The Next Draft

Springdale cans a bean-to-beer epic

MATTHEW TOTA

Joe Connolly had never treated coffee with so much reverence.

The director of Springdale

Beer Co. in Framingham, Connolly recently used 70 pounds of beans imported from Burundi, one of the world’s poorest nations, for his latest iteration of the creamy mocha stout BRIG.

In the history of brewing BRIG, Springdale has probably gone through thousands of pounds of roasted coffee beans. But these Burundi beans were different. These beans had a story to tell.

The narrator of the beans-to-beer epic was Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian, founder of JNP Coffee in Shrewsbury, a producer, exporter and importer of green coffee from Burundi, a landlocked East African country about the size of Maryland.

Born in Burundi, NiyonzimaAroian would explain how long the supply chain that got the beans to Framingham was and how hard the people at the start of it had worked.

The coffee began as cherries, clinging to the branches of a tree somewhere in Burundi. Farmers, mostly women, picked and harvested the beans, which Niyonzima-Aroian then had shipped out of a port in Tanzania for sale to a roaster in Brooklyn.

Coffee farming hardly makes the women wealthy, barely providing enough money to support their families and villages. But NiyonzimaAroian’s mission at JNP Coffee is to offer a trustworthy, caring, consistent outlet for them to monetize their seemingly endless labor.

She always has her mother, once one of those farmers, in mind.

“I see this as an opportunity to empower these farmers, especially the women,” she said. “My mom has been such a great role model in my life. And I know if you empower one woman, especially in a place like Burundi, you are empowering a whole village.”

Springdale’s Burundi BRIG, released last month, but still available in cans and on draft, came about after the brewery went looking for a different perspective.

“The summer has been an awakening for a lot of people,” Connolly said. “We started having serious conversations about who we were as a team, and what diversity, equality and inclusion means to us. We found that we could do more than post about it. We could find a Black-owned business to work with.”

Springdale was not the first brewery to call Niyonzima-Aroian looking for beans and a partnership in the name of social justice. Over the summer, she sourced Burundi beans for Casa Agria Specialty Ales in California, which used the coffee for its version of the “Black is Beautiful” imperial stout. Black is Beautiful beers raise money for organizations supporting inclusion, equality, police reform and legal representation for those who have been wronged. Casa Agria donated the proceeds from its stout to the ACLU Legal Defense Fund.

Niyonzima-Aroian’s knowledge of beer pales in comparison to what she knows about coffee. She is a licensed Q Grader — essentially the coffee equivalent of a sommelier — and has spent around a decade learning about the supply chains and politics that control how coffee moves from Burundi to roasters around the world.

“I knew coffee growing up,” she said. “As a matter of fact, my mother and my grandfather grew coffee. My family members were able to go to school because of the money they got out of coffee. I would see the cherries on the tree, and would be told, ‘Don’t touch this, it’s precious.’”

She started JNP Coffee in 2012. At the time she had already been aiding her homeland through Burundi Friends International, a nonprofit she founded five years earlier. With coffee, she saw an opportunity to use her business savvy to represent some of the hardest working people in her country: the farmers.

“They don’t have any way to represent themselves in the marketplace. There are so many barriers of entry,” Niyonzima-Aroian said. “Prior to 2015, Burundi coffee was actually traded as a commodity. They would take it in Tanzania and trade it as a commodity product. A company like Folgers would buy it to use it to bring aroma to their coffee.”

JNP Coffee sells Burundi coffee to roasters of all sizes, paying her farmers — a network of more than 2,000 and Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian helped Springdale Beer Co. source cofgrowing — a premium fee beans from her homeland, Burundi. Niyonzima-Aroian owns for their beans. She helps the women in JNP Coffee in Shrewsbury, which imports and exports green coffee other ways, too, includfrom Burundi. ing funding education SPRINGDALE BEER CO. initiatives for financial literacy. proud about the people we get to For the people enjoying Burundi

“The story of this beer is re- work with and step into someone BRIG here, she said, it’s a chance for ally how Jeanine helped build an else’s perspective.” them to learn about a different part infrastructure that allowed these For the first time last week, Ni- of the world. women-owned businesses in one of yonzima-Aroian tasted the Burundi “My hope is they can discover the poorest countries in the world BRIG, which she described as sweet, Burundi, that they can learn more to compete in a global market,” Con- but still well balanced. “The acidity of about the beautiful crop that can nolly said. the coffee makes it bright and light, come from this poor country,” she

The collaboration with JNP Coffee which you would not expect in a said. “They are indirectly empowerwas about trading knowledge and stout,” she said. ing the farmers of Burundi.” perspectives, not money and beans, She has already sent a picture To learn more about Jeanine he said. of the can to her family back in Niyonzima-Aroian and JNP Coffee,

“We’ve learned from each other,” Burundi. Burundians love their beer, visit www.jnpcoffee.com. To find out he said, adding, “We will use what- she said, but they likely have never more about Burundi and how you can ever tools we have to be loud and seen anything like Burundi BRIG. help, go to bufri.org.