A strategy book on boutique coffee necessary for a trip to Tokyo

Pay attention to coffee reviews (Weixin Official Accounts vdailycom ) and find a beautiful cafe to open your own shop

Friends who like coffee will know that there is a "low-key online store" on Wuxing Road in Shanghai.

It was said to be low-key because it was different from other popular stores. Only those who knew the password of the door could enter the store. It is popular because you can see its name on various coffee and food rankings in Shanghai. Customers sitting next to you in the store are likely to fly from another city for a limited amount of fine coffee.

This store, called T12: Lab, is owned by one of our heroes today, Fox.

Fox is a coffee fanatic and a former software engineer for Google China.

She drank coffee from all over the world: from Chiang Mai to Melbourne, from Kyoto to Portland. She clearly remembered that at the moment when she drank her first cup of rich, sweet and perfectly blended Gibraltar in Chiang Mai, the whole world in front of her eyes was lit up, as if there had never been a light accompanied by a shocking taste experience.

What made her officially bond with T12 was also a cup of coffee:

"At T12, Figo brings out a glass of sunburned Ethiopian Flat White and says,'Come, have a cup of coffee.'

That glass of Australian white was so good it was embarrassing.

Smooth on the palate, explosive aroma of flowers and fermentation, sweet like citrus, plump like Kobe and beef, hot and cold flavors, but consistent taste. I've traveled so many cities and drunk so much coffee, but I've never tasted anything like it. The years ago hit me again.

A cup of soulful, I became a partner in my favorite cafe."

"Good coffee should be everyday"- Fox practices this simple wish day after day, and even establishes a new coffee technology company T12: lab with friends to take on the mission of coffee culture dissemination and technological innovation in the form of a laboratory.

It was at T12 that Fox met Jimmy, who also wanted to make real good coffee known to more people.

Jimmy is a designer himself and has worked as a brand designer and brand product innovation manager for Tencent and Sina respectively. Since 2011, he has been working in Beijing. He likes to travel through alleys to visit hidden coffee shops. Later, he became friends with a Beijing coffee shop owner and learned more about the profound coffee culture.

In 2015, he declined the company's invitation to become brand director and resolutely resigned to return to Hong Kong, deciding to pursue his ideals. Combining his interests and previous work experience, he founded ListCup coffee exchange platform in the same year, hoping to gather coffee lovers from all over the world, promote coffee culture through ListCup, and let more people re-understand coffee, appreciate and respect coffee industry and culture.

Jimmy, who left his high-paying position as design director of Sina Weibo to become a coffee culture platform, is probably a fool in the eyes of others. Out of his love for good coffee, he wants to help his esteemed baristas build a bigger stage, put good cafes, baristas and coffee lovers from all over the world into the same online community, promote more communication within the industry, and help truly good cafes be discovered and known by more people.

Jimmy's team spent more than a year crafting the App ListCup, which is now famous in the coffee world. In this app for coffee lovers and practitioners, you can not only record the flavor of coffee, but also find really good coffee shops in all corners of the world.

Nowadays, cafes labeled ListCup are basically branded with good coffee.

Before they met, Fox and Jimmy's footprints had overlapped many times in cafes around the world, talking about their favorite baristas and hidden cafes, and they actually had some sympathy. When talking about the world's top coffee mecca, they all think of Tokyo, Japan.

Coffee drinking in Japan has a long history and a rich accumulation of skills. Since the 18th century, with the arrival of Dutch merchant ships, this berry extract has gradually formed its own style climate in the struggle between generations of persistent coffee workers and stubborn Japanese people.

On the other hand, the Japanese seem to have an innate ability to absorb foreign things completely, transform them, and fully integrate them into their own culture. The century-old traditional deep-baked and tea-eating culture coexists with the trend of light-baked fine coffee as a latecomer. While constantly innovating themselves, they learn from each other and become an example of fine workmanship and diversification.

For those in the coffee industry, the long road traveled by other professionals is undoubtedly worth learning from.

They wondered if there were so many good cafes in Tokyo, so many good coffees they had tasted, and so many seniors they had visited, could they leave something behind?

What has weight and is easy to get, neither shallow nor lasting?

Books, they want to make a book.

Tokyo Coffee Time, hot pre-sale

So Fox and Jimmy led the team to visit nearly 100 cafes in Tokyo in depth, dig out the stories and secrets behind their delicious food, and write a book called Tokyo Coffee Time, which is expected to be published by Pu Rui Culture in July.

Different from the easy-to-read and easy-to-forget of fast-moving articles, this book, which starts from a professional point of view, does not follow fleeting hot spots, but also summarizes the knowledge that can really guide practice, neither patchwork repeatedly, nor difficult to understand as theoretical literature.

It will be a good and useful book.

In the process, they visited a lot of Tokyo coffee shops:

For example, Beishan only cooked beans, not allowed to watch brewing, must drink and leave within 30 minutes, but long ranked first in tabelog coffee:

Or paranoia shops like Bear Pond, which specializes in espresso and limits its daily supply to 20 cups of syrupy, deep-baked concentrate:

There are also master shops like Unlimited and Obscura, where world champions and international judges stand in the bar every day and serve their guests approachable and flawless coffee to competition standards:

These are the shops you can't miss when you go to Tokyo

It is all recorded in Tokyo Coffee Time:

What they ultimately want to do, through their eyes and pen, is to give coffee-loving and curious readers a broader view of the world. This world is only about good taste, there are not too many masks and flattery, and there are not too many walls of "should", so it will be closer to pure happiness.