Kyoto’s alt.coffee roasters goes fully vegan with organic oat milk

Specialty coffee store alt.coffee roasters has become totally vegan – from its desserts to its cafe lattes – by switching from cow’s milk to oat milk. The organic milk is made especially for baristas. It brings out the flavor of coffee, and has a lower environmental impact than other types of milk.

Located in Kyoto City, alt.coffee roasters has served vegan desserts and dishes made from natural, domestically grown ingredients since it opened in 2019. And from July, it has gone completely vegan by using oat milk in its coffee drinks.

Chihiro Nakamura started the cafe as a way to contribute to society and the environment. As a trained nutritionist, the more she learned from new research about the effects of dairy products on the human body, the more uncomfortable she became about using cow’s milk. That has been a key force behind her decision to change to oat milk.

World’s first organic oat milk for coffee

Oat milk has become popular overseas as an alternative to cow’s milk in coffee drinks because it can achieve a creamy foam and doesn’t separate in hot drinks like some other dairy alternatives do. Whereas soymilk and almond milk have a distinctive smell that can interfere with the aroma of the coffee, oat milk doesn’t.

Alt.coffee uses the world’s first organic barista-use oat milk, made by Minor Figures, coffee professionals with stores in Melbourne, Australia, and the U.K.

Gentler on the environment

Oat milk is gentler on the environment than cow’s milk or almond milk because producing oats requires less than one-eighth of the water needed to farm cows or almonds. Oat milk has the same level of calcium as dairy products, but only about one-third of the calories. It’s also suitable for people with dairy or soybean allergies.

Before shifting from dairy to oat milk, alt.coffee first offered it as an option. Customers who tried it during that period took a liking to it. Some said they hadn’t noticed any difference and others said its smell was less intrusive than that of cow’s milk, which allowed them to better savor the characteristics of the coffee.

Alt.coffee has always been conscious of environmental concerns and the welfare of producers and has reduced its use of plastic, developed ecological products and uses sustainable coffee beans.

“Recycled” coffee

It introduced a new, environmentally friendly way to drink coffee with its Second Brew Coffee—a kind of recycled coffee. The same ground coffee is used twice, creating two different beverages that allow drinkers to experience the delicate sweetness and aroma of the coffee. For this, alt.coffee applies its specialist techniques to perform an extremely light roasting that removes bitterness to create a clean-tasting drip coffee with a lightness of flavor that is similar to black tea.

Alt.coffee is selling Second Brew beans for customers to make themselves at home and recommends sharing it even with non-coffee lovers.

Demonstrating conviction

Nakamura says that although in many western countries avoiding animal-based foods due to health, environmental and animal-rights concerns is becoming mainstream, those trends as still nascent in Japan. Despite that, after receiving a recent crowdfunding injection, she decided to do it in line with her own conscience. With her goal to improve society, she made the change to oat milk.

True leaders are rare, but people who become them are those like Nakamura, who are committed to their ideals and have done the research to support them. As alt.coffee’s crowdfunding showed, people will follow those who show conviction.