Beans Newsletter

Hello, everyone. We are the Shimizu sisters of Beans Kitami.

We are a small coffee roastery founded in 1988. Ever since, we’ve been roasting coffee on demand in a way that’s tailored to customers’ various preferences, using an original roaster developed by ourselves in Japan. The Beans small roaster excels at bringing out coffee beans’ unique character. Small-batch, direct-fire roasting gives coffee a powerful aroma and lasting umami. We hope that you enjoy coffees full of unique characteristics roasted by a staff of coffee lovers.

Beans publishes a newsletter every month. This time, we are delivering the first extra edition in a while!

That’s because TYPICA, a company we’ve featured now and then in this newsletter, has made a tempting offer to the Shimizu sisters: a chance to visit the coffee producing country of Ethiopia!

Before we set off on the trip, we’ll be writing our strong love for Ethiopia in this extra edition.

At Beans, we regularly sell 6 to 7 Ethiopian coffees. We only buy beans that are a good match for our small roaster.

But we can’t know if a coffee is a good match immediately after roasting. We’ll know whether a coffee is suited to our roaster only after cupping it right out of the roaster and examining the change of tastes over days.

Sometimes, we test-roast a coffee dozens of times, tinker with roasting profiles little by little and cup it to create tastes. Only the beans that clear all these hurdles will make it onto our lineup.

Ethiopian beans, in particular, are full of uniqueness. It’s not very often that we come across ones that pass the rigorous test. What is our impression of Ethiopian coffee? You may ask. We weren’t necessarily good at writing summer-break book reviews as a student.

But we’ll give it a go!

A majority of our Ethiopian coffees come from the southern region (Hambela, Yirgacheffe), east of the Great Rift Valley. The reason for the focus on this region is because its coffees have good aromas, flavors, aftertaste and character.

And above all, consistent quality is the key decider.

By the way, you want to know what we think is the key that determines quality?

We’ll let you readers in on the secret.

Point1

Ability to discern ripe cherries

Unlike in other countries, large-scale farms managing cherries in one place are in the minority in Ethiopia. A vast majority are small-scale farmers growing coffee trees in their gardens in traditional, natural farming methods. (Garden coffee)

There isn’t much of a difference between native trees. The key to the flavors unique to Ethiopia is the ability to pick only ripe coffee cherries.

Picked cherries go bad in one day. So unripe cherries will not be picked.

This region we are buying from is home to many farmers who have consistent abilities to pick only ripe cherries.

For more details, please refer to Newsletter Backnumber Issue 172!

Point2

Technical prowess of processing stations

The amount of coffee one small farmer harvests is extremely small.

So it’s hard to commercialize it. That’s why there is a system below.

Picked cherries are brought to a collection spot called a primary market → Cherries collected here, separated by the farm, are moved to a processing station where cherries are processed → Cherries are selected and processed at a processing station.

The ability to select cherries is the biggest factor determining the quality.

We buy coffee with these two points in mind. There is something the Shimizu sisters have always been wondering about. That is, what kind of life farmers who grow delicious coffee are living? When we look up their location using information we have, the result sometimes points us to a completely different place, or often, no search result comes up. There are times when we don’t know their exact location on the map.

This is because many regions in Ethiopia don’t have an accurate government registry of addresses, unlike in Japan. During the upcoming trip to Ethiopia, we will explore both soft and hard aspects that are not available even with the power of the internet. We want to explore the lives of coffee farmers and their passion for coffee, and share our experience with you with our own words.

We still have a long way to go. But why don’t you come along with us on a exciting trip to find delicious coffee? Stay tuned for more newsletters to come!