Roaster Profile
Cafe Bach
カフェ・バッハ
東京(南千住)
A storied coffee house founded in 1968. Mamoru Taguchi’s "Bach Group" is renowned for coffee education and outreach. From dark-roast blends to single origins, a legendary shop that has led Japanese coffee culture for over 50 years.
Roast
Medium–dark
Online sales
Yes
Origins
5 origins
Tags
Origins carried
Editorial
How to read this roaster
Café Bach, founded in Minami-senju, Tokyo in 1968, is something like the living history of Japanese coffee culture. Owner Mamoru Taguchi systematized roasting theory, extraction theory and café management in a long list of books, and has anchored coffee education for the hundreds of shops of the "Bach Group" nationwide — training Japan’s coffee artisans from the pre-specialty era to today.
Making hand-picking a culture
No telling of Café Bach’s work can skip hand-picking — removing defective beans one by one. Picking happens at three stages (green, pre-roast, post-roast), ruthlessly eliminating beans that would put noise in the cup, a practice maintained since long before modern specialty standards spread. "Good coffee begins with removing the defects" has become the industry’s shared language.
Balanced, deeper-roasted blends
The listed roast style is medium, but in practice Bach works across medium to dark, with a particular reputation for the completeness of its balanced blends. The Café Bach blend series organizes origin roles with textbook clarity — a lineup worth tasting at least once by anyone studying blend design.
Coffee education and the Bach Group
Taguchi’s books are read well beyond the trade, by ordinary enthusiasts. The Bach Group, which trains artisans aiming for independence, reaches across the country — trace a good regional roastery to its roots and you will often find an apprenticeship at Bach.
Recommended brewing
The Bach style is nel drip, low water temperature at 83–85°C, drawn slowly — the traditional way of pulling maximum sweetness from a dark roast. As a culture apart from today’s light-roast specialty, it is worth experiencing at least once.
Buy
Find Cafe Bach’s beans
Opens the official online shop via Google. Stock and prices on the official site take precedence.
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