Coffee hunter Kawashima: searching for the real coffee taste of enlightenment

Yoshihiro Kawashima:

Born in Shizuoka Prefecture in 1956. In 75, he went to El Salvador alone to learn coffee cultivation and selection techniques at the National Coffee Institute. After that, it became a hot topic in the coffee industry to participate in the development of coffee farms in Jamaica, Hawaii, Indonesia and other places, and to save endangered coffee varieties in Reunion. Mi Cafeto, a company founded in 2008, has the title of "coffee hunter". Provide Japan Airlines with on-board coffee, etc., dedicated to various activities that connect coffee producers and consumers.

Let's follow Ism's interview report and get close to his coffee life.

Open your eyes in the morning and have a drink. Go to the office, have a drink. Have another drink before the meeting. Now coffee has become an indispensable part of daily life. Kawashima is such a "coffee hunter" who is fascinated by coffee and always pursues the original taste of coffee.

Let's follow Kawashima to explore his coffee life and Mi Cafeto led by him.

"this is my coffee cellar. Always keep storage at 18 degrees Celsius. Once the room temperature changes, the security company will quickly come and adjust it. That's what I said about the contract I signed with them. Yoshihiro Kawashima took out a vacuum bag containing grains of ivory coffee beans with green luster. In [Mi Cafeto Yuan linen cloth shop], about 100 kinds of raw coffee beans are preserved and then baked according to the needs of guests.

"so far, have you ever had coffee affixed to the harvest year? In this warehouse are raw beans harvested from 2008 to 2014. The coffee cellar is built to keep raw beans as fresh as possible, so that people can taste the different flavors of each harvest year. In theory, coffee is like new rice, the coffee brewed with newly harvested beans is the most delicious, but the use of this coffee cellar can preserve the state of new beans as much as possible, maintaining a certain flavor and freshness. In this way, like red wine, people can taste different flavors in different harvest years, because even on the same farm, the flavor of raw beans may be different from year to year. "

In order to find the endangered species of coffee, he went deep into the dense forests of Madagascar and finally successfully found the species. The local guide called him "Coffee Hunter", so the flower name is still in use today, simply and directly conveying his passion for coffee. I learned from my own coffee expedition that even on the same farm, there may be a very special coffee tree that bears distinctive fruit, resulting in the development of brands such as [Gran Cru Cafe] and [Premier Cru Cafe], which has caused a lot of uproar in the coffee industry. And the foundation of all this comes only from his understanding of coffee: coffee is actually a kind of fruit.

"many people don't like the miscellaneous, bitter and sour taste of coffee left on their tongues. In fact, the sour taste they are talking about is not entirely the sour taste of the coffee itself, but the acidified coffee beans after roasting. This is because if you don't drink the coffee after brewing it, it will naturally acidify. Miscellaneous and bitter tastes are due to the use of immature fruits. Coffee is actually a fruit. If the fully ripe fruit is not picked and strictly screened, it will produce a bad taste.

He kept reminding everyone that we must know more about the place of origin. And he himself carried it out with this sense of mission.

"the purpose of tasting coffee is to enjoy the sweetness and sour taste of fruit. I often tell you, let you drink my coffee, people will be surprised by this taste experience, so more and more people like coffee. This is my mission. I hope more and more people can realize the original taste of coffee. To this end, I hope that from 100 yen of coffee to thousands of yen of coffee, can be delicious. Once such a consumer market is formed, a good and sustainable relationship can be maintained between consumers and producers. Just like red wine, we usually drink ordinary red wine with dinner, but on special days, we open high-grade red wine to celebrate, hoping that coffee can also form a culture like red wine. My goal is to start such a revolution in coffee culture. " (laughter)

Currently, the origin / regions contracted with Mi Cafeto include Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Colombia, Peru, Jamaica, Tanzania and Hawaii. Mr. Kawashima, who spent 133 days overseas last year, has always had a sense of crisis about the unfamiliarity of the Japanese coffee industry with its origin.

