Cristiane Yuki Minami, Founder of Aequitas Coffee
Oh Fudge, Yuki! by Kohi Micro-torréfacteur in Issue #9 of our Classic & Approachable Pack was produced by Cristiane Yuki Minami, founder of Aequitas Coffee.
Meet Cristiane Yuki Minami
Minami’s family has been in coffee production for four generations since they arrived from Japan to Brazil at the end of the 1920s. They have been working in the region of Sao Gottardo, Cerrado Mineiro since 1975.
In August 2015, a specialty coffee roaster and Q-grader cupped Minami’s coffee and awarded it an 86, classifying it as a specialty coffee. He then asked to buy the coffee, throwing Minami into unknown territory. Not knowing the market or how to price coffee, she was later told that she could have charged him double what she did. This experience was the catalyst behind Aequitas.
What is Aequitas Coffee?
In 2017 Minami founded Aequitas, a coffee export company that focuses on connecting producers from Sao Gottardo to the specialty coffee market. It strives to educate farmers on the coffee pricing market and help them ensure they get a fair price for their crop. Their goal is to foster equitable and transparent relationships. They do this by building connections between producers and the specialty coffee market, focusing on roasters and importers.
Daniel Moranville, the owner of Kohi Microtorrefacteur is one of the many roasters that now work with Minami.
“Yuki is a young female coffee producer that is really determined to get better conditions for coffee farmers in her country. She founded Aequitas Coffee a few years ago in order to facilitate the relationships between the roasters and the farmers, which is exactly what we are looking for in our business. We’ve had the chance to talk with Yuki and she really cares about the quality of the products she exports, but even more about the humans behind them. It is really inspiring for us,” explained Moranville.
Oh Fudge, Yuki!
“The fact that this coffee can show a great big body with a medium roast is impressive. No need to go to high temperatures in order to get it to withstand a large pitcher of foamy milk. It is sweet and strong at the same time,” shared Moranville.
“We bought a quarter bag of this lot in 2020 for a special project. We totally fell in love with the fact that this coffee was classic yet complex at the same time,” explained Moranville on the small lot that gave them a taste of the quality of Aequitas.
“We have been following Yuki’s work for a long time and we jumped on the occasion to book this lot when it became available with one of our importing partners,” Moranville furthered.
Moranville loves brewing this Brazilian Natural up on a V60. “This coffee is great in V60 if you are looking for a cup that will be comforting and rich. Even though it is a natural process, it won’t show a lot of fruit, and that is totally fine!”