With four generations of experience, JJ Bean has been through almost every industry fad and extracted the essentials for crafting exceptional coffee. From sourcing and roasting all the way through to placing a cup on the counter for you, we seek to produce the most satisfying coffee possible – clean and sweet with expressive, perfectly harmonious flavours.
We specialize in roasting and serving consistently delicious coffee: blends with distinct profiles and a rotating selection of seasonal single origin coffees. Though we offer the occasional experimental process, we focus on classic, high altitude washed coffees with clear terroir (that means they taste like where they are from).
Our coffees are precision roasted on a vintage 90kg German Probat in East Vancouver to unlock the absolute essence that makes each one a treasure.
Our single origin coffees are light roasts, but not extremely light; we believe that sweetness, body, and balance are good things. Produced by a single farm or cooperative, each is picked at different times depending on the region and proximity to the equator. We select the finest of these at their peak of freshness.
Our flagship blends, JJ and Eastside, are full medium roasts; the result is reliability and versatility to make satisfying espresso or drip coffee. We adjust blend components seasonally and the exact farms and percentages are on every bag that leaves our roastery.
We also offer a true dark roast, Railtown, preserving the heritage of a storied West Coast tradition, and a chemical-free, Swiss Water Process Decaf. Railtown and Decaf get exactly the same care we put into selecting clean, high quality coffees for our espresso blends and single origin coffees.
Our Coffee Quality team cups hundreds of samples a year and we buy the best tasting coffee available regardless of certifications and we always pay above Fair Trade rates. We're not bound by certifications or rhetoric, but the enduring pursuit of the best tasting coffee – which allows us to pay producers the premium their effort deserves. Though we import some of our coffees, we don’t use direct trade terminology because we rely on our importing and exporting partners: we have given credit to these partners on our labels since 2015.
One of our longest standing relationships has been with Arturo Aguirre Senior & Junior, the father and son behind Finca El Injerto in Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
Under their leadership, El Injerto has become one of the most progressive and celebrated coffee farms in the world.
Ricardo Zelaya leads a century-long family legacy of cultivating coffee in the esteemed region of Antigua, Guatemala.
Proud stewards of multiple farms in the area, the Zelayas have dedicated themselves to meticulously preserving, refining, and enhancing Antigua's reputation as one of Guatemala's most cherished and renowned coffee regions.
Túlio and Lu Junquiera lead the fifth generation of the family’s coffee growing efforts at Carmo Estate in Brazil.
Combining tradition with innovation, Carmo Estate has become a sustainable farm dedicated to the production of specialty coffees. They are some of the most generous and wonderful people on the planet.
The coffee we enjoy would not exist without the hard work of producers who also happen to live in some of the poorest areas of the world. While we are committed to always paying excellent prices for exceptional coffee, we believe we can do more to make a positive difference in the coffee growing countries over and above our basic responsibilities: we do this through the Over + Above Foundation’s initiatives.
Putting the coffee in JJ Bean Coffee
In our cafes, our preferred brewing method is batch brewed drip coffee. It tastes really good, it’s extremely consistent, and it’s hot and ready for you when you walk in the door.
Our espresso bar program is focused on timeless drinks, like the cherished traditional cappuccino. Our baristas go through an extensive four-level training program. We extract our espresso to a house recipe and our L4 Baristas are empowered to adjust variables to extract the best flavour on a given day. We also developed a specific milk pouring technique that ensures your cappuccino doesn’t just look pretty but maintains a creamy, cohesive texture through your last sip.
At JJ, we love coffee and are devoted to our craft, but we believe that you should drink coffee you actually enjoy drinking. We will happily break from standards of “the best” to make you happy. It’s not about us; it’s about you.
Brewing coffee at home? Here's our guide to brewing with the old, faithful French Press.
When you taste coffee, what exactly are you tasting for?
At JJ Bean, we talk about tasting coffee by distinguishing between the structural and the aromatic components. Structure refers to the physical sensations that can be discerned in the mouth alone: body and acidity. Taste receptors on the tongue create the feeling of salinity, sweetness, sourness, bitterness, and umami. Aromatic components are olfactory sensations (smells) that integrate with structure, producing flavours. Tart is a taste. Floral is an aroma. Flavour is the overall impression that includes both taste and smell.
Tasting is all about figuring out what coffees you like. Ultimately you have to decide whether you enjoy a coffee or not!
Structural Components
Acidity is the perceived tartness of a coffee, not the actual pH (coffee is around 5, nerds!). A coffee without acidity is like an orange without acidity: it just ain’t right. Too much becomes sour, overwhelming other characteristics in the coffee, but everyone has different thresholds for pleasant liveliness. We describe acidity with words like bright, juicy, and tangy. If that sounds like your cup of coffee, gravitate towards lighter roasts from Kenya, Colombia, and high-altitude Central America.
Body is the perceived weight of the coffee in your mouth: full-bodied, thin, or somewhere in the middle? Body is difficult to determine when starting to taste coffee. Cream is heavy or full-bodied, while non-fat milk is thin or light-bodied. In general, lighter roast coffees are thinner in body, while darker roast coffees are heavier in body. But brewing methods also contribute to perceived body as well. French press, for example, will feel heavier while filtered drip absorbs more undissolved solids resulting in a lighter mouthfeel. Try medium-dark or dark roasts, and coffees from Brazil or Indonesia.
Finish is coffee jargon for “aftertaste.” How quickly did the coffee leave your tongue? If the flavour lingers on your palate long after the coffee is swallowed (or expectorated!), it’s called a long finish. If the flavour drifts off quickly, the finish is short. Some coffees have flavours that aren’t initially perceived but develop in the finish.
Aromatic Components
Aroma is how brewed coffee smells. Simple, right? Coffee contains more than 800 aromatic compounds. Enjoy yourself and don’t worry if you can’t smell that obscure subspecies of white peach. We think that finding the subtle aromatics enhances the pleasure of drinking coffee. Some primary aroma categories are fruity, floral, chocolate, sugar-browning, nutty, earthy, spicy, and herbal.
Flavour is the fusion of aromatic and structural elements in your mouth. Sweet, sour, salt, bitter, and body are tastes we detect with the tongue. Aside from these, everything else we taste in coffee is aromatic, or detected by the nose. The broad flavour categories often found in coffee include sugar browning (toasty, caramel, etc.), nuts, chocolate, fruit, floral, earthy, herbal, and smoky.
Taste coffee with us
Interested in some experiential coffee education?
The world of specialty coffee is complex and we host free weekly cuppings (coffee lingo for tastings) to make it more accessible.
Every Thursday at 1 pm at different JJ Bean locations around Metro Vancouver.