In Brooklyn, Lucienne Coffee is Serving Coffees Roasted in Japan

All images courtesy of Lucienne Coffee.

A new coffee company called Lucienne Coffee in Brooklyn, New York, is specializing in the brewing and sales of high-quality specialty coffees roasted in, and imported from, Japan. 

Selling whole beans direct to consumers, and crafting brews at various popups throughout New York City, the company is also offering coffees roasted in-house on an Aillio Bullet R1 roaster.

Many of the imported coffees, which currently come from Japanese roasters Glitch, Lilo Coffee Factory and Red Poison, pass through an internal certification scheme designed to confirm that tasting notes listed by the roasters are in line with what’s tasted in blind cuppings by Lucienne founder, roaster and coffee consultant Josh Batenhorst. 

Josh Batenhorst.

Batenhorst will also occasionally translate the tasting notes on foreign coffees for flavor references more familiar to United States consumers.

“Sometimes we may make minor alterations to tasting notes to be more specific or more general. For example, if one of our partners has ‘lemon’ and ‘iced tea’ as a listed note, we may change that to ‘Arnold Palmer’ to be more specific and relatable,” Batenhorst told DCN. “Conversely, if the roaster lists a specific note such as ‘kuromitsu’ — a Japanese black sugar syrup — we may choose to generalize or translate that note to simply say ‘black sugar’ or ‘black honey’ in order to more effectively communicate that note to American audiences. We only really do this in specific circumstances, or if a note is overly esoteric.”

Coffees from Japan are vacuum packaged and frozen at -28° Celsius by Lucienne exactly seven days after they’re roasted. The coffees are packaged in silver Lucienne-branded bags, with references to any partner roasters. 

“Those seven rest days are used for transit to us, tasting and experimenting with the coffees, working on packaging, and building their product pages,” Batenhorst said. “I freeze my own roasts in the same manner. I’m kind of operating Lucienne like an archive or wine cellar, with various vintages of coffees stored in stasis.”

Batenhorst’s passion for Japan’s multifaceted coffee culture extends beyond roasting to in-person service traditions. Living in Tokyo in the early 2010s while serving in the military, Batenhorst cherished his time inside the city’s vintage kissatens — quiet, old-school places for tea, coffee or breakfast.

“I’d spend most of my free time visiting kissa in all sorts of neighborhoods, drinking dark coffee and inhaling second-hand smoke,” said Batenhorst. “A few of these spots became third places for me. They were just so calming, felt so natural and lived-in, and felt very ‘real’ to me for some reason. The masters behind those sunken bars were so detail oriented but somehow managed to not come off as pretentious.”

Opening a brick-and-mortar “American kissaten” remains a longer-term conceptual goal.

“There’s not really anywhere in America that captures that same feeling,” said Batenhorst. “I realized that kissaten in Japan are a product of a very specific time and place and circumstance, all of which have nothing to do with us. We are in America after all. Hence, the idea of the ‘American kissaten,’ which I admit I still don’t know what it looks like.”

In the meantime, Batenhorst continues to work for the City of New York following almost 10 years in the field of military communications systems, while occasionally moonlighting on weekends as a barista at different New York shops. 

Lucienne is currently finalizing arrangements to carry coffees from a fourth Japanese roaster, while Batenhorst continues to host popups at least once per month. 

“These pop-ups are so important to us, because it’s the only face-to-face opportunity we have with customers most of the time, and so much of Lucienne is rooted in excellent hospitality,” said Batenhorst. “I love to make my customers feel special.”

Comments? Questions? News to share? Contact DCN’s editor’s here. 

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