Japan's Hand Drip Champion: Four Straight Titles for One Family, a First in JHDC History — Chikako Nitta of Nitta Coffee (Tsuruga, Fukui) Wins JCTC 2018 and JHDC 2026

Chikako Nitta has won the Japan Hand Drip Championship 2026. Following her win at the 2018 Japan Cup Tasters Championship (JCTC), this is her second national title. After her husband (2023 and 2024) and their eldest daughter (2025), she is the third member of the family to become Japan's hand drip champion.

Chikako Nitta of Nitta Coffee Co., Ltd. (President: Kazuo Nitta), a coffee shop founded in 1940 in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, Japan, won the Japan Hand Drip Championship 2026 (JHDC 2026), held at Tokyo Big Sight on October 16, 2026.

Preliminary rounds, with places for up to 224 competitors, were held across Japan, and 14 competitors advanced to the final. Chikako first entered the competition in 2016. After placing third in Japan in 2017 and 2019, she won her first title in her eleventh year of competing.

Following her win at the 2018 JCTC (Japan Cup Tasters Championship), this victory means she has now won national titles in both a competition for tasting coffee and a competition for brewing it.

Nitta Coffee's Kazuo Nitta won in 2023 and 2024, and Ibuki Nitta won in 2025. With this year's win, three members of the same family, from the same shop, have each become Japan's hand drip champion, four years in a row.

This is the first time in JHDC history that the same shop — and the same family — has won four consecutive titles.

Three Family Members, Four Consecutive National Titles

JHDC champions from Nitta Coffee:

• 2023 — Kazuo Nitta (President)
• 2024 — Kazuo Nitta (second consecutive title)
• 2025 — Ibuki Nitta (eldest daughter; at 20 years and 4 months, the youngest champion in the competition's history)
• 2026 — Chikako Nitta (Kazuo's wife)

Two National Titles: One for Tasting, One for Brewing

In 2018, Chikako won the Japan Cup Tasters Championship (JCTC), a competition that tests the ability to tell coffees apart by taste. The following year, she represented Japan at the World Cup Tasters Championship (WCTC) in Germany, finishing 14th.

In 2026, she won the JHDC, a competition of brewing skill, for the first time. She is now a national champion both in judging flavor and in bringing that flavor out in the cup.

About the JHDC: Two Cups of Different Sizes, One Flavor

The JHDC (Japan Hand Drip Championship) is organized by the Specialty Coffee Association of Japan (SCAJ). Competitors are judged on their skill in brewing coffee by hand drip.

Preliminary round (drip round)

Using coffee announced on the day, competitors have 10 minutes to brew two cups of different volumes (150–200 ml and 300–400 ml). Three judges, seated where they cannot see the competitor, taste the coffees and assess how closely the two cups match (uniformity) and the flavor of the larger cup.

Final (drip round + free round)

Final rankings are based on the combined scores of a drip round, in the same format as the preliminaries, and a free round. In the free round, competitors use coffee distributed for practice about one month before the competition. Within 11 minutes, while giving a presentation, they brew two cups of different volumes and serve them to three sensory judges — six cups in total. The judges assess flavor, uniformity between the two cups, the presentation, and technique. Going over 11 minutes means disqualification.

The Cup in the Final: Large Beans and Small Beans

The coffee

The competition coffee was a Yellow Pacamara (washed) from El Limoncillo farm in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. In 2004, just three trees bearing yellow cherries were found in a section of the farm planted with red-cherry trees. The Mierisch family, who own the farm, have protected and grown the variety for more than 20 years.

What she noticed

Pacamara is known for its large beans, but Chikako noticed that the bean size in this lot varied. When she separated large and small beans and tasted them, she found bright, citrus-like acidity in the large beans, and cocoa-like sweetness with a lingering weight in the small beans. She saw the complex flavor created when these two overlap as the appeal of this coffee.

How she brewed it

By tasting the brewed coffee in separate fractions, she found that acidity came first, then sweetness, and finally the weight of the aftertaste. Focusing on this timing, she adjusted the flavor with three variables: coffee dose, grind size, and water temperature. In the first half of the brew she used hotter water to draw out bright acidity and aroma; in the second half she lowered the temperature to hold back the heavy aftertaste, layering sweetness over the acidity.

Equipment

She ground the coffee slightly coarse to make the bright acidity easier to extract. She chose a dripper with a single large hole for good flow and a filter that resists clogging, so that the flavor could be adjusted through the pour.

Grinder: Kalita Nice Cut G
Dripper: CAFEC Flower Dripper
Filter: CAFEC Abaca Filter

From her presentation

"By learning the story of the farm and its producers, and by looking more closely at what we can see, I found a new appeal in this coffee — and used it to create the cup I was aiming for."

The Road to Victory: From a First Entry in 2016, Through Two Third-Place Finishes, to a First Title in Her Eleventh Year

Chikako first competed in the JHDC in 2016 and placed third in Japan in 2017 and 2019. She kept competing, and this year — her eleventh since her first entry — she won the title for the first time.

This year's competition was also a chance for Nitta Coffee to win a fourth consecutive title.

She began preparing for the free round in March, after the preliminaries. Once the competition coffee arrived in September, she rewrote her script many times while studying the beans and tasting the brewed coffee in separate fractions. She narrowed down her words so she could say everything while brewing within the 11 minutes.

Comment from Chikako Nitta

"I won this competition, which began with preliminary rounds for up to 224 competitors, and following Kazuo Nitta in 2023 and 2024 and Ibuki Nitta in 2025, Nitta Coffee has now won four in a row. Winning a second title after the 2018 JCTC also makes me truly happy — I'm overwhelmed.
Competing under the pressure of a fourth consecutive title, my stomach hurt terribly right before I competed. I could never have reached this victory on my own. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to our customers who always support us, to our staff who supported me, to everyone at the SCAJ who organized the competition, to the organizers, committee members, volunteers, and judges, and to all of the competitors I had the honor of competing alongside."

Profiles

Competition Overview

About Nitta Coffee

Nitta Coffee is a specialty coffee roaster founded in January 1940 in Honmachi, Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture. Today, led by third-generation owner Kazuo Nitta, the family works together to improve the quality of its coffee.

We roast coffee beans selected from around the world in our shop and sell them there. There is no seating in the shop, but you can enjoy our champions’ coffee to go. We also deliver coffee to customers across Japan through our online shop.

Nitta Coffee (English)
Instagram: @nitta_coffee
Online shop (Japanese)

Media Inquiries

Chikako Nitta and Kazuo Nitta are available for interviews. Interviews and photography at our shop in Honmachi, Tsuruga, as well as brewing demonstrations, can be arranged. Ibuki Nitta will be traveling overseas and is unlikely to be available.

This article is an English translation of our Japanese press release distributed via PR TIMES on October 24, 2026. If there is any difference between the two, the Japanese version takes precedence.
Original press release on PR TIMES (Japanese)