Coffee Sketcher

Tetsu Kasuya

Properties3
descriptionThe 2016 World Brewers Cup champion — the first Asian winner — who turned his competition routine into the 4:6 method, the most widely copied pour-over recipe in specialty coffee.
tagsperson, japan, brewers-cup, barista, roaster, brewing
aliasesKasuya Tetsu, Tetsu Kasuya 4:6

9 min read

Tetsu Kasuya

Tetsu Kasuya is a Japanese barista, roaster and consultant who won the 2016 World Brewers Cup in Dublin and then gave away the recipe. That recipe — the 4:6 method — is now the default hand-brew taught in cafés and on YouTube worldwide, which makes him unusual among champions: most are remembered for a coffee, he is remembered for a technique (Barista Magazine — 10 Minutes with Tetsu Kasuya, accessed 2026-07-23; Daiohs — Daiohs x Philocoffea, accessed 2026-07-23).

He was the first Asian champion of the Brewers Cup (ZEROMILE — Discovering Japan’s Finest Drip Coffee, Chapter 11, accessed 2026-07-23) — consistent with this wiki’s own champions table, where every winner from 2011 to 2015 came from Ireland, Australia, the USA, Greece or Norway.

He also founds and runs Philocoffea, a roastery and café group in Chiba, east of Tokyo.

Story

From IT to a coffee counter

Kasuya worked in IT before coffee — described in a 2016 interview as an IT consultant. What moved him was a diabetes diagnosis roughly four years before that interview: he could no longer drink sugary drinks, so, in his words, “I had to change what I drink” (Perfect Daily Grind — Interview with World Brewers Cup Champion, Tetsu Kasuya, accessed 2026-07-23).

He moved into the coffee industry properly in 2013 (ZEROMILE and Daiohs, both accessed 2026-07-23), working as manager and barista at The Coffee Factory in Ibaraki, a thirty-year-old shop north-east of Tokyo (Barista Magazine and Daiohs, both accessed 2026-07-23). Ibaraki is the same prefecture that produces Saza Coffee and Taro Suzuki — no source connects the two, but it says something about where Japanese coffee obsession actually lives.

Competition record

YearCompetitionResult
2015Japan AeroPress ChampionshipChampion
2016Japan Brewers Cup (national qualifier)Champion — brewed on an AeroPress
2016World Brewers Cup, DublinWorld champion

Both Barista Magazine and Daiohs give the same three results, independently (accessed 2026-07-23). Winning a national Brewers Cup on an AeroPress — a plunger-style immersion brewer, not a pour-over cone — was itself a statement; he switched to a Hario V60 ceramic dripper for the world stage, choosing ceramic because it holds heat during the brew, which he called especially important for the 4:6 method (Barista Magazine, accessed 2026-07-23).

The world final was held in Dublin in June 2016 (Daiohs, accessed 2026-07-23; Perfect Daily Grind, writing in August 2016, refers to it as “this June”). No source consulted publishes his score.

The coffee he won with

A natural-processed Geisha from Panama, a lot called “Sylvia”, grown by Ninety Plus — the producer-and-brand whose Panamanian operation is named Gesha Estates (Perfect Daily Grind and Kurasu — Winning recipe of 2016 World Brewers Cup Champion Tetsu Kasuya, both accessed 2026-07-23). He says he picked it partly for the producer’s passion rather than cup score alone (Perfect Daily Grind).

Geisha from Panama is the coffee that broke every price record at Best of Panama; a natural one is dried whole in the fruit, which pushes it further towards ripe berry and floral sweetness. Note that Ninety Plus sells through its own channels rather than the Best of Panama auction, so this lot has no auction price attached to it — see the callout below.

The 4:6 method

The idea is a single split. Take your total brew water and divide it 40% / 60%:

  • The first 40% — poured in two goes — sets the balance between acidity and sweetness. More water in the first pour, more sweetness; less, more acidity.
  • The remaining 60% — poured in two, three or more goes — does nothing but set the strength. As Kasuya put it, “the only role of the last 60% of the total water is to control the strength of coffee” (Barista Magazine, accessed 2026-07-23).

He arrived at it by brute force: brewing the same coffee over and over, catching each portion of water in a separate cup, and tasting which portion was actually carrying the flavour. His conclusion was that “after 40%, the rest doesn’t have a clear taste” (Perfect Daily Grind, accessed 2026-07-23).

The second unconventional part is the waiting. He lets the bed drain completely — all liquid down into the decanter — before starting the next pour (Barista Magazine). At the time, the received wisdom was to keep the bed wet and the flow continuous.

Why it caught on: it gives a home brewer two independent dials — sweet-versus-sour, and strong-versus-weak — instead of a single fixed recipe to follow. Philocoffea’s own site describes it as “a coffee brewing technique based on a scientific approach to coffee extraction” (Philocoffea, accessed 2026-07-23).

