For the past few years, Laughing Bean Coffee has grown and harvested coffee berries from a plant that grows in the corner of the shop. This week, the berries were roasted and the staff finally got a taste of the ultra-local brew. “It’s the best coffee I’ve ever had,” said Wayne Bertrand, co-owner of Laughing Bean. The coffee was roasted at JJ Bean, supplier and business partner of Laughing Bean. Staff gathered at the JJ Bean cafe at Main Street and 14th Avenue on Wednesday for the tasting, with samplers saying the flavor profile contained hints of cinnamon, popcorn and wood. “We’ve never tried coffee grown in Canada before. It’s unique to us,” said Grady Buhler, coffee quality leader at JJ Bean. “It’s not a specialty coffee by any means, but it doesn’t have blemishes or blemishes,” Buhler said. One of the rare cups of hyperlocal coffee, pictured in the recent staff tasting at JJ Bean. The beans came from a coffee plant grown at Laughing Bean Coffee. (Gian Paolo Mendoza/CBC) Coffee is not commonly grown in Canada as the plants require constant heat. But Bertrand says he was able to grow the coffee by meticulously tending to the plant and drying the berries as he picked each batch.
New life for a neglected plant
The plant was given to the cafe on East Hastings Street by a customer when it first opened 19 years ago. “For several years it sat there in the corner with me not taking care of it, looking kind of sick,” Bertrand said. In 2015, Bertrand decided it was time to start caring for the plant. He repotted it, gave it better soil and started watering and pruning it regularly. Unripe coffee cherries on the plant at Laughing Bean Coffee. They will turn red in a few months and be ready to harvest. (Gian Paolo Mendoza/CBC) “Boy, I loved that. It just took off,” Bertrand said. In 2018, Bertrand left for the winter for a temporary job at Big White Ski Resort. When he returned in the spring, he was shocked to find the plant had “an explosion of beautiful white flowers.” He didn’t think it was possible for a coffee plant to flourish in Canada. After a few months, the flowers grew into coffee berries, known as cherries. Once they were ripe and reddened, they were ready to harvest. “Skipsa [the beans] out of the cherries, put them on a plate and let them dry,” said Bertrand. A jar of beans. (Gian Paolo Mendoza/CBC) It took two crops over two years to get a pound of beans, with the harvest yielding about eight cups of coffee and a jar of leftover beans for future batches. This means that growing coffee will not be a commercial activity for Laughing Bean. But Bertrand says he wants to continue harvesting and try different processes.
