Screw You, Italy: We're Brewing Japanese

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James Freeman.

​I called Blue Bottle owner James Freeman to ask about the upcoming opening of his cafe and roastery in Brooklyn. Projected date: two weeks out. Truth be told, I was hoping for word of a Stumptown-Blue Bottle rumble in New York, but it turns out Freeman's been drinking coffee at Stumptown every day during his latest stay in New York ("We all realize we're fighting the good fight," he says. "It's not Stumptown versus Intelligentsia, it's Stumptown versus Dunkin' Donuts.")

But an offhand comment caught my attention when I asked Freeman: Why New York? He joked, "Well, Tokyo is too far away." It all came together: the Japanese siphon bar, the Japanese slow-drippers, the Japanese nel drip (washable flannel filter) setup, the hand burr grinders from cult Japanese equipment manufacturer Hario Blue Bottle stores sell.

What was it about Japan that inspired him so much?
"Tokyo's been awesome for coffee since 1920," he replied. "Now it's just occurring to certain coffee geeks that that's where a lot of inspiration is. Prior to that we had a lot of inspiration from the esprsso culture of Italy ― that's been the dominant place that we steal from. Now it's becoming more obvious to people what a refined coffee culture Japan has and has had."

"Espresso is resurgent in Japan," Freeman continued, "but it's more recent on the scene, and so when I go to Japan I'm inspired by the brewed coffee culture. The most inspiring thing about Japanese brewed coffee is the service aspect. People go to painstaking lengths to prepare and serve food."

Evidence of the depth of Japanese coffee culture? The slow-drippers ― two in Mint Plaza, a handful in Brooklyn ― which look straight out of a Miyazaki film. "It's an impressive machine," Freeman explains. "The Kyoto-style iced coffee it produces is really great, really delicious.... My wife and I were in Kyoto, in a block-long teenager-style mall with knickknacks on every side, and we passed a pearl tea shop with these slow-drippers in the front window, though they weren't as fancy as the ones in our store. That iced coffee is just what people drink."

​With single-estate drip coffee ascendant, Blue Bottle isn't the only coffee shop to look away from Europe. Ritual Roasters (and Starbucks' prototype pour-over bars) in Seattle now use the V-60 pour-over system, and even places that haven't gone full-Japanese, like Sight Glass and Matching Half, are using Hario's thin-spout kettle to irrigate the grounds in their pour-over filters. The philosophy behind the kettle is that you evenly wet the coffee so you don't "drown" the grounds and risk uneven extraction.

I wonder if alpha-Italophile Howard Schultz, Starbucks' CEO, is now making regular trips to Tokyo.