Beans Tei

Walking along Takakura street, a green sun-shade catches your eyes together with beautiful aroma stimulate your olfactory sensation.  Beans Tei is KIOSK type coffee roaster at Shijyo, Kyoto.  Located near Nishiki-Ichiba, a traditional and historical marketplace in Kyoto, some may expect "Tradition" and "History" behind this roaster.  According to one of shop staff, this roaster has founded in 1990's, 1994 from their HP, which is considered relatively new in both this historical city and Japanese Cafe history.   Although this roaster is pretty new, it's merged into atmosphere of Nishiki, sitting there silently.  Beans Tei @  Shijyo is very small and hidden, cozy and friendly.  This Kiosk offers a Cup of coffee, so it will be fun to grab a cup here to explore the town.  

As other 90's coffee roasters, Beans Tei  also follows "trend" of 3rd wavers; Specialty, single origin.  There are some micro farmers as well as COE, cup of excellence.  Roasting technique and degrees closely resemble to Seattle style, but has a tip of a traditional Japanese light roasting and flavor sensitive "Blending" techniques.  Understanding roasting machine capabilities, their roasting technique is high.  Also, their flavor, their blending technique, is good enough considering the price.  The price range at Beans Tei is around JPY 450 to around 550 per 100g, quite reasonable price setting for both Specialty coffee beans and Shijyo, the down town Kyoto.    

My recommendation for first timers is Special Blend, reasonable and flavorful coffee best for paper brew.