the roast has already removed the compounds that turn bitter in hot water. Use water just off the boil, about 90 °C. Measure 3 g of leaf, roughly one heaped tablespoon, into a pot or mug infuser, pour on 200 ml of water and wait 30–60 seconds. Pour it all out; leaf left in water keeps extracting. The same leaf gives a second cup; steep it a little longer.

For a cold brew, put 10 g of leaf in 1 litre of cold water and leave it in the fridge for 6–8 hours. The result is lightly sweet with no bitterness, and keeps for two days.

Hojicha powder is different: nothing is steeped, the powder is the drink. Whisk 2 g into 50 ml of hot water until smooth, then add 150–200 ml of warm or cold milk. For sparkling hojicha, dissolve 2 g in a little water and top up with soda water.

Hojicha leaf and hojicha powder compared

Caffeine values are MEXT 2020 for the leaf infusion; none exists for the powder. Regular prices, October 2026; cost per cup uses 3 g of leaf or 2 g of powder.

	Hojicha leaf	Hojicha powder
What it is	Roasted whole leaf, steeped and discarded	The same roasted leaf, milled; you drink all of it
Best for	Drinking plain, hot or cold-brewed	Lattes, sparkling hojicha, baking
Serving	3 g in 200 ml at 90 °C, 30–60 s	2 g whisked into 50 ml water, then milk
Caffeine	About 40 mg per 200 ml (MEXT)	No published value; more than the infusion, less than matcha
Taste	Toasty, light, clear	Toasty, fuller, slightly creamy
Price, cost per cup	50 g €12.90, €0.77	30 g €14.90, €0.99; 100 g €34.90, €0.70

The table says what the counter says: leaf for the cup you drink plain, powder for the cup you add milk to. Both cost under a euro per serving, one reason hojicha is the tea many of our regulars drink every day.