An attempt at an agar jelly drink

As my 12 week coding class plods on, I continue to look for some easy tea recipes to try. Since Asia is where tea originated, they seem to do a lot more with it than people in my part of the world. I was trying to figure out if people in Japan made iced matcha, and I came across this video.

Since I had all of the ingredients, I decided to give it a try. 

Per the video, they used a gram of agar powder, 300 mL of water, and 0.6 grams of matcha powder (I used a teaspoon because there was no way that I would be able to weigh that amount of matcha). 

I have a couple of options. The only powdered agar I can find already has sugar in it. I don't remember if it was in a video, or something I read, but adding sugar to a matcha drink seems to be frowned on, so my other option is to use the agar stick. I tried using this for something before, and it didn't work out the best, so we'll see how I do this time. 

As it turns out, my digital food scale has a little trouble weighing one gram. This is actually 2 grams worth of agar. I figured I would use a little more, because last time I tried to use it, it didn't set up very well. I ended up with a slightly thickened liquid.

Into the water it goes. I put it over high heat to bring it to a boil. The instructions said to boil for 3 minutes, so that's what I did.

One of the things that went wrong last time I used this is that the agar never fully dissolved. I had all these little chunks floating in my liquid after boiling and stirring for the allotted time. Thanks to the instructions in the video, I whisked the heck out of this stuff. In the end, it did all dissolve, but it takes some work. 

So this is what I ended up with. I opted to let it cool down a bit before adding the matcha powder. You aren't supposed to add matcha to boiling hot water, so transferring it to a bowl is enough to cool it down for the next step. I wasn't sure how it would go since the bowl was so full, but I decided to give it a try. 

I wasn't sure if the matcha would settle after mixing it in. I let it sit on the counter for a while, then whisked it again. I thought the top layer looked funny, like maybe it was separating a bit. After I put the whisk in I realized that the top layer was actually setting up. 

Things were going well, until I got impatient and put it in the fridge. Okay, I also wanted it to be cold because it was a really hot day. I mean, I had ice cubes made!. I normally hate cold drinks, and ice cubes will evaporate out of the tray if you leave them in the freezer long enough. 

In the video, the maker ends up with a thick liquid. I ended up with something the consistency of jello. They showed using a fork to break up the soft set liquid, and pouring it into a cup. So, I started hacking away at my creation with a fork. This stuff was not going to pour nicely into a cup.

I added some ice cubes, and hoped that they would make this more beverage like as they melted. No luck. I ended up eating this with a spoon. I know why they said that this makes 2 servings. The matcha flavor is intense. I ended up splitting this into 2 servings. It's a new way to have some cold, dessert tea.If I make it again, I plan to use less matcha, and less agar now that I know how to get it to dissolve fully.