In Japan, if you go to a coffee shop that runs boutique coffee, although you can know the origin of the coffee beans or the farm, the problem is that not all the coffee beans produced by this farm are delicious. There are good and bad coffee among them. Because coffee is a crop after all, even if it is planted on the same farm, it will affect the growth of coffee trees due to changes in sunshine, wind direction, rainfall, soil and so on.

The coffee beans grown on the good farms he visited will also be divided into primary and secondary. To make more people aware of the problem, Mr. Kawashima specifically developed his own brands [Gran Cru Caf é] and [Premier Cru Caf é]. This kind of naming is the same as the red wine produced by Burgundy with the label of super field and first class field on the wine label.

Grand Cru Caf é

Premier Cru Caf é

"Gran Cru Caf é accounts for about 0.3 per cent of the coffee sold in the store, while Premier Cru Caf é accounts for about 2 per cent of the total, because the production of really good coffee must be very small."

Good coffee beans must have good coffee? Of course, it is not that simple, in addition to planting, there are more important aspects of treatment, these processes are thoroughly managed in order to produce a cup of coffee with the best drink.

"in terms of coffee quality, the farmland is of course very important, but this is not a decisive factor, the key lies in the degree of pretreatment. Sometimes, beans from a very good manor may brew an ordinary cup of coffee. The so-called pretreatment is the process of picking out defective beans after the harvest and drying process. "

"when selecting coffee beans, they are first classified according to size, weight and density, and then classified according to color. Defective beans need to be picked out one by one. Some coffee beans are empty, some have been bitten by insects, or cracked beans, with a variety of defects. The coffee beans I developed for Gran Cru Cafe have a limited harvest time, because the fruits picked in the first and last stages of the harvest period are not so delicious, and only the coffee beans picked in the middle of the harvest season will produce the best coffee because of their high density. Of course, this is not limited to Gran Cru Caf é, all the beans I buy are like this. "

Although it is produced from the same crop as red wine, coffee is different from red wine.

"the main reason is that the consumption system is different. Generally speaking, producers themselves are consumers of red wine, and they know how to evaluate and sell red wine like the back of their hand. Coffee, on the other hand, is mostly grown and produced in developing countries and consumed in developed countries. These coffee growers don't necessarily drink their own coffee, and some don't even know how to drink it. This is a big problem. "

"those growers from the place of origin, I call them partners, and every time I go to the place of origin, I will bottle the coffee beans they grow and bring them as handletters, and then brew the coffee for them on the spot. Because if you don't know how delicious coffee is, how can you grow good coffee beans? The coffee beans suitable for Grand Cru Caf é are grown by scattered small farmers I found in Colombia. Until then, they did not know what their coffee was. When they drank the coffee brewed from their own coffee beans, they shed tears of gratitude and said they did not expect their coffee beans to be so delicious. It is precisely because I have established such a strong friendship with them that when the result of the pretreatment is not ideal, I will say very willfully, "I can't do it again." In this way, the coffee born under the strong trust relationship with the growers was shipped to Japan.

"this is a pretreatment process. The process by which the pulp of a coffee fruit is removed and washed and then dried. If you remove the shell, you will get raw coffee beans. On the other hand, the larger black beans retain the original red pulp through the sun, so that the coffee fruit brewed out is more mellow. Sun treatment is mainstream in Brazil, while water washing is dominant in other Central and South American regions where Arabica beans are grown. Washing treatment has been popular in the British colonies of the Caribbean since the mid-19th century.

Although this knowledge is common sense to Mr. Kawashima, we sincerely admire his knowledge. When he talked about all kinds of coffee, he was showing us his love for coffee. Not only the coffee grown in the producing area is carefully selected, but also the mode of transportation is also pursued to the extreme and strictly managed.

