I met Iwata san at last summer’s Tokyo Coffee Festival and his story instantly intrigued me. He operates in essentially a shack, renovated from an old storage room for farm equipment which was used by his grandparents. In a remote location where specialty coffee is not accustomed to, Iwata san studied roasting from scratch with his Diedrich roaster, slowly perfecting his craft - he’s constantly perfecting his craft throughout his 5 years of roasting experience, taking him 3 years to get to a level which he thought he can provide to his customers.
With a background in architecture and design, Iwata san found his love for coffee while on a working holiday in Canada, and decided to jump into the field after recognising his true passion. The coffee will be roasted on his beautiful Diedrich 1kg, an uncommon machine in Japan, but which he fell in love at first sight due to the design. With only a 1kg roasting capacity, it was a challenge for Iwata san and Kurasu to coordinate to provide coffee for all our members, we're happy to be able to showcase Iwata san's passion and Otomoni Coffee to the world.
A message from Iwata san:
"We put a lot of thoughts into which coffee to choose, given this wonderful opportunity to introduce our Otomoni coffee to the customers in Japan and all over the world.
We assumed for the most part that a lighter roasted pallet would be what the subscribers want - both for Japanese who are familiar to the specialty coffee scene, or overseas subscribers eager to explore the unique characteristics or the acidity of beans.
Our first intuition was to provide both beans as lightly roasted, but we also wanted to tell our strength and uniqueness as Otomoni Coffee, providing variety of roasts for our local customers.
In the end we decided to prepare two different beans: a Brazilian medium roast which is unique but has a lovely acidity, and very fresh, new crop Kenia medium-dark roast.
We would like the Japanese customers to know more about Otomoni coffee, but also introduce to the international subscribers the Japanese local coffee culture rooted in darker roasting through our Kenya."
