Philocoffea was founded by Tetsu Kasuya and co-founder Ami Kaji. Tetsu Kasuya is the first Asian to win the World Brewers Cup Championship. Kasuya selects and purchases green coffee beans, creates roasting profiles, and controls quality. He understands the taste of black coffee better than anyone.
Taste is subjective, so there is no right or wrong. However, Philocoffea believes that cleanliness is key to creating the complex flavors, pleasant acidity, and lasting sweet aftertaste of specialty coffee. Therefore, from light roast to dark roast, all Philocoffea coffees exhibit "clean" characteristics and offer a pleasant and lasting aftertaste.
Philocoffea defines specialty coffee by four key standards: location, cultivation, handpicking, and sustainability. This means you can trace the coffee beans back to the farm where they were grown. Their extraction process is handled in the most careful and sustainable way. When Kasuya finds coffee he believes in, he buys it directly from the farm. He values the trust-based relationship that comes from seeing firsthand how they work and live. After interacting with the locals and experiencing their culture, Kasuya is inspired to sell their coffee.
Philocoffea stores are equipped with the world's best Loring roasters, which serve as roasting stations and sacred labs for exploring new methods and unique ways of handling coffee beans. Kasuya personally creates and manages all the roasting profiles. When new green coffee beans arrive, Kasuya's expertise, repeated hypotheses, tests, and development of roasting profiles create the best product.
