u/NickKeeling

In an effort to get very fresh dark-roast coffee, last year I finally journeyed into home-roasting! My friend from Japan serves as my mentor as I try to roast and brew a very good dark roasted coffee. I do love light roast coffee, but after 10 years of brewing third-wave light roast I think I'm a bit tired of that now. Dark-roast has been a fun change of pace, and learning the WhirleyPop's particular fussy nature at times has been a treat.

I roast weekly, usually in batches of 200g to 400g with beans from Sweetmarias. Some have impressed me, some have disappointed. Learning new techniques and embracing the ritual has made this a hobby I love and share with all my friends! I even did a small coffee pop-up at an art gallery that sold out!

I hope to one day upgrade my roaster to the Japanese "Sample Roaster". My brewing method is that of kissaten culture, which was a fun change on pour-over I've learned a decade ago.

I created a multi-media piece that includes a cassette and miniature photographs from my time in Japan. The tape includes field recordings I took on a portable cassette recorder and the photos are from the same time / location. You can look at the photos while you listen to the field recordings :)

The entire packet is about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

Even though the recordings are rather lo-fi, I wanted to release the tape on beautiful cassettes so I chose to use 1985 Maxell and TDK tapes that were both manufactured in Japan. I dubbed each one real-time with a few machines daisy-chained together.

Everything was printed with a risograph printer, a method also invented in Japan, which I feel has a similar hazy feeling as the recordings.

I made 40 copies, pass me a message if you'd like to purchase one! $40 + shipping

I worked with a local risograph studio here in Ohio, Cereal Box Studios, to recreate a piece of media I've always loved... a souvenir packet of miniature photographs that was common a century ago.

This was film photography I took in Japan last year. The packet itself was also risograph printed and die-cut. It was all designed to hold the 18 photos, the cassette, and liner notes together neatly. In the end, it is about the size of a pack of cigarettes.

The tape is audio field recordings I took on a portable cassette tape player of those exact locations. You can look at the photos as you listen to the field recordings. Very lo-fi at its core and I found that risograph of the two colors lends well to the faded sounds of the cassette field recordings.

It felt like a fitting tribute to use risograph for a project focused around Japan.

If anyone would like one, pass me a message 😄