The winning recipe, as published

Kurasu’s write-up of the 2016 routine gives the numbers (Kurasu, accessed 2026-07-23):

ParameterValue
Coffee20 g, coarse grind
Water300 ml at 92 °C, 0.33 ppm, pH 6.6
DripperHario V60
Pour 1 (bloom)50 ml
Pour 2 (0:45)70 ml
Pour 3 (1:30)60 ml
Pour 4 (2:15)60 ml
Pour 5 (3:00)60 ml
Finishlift the dripper at 3:30

The arithmetic is the method: 50 + 70 = 120 ml, exactly 40% of the water, then 60 + 60 + 60 = 180 ml, exactly 60%. The near-zero mineral content — 0.33 parts per million of dissolved solids — is competition-grade water, effectively blank, so nothing in it competes with the coffee.

Philocoffea

Philocoffea was founded in 2017 by Kasuya and a group of friends as a small roastery, with Kasuya handling roasting and quality control himself (Daiohs, accessed 2026-07-23). The company’s own site names him as founder and builds the brand explicitly around his selection criteria and brewing knowledge (Philocoffea, accessed 2026-07-23).

It now runs three shops in Chiba Prefecture and opened a flagship in Tokyo’s Omotesando district in March 2025 (ZEROMILE, accessed 2026-07-23). Chiba is commuter-belt Tokyo; Omotesando is the city’s luxury retail spine, and putting a roastery café there is a premiumisation move as much as a retail one.

On 1 October 2020, Daiohs — a Japanese office-services company — signed a comprehensive advisory contract with Philocoffea and Kasuya (Daiohs’ own announcement, accessed 2026-07-23; Daiohs is a party to the contract, so this is a first-hand source for its existence, not an independent one for its terms).

Consulting and teaching

Beyond his own company, Kasuya consults for convenience-store chains and large companies in Japan and abroad (ZEROMILE, accessed 2026-07-23), and travels internationally to run workshops and coach competitors. The line he is most often quoted on: “Anyone can easily make coffee more delicious” (Daiohs, accessed 2026-07-23).

That is the whole point of the 4:6 method, and it is why he sits differently in the Japan coffee market story than a buyer like Saza Coffee does. Saza’s influence runs through the auction room — paying record prices for a bag of Elida Estate Geisha. Kasuya’s runs through technique, distributed for free.

To verify

The Hario “Kasuya Model” V60. A retailer’s blog reports that Hario released a Kasuya Model V60 in 2018, with “customized ribs that hold coffee longer compared to the standard V60 model, which makes the extraction more stable and easier to control” (Kurasu, accessed 2026-07-23). Hario’s own sites could not be checked — both hario.com and global.hario.com returned HTTP 403 to this machine on 2026-07-23 — so the release year and the rib description rest on a single retailer source. No price or production figures are documented anywhere consulted.

To verify

The bloom timing in the published recipe, and the water figure. Kurasu’s own list writes both the 50 ml bloom and the 70 ml second pour at 0:45, which cannot both be right; the sensible reading is bloom at 0:00, second pour at 0:45. The research report behind this note also gives the water as 0.3 ppm where the Kurasu page reads 0.33 ppm. Neither discrepancy changes the 40/60 structure, but do not quote the timings or the ppm figure as exact.

To verify

The Best of Panama link that isn’t there. The winning coffee is documented as a natural Geisha from Ninety Plus in Panama, but no source ties it to a specific Best of Panama lot, auction year, price or buyer. Ninety Plus sells privately rather than through the auction. Any lot number, cupping score or hammer price attached to “Sylvia” would be invented.

To verify

The Stronghold S7X roaster. The research report states he roasts on a Stronghold S7X in Chiba, sourced to a single YouTube video (Make it your Story — Philocoffea, Tetsu Kasuya), not fetched or corroborated here. Philocoffea’s site does not name its roasting equipment on the pages read.

To verify

What is simply not documented. No source consulted gives his birth date, age or home town; his name in Japanese characters; his exact World Brewers Cup score or any sub-scores; Philocoffea’s ownership breakdown, production volume or wholesale clients; or the names of the three Chiba shops. The official Specialty Coffee Association of Japan competition archives and the Specialty Coffee Association’s year-by-year rankings PDFs would be the places to settle the competition figures.

Sources

  1. PHILOCOFFEA — official site — accessed 2026-07-23
  2. Daiohs — Daiohs x Philocoffea (advisory-contract announcement, a party to the agreement) — accessed 2026-07-23
  3. Barista Magazine — 10 Minutes with World Brewers Cup Champion Tetsu Kasuya of Japan — accessed 2026-07-23
  4. Perfect Daily Grind — Interview with World Brewers Cup Champion, Tetsu Kasuya — accessed 2026-07-23
  5. ZEROMILE — Discovering Japan’s Finest Drip Coffee, Chapter 11: PHILOCOFFEA / Tetsu Kasuya — accessed 2026-07-23
  6. Kurasu — Winning recipe of 2016 World Brewers Cup Champion Tetsu Kasuya — accessed 2026-07-23
  7. MATCHA — Coffee by a World Brewers Cup Champion — cited in the research report, not independently fetched
  8. A Brief Encounter With Tetsu Kasuya — projecktdrip — cited in the research report, not independently fetched
  9. Make it your Story — Philocoffea, Tetsu Kasuya (video) — cited in the research report, not independently fetched
  10. Hario — global site — attempted 2026-07-23, returned HTTP 403

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