Mecha
Mecha (bud tea) is made from the leaf buds and tips sifted out while refining sencha and gyokuro, rolled into small tight pellets because young buds curl as they dry. As a concentrated bud fraction it brews a strong, deep-green, full-flavored cup that punches well above its modest price. The variable that matters most is which tea it was sorted from, since gyokuro mecha carries real sweetness while sencha mecha is simply brisk and robust.
Mecha looks like small, tight, deep-green pellets or curls, the buds and tips having rolled up during drying. The cup is strong, brisk and full, greener and more concentrated than the parent sencha, with good body for the price. The decisive quality signal is its source: gyokuro mecha brings sweetness and umami, while sencha mecha is robust and grassy but still satisfying. Fresh, glossy deep-green pellets that taste lively are what you want; dull, brownish or flat-tasting material is old byproduct. Like other fine-particle teas, it brews fast and benefits from a fine-mesh pot.
Mecha is a refining byproduct (demono), not a tea grown on its own; it is produced wherever Japanese sencha and gyokuro are finished. When the crude aracha is sorted during finishing, the bud-and-tip fraction is separated out as mecha, the stem fraction as kukicha, and the dust as konacha, so a single garden's harvest fans out into several differently priced teas. Mecha's character inherits from its parent tea and region, which is why gyokuro-sourced mecha can be genuinely fine.
Western: 70-80°C, 3-4 g per 200 ml, 30-60 seconds because the tight buds release quickly, 2-3 infusions. In a kyusu: 70-75°C, 4 g per 120 ml, 20-30 seconds, increasing slightly, 3-4 infusions. Use cooler water for gyokuro mecha to draw out its sweetness; a fine-mesh pot keeps the small pieces out of the cup.
€8-20 (about $9-22) per 100 g for ordinary mecha, with gyokuro-sourced mecha reaching €25-40 (about $27-43). Like other byproduct teas it offers an unusually high flavor-to-price ratio.
Prices reviewed June 2026
Konacha
The dust-and-powder fraction from the same refining, left as powder rather than rolled into bud pellets.
Kukicha
The stem-and-twig fraction separated during the same finishing, lighter and sweeter than the bud-heavy mecha.
Sencha
The parent tea that mecha is a concentrated bud fraction of; mecha is the tippy offcut, sencha the finished leaf.
Mecha, kukicha and konacha are all sorted out of the same finishing process, so they are effectively siblings of the sencha or gyokuro they came from; the bud fraction that becomes mecha is prized because buds concentrate the leaf's flavor, giving it more intensity than its byproduct price suggests.