Visiting Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Tokyo Part 3 – Getting Coffee!

The following was featured on dennisamith.com:

My coverage of Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Meguro continues and this time we look at the center portion. Where you want to get your coffee.

May you want Clover Brewed (a full-immersion and vacuum filtration yields exquisite balance and body), Coffee Pressed (a classic method that retains the flavorful oils of the coffee for a rich, full-bodied cup), Siphon (a stunning visual display creates a smooth clean-tasting cup), Modbar Pour-Over (A precisely controlled pour-over system delivering a cleanly bright cup) and Chemex (a specialized variation of pour-over that produces a rich, clean and flavorful cup).

You’ll notice the silos on the first and third floor. According to Starbucks: We slowly infuse our Starbucks Reserve™ coffee in water to produce cold brew and other beverage innovations. The silos recall the look of our original Seattle Starbucks Reserve™ Roastery as well as traditional pot stills and chemistry sets, expressing a love of traditional craft and experimentation.

You will see quite a bit of pipes running above. According to Starbucks: The pipes running overhead evoke the sight and sound of a brass instrument, carrying freshly roasted coffee beans from the copper cask to the coffee silos. They provide a vital link–stretching throughout the building, carrying beans from the first floor to the third floor. Our coffee masters will transform these freshly roasted beans into your brewed coffee or espresso drinks.

The location is expected to roast more than 680,000kg (1.4 million pounds) of coffee per year for the Japanese public and that means 31 burlap bags of 60kg each that are packaged at the location each day.

Right behind the coffee bar is their 17m (55 foot) coffee cask made of copper where coffee beans are left to rest after they are roasted. The cask was built using the Japanese technique known as tsuchime (copper beating to create its texture and pattern) and this is where you will find hundreds of hand-crafted copper cherry blossoms.

According to Starbucks: We’re featuring two beautifully copper-clad roasters in this space. “N-500”, the large roaster located on the ground floor, and “P-25”, the smaller roaster located on the third floor. Each offers an opportunity to watch our roasters unlock coffee’s unique flavor nuances.

The whole process is quite interesting to watch as coffee beans are roasted, grounded and you can see the coffee flowing through the copper pipes to its intended coffee area in the first floor but you can also see more on other floors.

But it’s an amazing sight to see, as there are employees focused on the roasting, looking at temperatures and pretty not phased by the many onlookers who are curious about the coffee roasting technology. And as for the coffee, it’s absolutely delicious!

In tomorrow’s post, I will go into the merchandise store right next to this process area.

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