Roaster Profile
Horiguchi Coffee
堀口珈琲
東京（世田谷・新宿ほか）
Founded in 1990, a pioneer who laid the groundwork of Japanese specialty coffee. Known for direct origin visits, long-term farmer relationships, and books that systematized brewing and roasting theory. Excels at balanced medium to medium-dark roasts.
Roast
Medium–dark
Online sales
Yes
Origins
5 origins
Tags
Origins carried
Editorial
How to read this roaster
Horiguchi Coffee, founded in Setagaya, Tokyo in 1990, laid the groundwork of Japanese specialty coffee alongside Maruyama. Founder Toshihide Horiguchi brought direct origin visits, long-term farmer relationships and a scientific approach to articulating "deliciousness" into the industry; his books on coffee tasting and coffee science are read as essential texts by baristas and café owners.
Theory and practice on two wheels
What marks Horiguchi is the will to explain quality in words and numbers, not only artisan intuition. Indicators like pH, Brix and cupping scores, and a method that decomposes flavor into eight elements, are shared in-house and taught outward as a systematized coffee education. Replacing "this is delicious" with "here is why" deeply influenced the development of SCAJ’s certification programs.
Medium to medium-dark, drawing out the material
The roast style is medium — an axis of medium to medium-dark that keeps origin character while maximizing body and sweetness. Neither too light nor too dark, it is the archetype of "a balance you can drink every day," with the establishment-grade reliability of a daily cup. The stable lineup of representative lots from Ethiopia, Kenya, Colombia, Guatemala and Indonesia is another reason it has been loved so long.
Blends designed around balance
The signature numbered blends (the No.1–No.9 line) are textbook designs with each origin’s role clearly assigned. Even in an era of single-origin individualism, tasting these standards is worth it to understand the original grammar of blending — what goes in the base, what provides the accent.
Recommended brewing
Paper drip (V60 or Kalita Wave) at 90–92°C, water at 15× the dose as the baseline. For a comparative "reading," pour Ethiopia, Kenya and Colombia side by side on the same recipe — you will taste exactly the flavor differentials Horiguchi’s cupping method emphasizes.
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Find Horiguchi Coffee’s beans
Opens the official online shop via Google. Stock and prices on the official site take precedence.
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