What is Specialty Coffee?

What is Specialty Coffee?

Specialty Grade Coffee Vs. Commercial Grade Coffee

The journey of a coffee bean from a plant to your cup is long and complicated. Coffee beans go through a number of stages from growing, picking, and processing all the way up to brewing. All these steps play vital roles in determining the quality and flavor of a bag of coffee.  

Commercial (or commodity coffee) is produced without real consideration other than the fact it is coffee. Compared to specialty coffee, it is of significantly lower quality and only holds value in the inexpensive cost to acquire and process quickly in large batches.  The origins of these coffees are not considered important. It’s nothing more than a generic product with an efficient but generally bitter tasting way to get caffeine into the bloodstream.

Specialty Coffee is coffee produced with the highest quality and flavors in mind.  Coffee beans which are good enough to carry the moniker “specialty” come from specific countries or regions, present distinct flavors, and meet certain standards set by the coffee industry. Within the coffee industry, there is a 100-point scoring system which certified graders use to evaluate a coffee. When a coffee receives more than 80 points on the scale, it’s considered a specialty coffee. Specialty coffee can range from coffee shop chains to small coffee roasters seeking out exceptional coffee beans and continuously create systems and processes to produce the best flavors.  These coffee beans are not traded on the commodities market and are purchased directly from farms or cooperatives. This enables traceability of the product and incentivizes the production of higher quality coffee.

Specialty coffee is distinct in the fact a consumer can trace the bean from a particular farm or region through the cycles of processing and roasting. Great care is taken to ensure specialty coffee is free from defects. Roasting profiles are designed and tested to ensure the best flavors are extracted from a particular coffee and these profiles vary from one coffee bean to the next.

At Robusta Move we aim to provide our customers with high-grade, roast-to-order specialty coffee. Roast-to-order operations ensure freshly roasted beans always arrive to the customer. All of our single origin coffees can be traced back to the regions they originated from and have roast profiles designed to maximize the aromas and flavors of the particular beans. If you’re ready to start your personal coffee journey with Robusta Move, stay tuned for our future newsletter on how to brew better coffee at home!