"Coffee beans are usually transported in sacks, but linen is not the most suitable material. Because the air will flow freely, and the coffee beans rich in oil will oxidize and stink. So what I do is add a special bag to the sack. In addition, the usual container is the dry container of the cargo ship, without any temperature management, the temperature in the container will reach about 60 degrees Celsius, which has a certain impact on the quality of coffee beans. Among the coffee beans I deal in, Gran Cru Cafe is all airlifted to avoid this problem. Other coffee beans also use refrigerated containers. From the farm out to my hands in Japan, it remained at 16 degrees Celsius. "

The poor quality of coffee beans caused by the use of dry container transportation, even the best coffee beans can not recover such flavor loss. Although many people in the coffee industry in Japan pursue coffee roasting to the extreme, they have no objection to these damaged coffee beans, so coffee makers must know more about the origin and so on. "

"I'm not belittling the importance of roasting. Baking is also a very important part of good coffee. But I think raw materials are more important. My family used to run our own roasted coffee beans, so when I was in Japan, I thought baking was everything. But when I actually went to the farm, I found it was quite different from what I had imagined. You will gain more from going to the scene to experience it. "

"after becoming a coffee maker, during the days of living in the producing area, I often think about how to deliver such delicious coffee to Japan without loss. As I just said, growers in the producing area have no idea what kind of coffee their beans will turn into, but only think about the planting of coffee trees, so they will never think of such things as transporting them in refrigerated containers. "

Carefully planted and transported Mr. Kawashima's coffee, after all kinds of strict management, the delicacy seems to have been sublimated, and it may be difficult to find it elsewhere, so Mi Cafeto has a lot of fans.

Born in Shizuoka Prefecture in 1956. In 75, he went to El Salvador alone to learn coffee cultivation and selection techniques at the National Coffee Institute. After that, it became a hot topic in the coffee industry to participate in the development of coffee farms in Jamaica, Hawaii, Indonesia and other places, and to save endangered coffee varieties in Reunion. Mi Cafeto, a company founded in 2008, has the title of "coffee hunter". Provide Japan Airlines with on-board coffee, etc., dedicated to various activities that connect coffee producers and consumers.

In the Mi Cafeto brand series, the most advanced is [Gran Cru Caf é], followed by [Premier Cru Caf é], followed by the [coffee hunter (coffee hunters)] series. For example, from Saint of Guatemala? When Sebastian Manor carefully selects coffee beans suitable for a certain brand for sale, the Gran Cru Caf é and Premier Cru Caf é brands will be sold in champagne bottles, which may seem strange to you, but you will understand why after listening to Mr. Kawashima's explanation.

"this is not to pursue beautiful and novel packaging, but purely to maintain the quality of coffee beans. After roasting, coffee beans produce carbon dioxide. The general practice is to release all the carbon dioxide and store it in an ordinary bag. In order to prevent the bag from breaking, a small hole was opened to release carbon dioxide. In this way, transportation, packaging and so on are relatively convenient, and people in the industry basically adopt such a way to preserve it according to their own situation. "

"however, if coffee beans co-exist without carbon dioxide, their aroma and freshness will be lost. I thought of a lot of ways to retain carbon dioxide. Finally, considering that the champagne bottle can resist the pressure produced by carbon dioxide, I used the champagne bottle. The Coffee Hunter series uses a pressure-resistant bottle. "

As he said this, Mr. Kawashima took a bottle of treasure for display, which contained ground coffee powder, shook it upside down and then put it back.

"look, the volume of coffee powder has increased, right? This is because carbon dioxide has been produced in the bottle, and after being turned upside down, the carbon dioxide enters the coffee powder. After being placed for a period of time, the gas will return to the space above the coffee powder. "

For Kawashima, it is best to buy his favorite coffee beans and brew them in his own home, but in order to make it easy for everyone to enjoy a good cup of coffee, he has also designed a variety of different products. Among them are ground coffee powder, and in order to enable customers to taste different flavor trial sets [Sampler Set], he put 20g of coffee beans from each of the three estates of the [Gran Cru Cafe] brand into sealed vials, so that customers can avoid weighing beans when brewing, making it easier. There is also a coffee bag [Caf é Puente] that can be tasted by injecting hot water directly, all of which are just to make more people like delicious coffee.

Sampler Set

Caf é Puente

Mi Cafeto Yuan linen cloth shop

-- reproduced from Douban > ING's diary