Why Matcha Lovers Are Turning to Hojicha Right Now

The matcha shortage is real, the prices are climbing, and there's a better answer than most people realize.

If you've noticed your matcha getting harder to find, more expensive, or quietly disappearing from café menus, you're not imagining it. The global matcha shortage that began building in 2024 is expected to deepen through mid-2026, and the people feeling it most are the ones who built a genuine daily ritual around it.

The good news is that the natural next step for a matcha lover isn't a compromise. It's hojicha. And for a lot of people who make the switch, it becomes something they wouldn't trade back.

Here's what's happening, and why hojicha makes more sense than any other alternative right now.

What's Actually Behind the Matcha Shortage

The matcha shortage isn't a supply chain blip. It's a structural imbalance between how fast demand grew and how slowly tea farming can respond to it.

Producing quality matcha requires shade-grown tea plants, a labor-intensive process, and years of cultivating the right growing conditions. Global demand roughly tripled between 2010 and 2023, then accelerated further as matcha lattes became a daily staple for millions of people across North America and Europe. Japan's tea farmers simply couldn't expand production fast enough to meet it.

The result is that matcha prices have risen significantly, wholesale buyers are facing supply restrictions, and some cafés are quietly pulling matcha drinks from their menus rather than absorb the cost. The shortage is expected to deepen through the summer of 2026 before any meaningful supply relief arrives.

For daily matcha drinkers, that means higher prices, inconsistent availability, and in some cases a product that's been quietly downgraded in quality to manage costs.

Why Hojicha Is the Natural Next Step

Hojicha comes from the same plant as matcha. Both are derived from Camellia sinensis, the same Japanese green tea plant, processed differently after harvest. Matcha is shade-grown and stone-ground into a fine green powder. Hojicha is roasted at high temperatures, which gives it a completely different flavor profile and dramatically lowers the caffeine content.

For someone already invested in Japanese tea culture, hojicha isn't foreign territory. It's the roasted cousin you haven't spent much time with yet.

The flavor comparison matters here. Matcha is grassy, vegetal, and slightly bitter with an umami depth that takes some getting used to. Hojicha is warm, earthy, and slightly caramel with almost no bitterness. It tastes the way a good cup of coffee smells, roasty and comforting, but without the caffeine load.

For specialty coffee shops navigating a tightening supply of high-quality matcha, hojicha is not a replacement but an addition. For consumers who find matcha's intensity too strong, hojicha offers a more familiar alternative.

The One Place Hojicha Does Something Matcha Can't

Matcha is a morning drink for most people. The caffeine content, around 60 to 70mg per cup, makes it genuinely useful for focus and energy but less suitable for the evening.

Hojicha has roughly 7 to 25mg of caffeine per cup. That's the evening half of your day, completely covered. The same ritual, the same warmth, the same intentional preparation, but in the hours when matcha doesn't really work.

For matcha lovers who already drink one in the morning, adding hojicha in the evening rounds out a complete Japanese tea practice that runs from morning to night. The two drinks aren't competing. They're complementary.

Hojicha as a Latte: What to Expect

If you love a matcha latte, the hojicha latte is going to feel immediately familiar and genuinely different at the same time.

The preparation is almost identical. Hojicha powder whisked with a small amount of hot water until smooth, then combined with steamed or frothed milk. The result is a creamy, warm drink with a toasty depth that pairs beautifully with oat milk in particular.

The flavor is where it diverges. Where a matcha latte has a grassy, slightly sweet brightness, a hojicha latte is deeper and more caramel-forward. Some people describe it as the tea version of a café au lait. It's rich without being heavy, and the low caffeine means you can drink it at 8pm without any consequences.

A classic hojicha latte with a small amount of vanilla or maple is one of the most satisfying evening drinks you can make at home. Once you've had it a few times, it stops being a substitute and becomes something you specifically want.

What Makes a Good Hojicha Powder

Not all hojicha powder is equal, and if you're coming from a matcha background you'll already know how much quality matters in powdered Japanese tea.

The best hojicha powder is made from properly roasted leaves with a consistent grind that dissolves smoothly without clumping. It should smell genuinely roasty and warm when you open the container, with notes of caramel and toasted grain. If it smells flat or dusty, the roast is stale or poor quality.

Color is also a signal. Quality hojicha powder ranges from a warm reddish-brown to a deep amber. Very pale powder often indicates under-roasting. Very dark powder can mean the leaves were over-roasted and the nuance of the flavor has been lost.

How it's stored matters too. Like matcha, hojicha powder is best kept away from light, heat, and moisture. A proper airtight container extends the freshness significantly and protects the aromatic compounds that make the drink worth drinking.

The Bigger Picture: What the Matcha Moment Opened Up

Matcha went from a niche Japanese ingredient to a global daily ritual in roughly a decade. It changed how millions of people think about their morning drink, about intentional preparation, about the idea that a beverage can be both functional and meaningful.

Hojicha is the natural continuation of that story for the evening. Not because matcha is going away, but because the people who genuinely love Japanese tea culture have always known there's more to explore beyond the one drink that went mainstream.

The shortage accelerated that discovery for a lot of people. But the ones who find hojicha and stay with it aren't staying because matcha is unavailable. They're staying because hojicha gave them something they didn't know they were missing.

How to Make the Switch

If you're a matcha drinker exploring hojicha for the first time, start with a simple latte.

Whisk 1 to 2 teaspoons of hojicha powder with a small amount of hot water at around 90°C / 195°F until completely smooth. Warm your milk of choice, oat milk works particularly well, and combine. Sweeten very lightly with honey or maple syrup if you prefer, though the natural sweetness of good hojicha powder often doesn't need it.

Drink it in the evening. That's where it will make the most immediate sense and where the low caffeine becomes an obvious advantage rather than just a data point.

Give it a week. By then it won't feel like a matcha substitute. It'll feel like hojicha, which is exactly what it is.

Enaga is a small-batch hojicha brand built around the evening ritual. Every order arrives in a hand-engraved stoneware tea caddy with a wax-sealed letter, because the way something arrives matters as much as what's inside.