As someone who spent years drinking mediocre coffee, thinking that was all there was. As I traveled I was introduced to a whole new world of coffee and what it could be. Cafes like in Motors Coffee in Paris, Tim Wendelboe in Oslo and many more early on in my specialty coffee journey reshaped the way I looked at coffee.
Now that I've been in the specialty coffee industry for several years, sourcing, roasting and serving coffee, the question is, how can you identify great coffee, what are key indicators of true specialty coffee?
At first glance, I look at how the coffee is named. Specialty coffee should offer traceability and transparency. Showing you as the customer who produced this coffee, I.e the farms or the producer themselves names.
Why is this important? This immediately lets you know this is not a blend of cheap coffees put together to make it palatable. Single origin/single producer offer the highest level of quality.
Additionally, because the roaster is more connected to the farm, either directly or through a specialty importer, it shows the roaster has a deep understanding of how this coffee was produced and processed. Roasters who care about that, care more about their product.
In addition to information about producer, looking for details about the coffee itself can give you insight into the quality of the coffee. Variety, altitude and region is all information that can help you to determine if this coffee meets your preferences and distinguish premium specialty roasters above average commodity coffee roasters that don’t care or even know these metrics. Please see our Guide to Reading Coffee Labels.
Next indicator is how the coffee is processed. If you’re unfamiliar with the different methods of how coffee is processed and how it drastically affects the flavors, look at our guide.
This information will help you determine if it meets your personal preferences, perhaps clean washed coffees, or funky and fruity naturals and anaerobically processed. In most cases, I look for roasters who are offering coffees with innovative and unique processing methods like anaerobic, thermal shock or yeast inoculation. Even if this doesn’t align with your personal preferences in flavor, this usually shows that a roaster is working with very premium coffees and you could trust their entire range of offerings.
Lastly looking at roast level a problem is presented. Roast level can be very subjective to the roaster. In many cases with non specialty producers, what they classify as a light roast would be considered by specialty enthusiasts as a dark roast.
Trial and error testing with different roasters may be needed, but if all the aforementioned information looks good, they are likely adhering to a specialty scale of roast level.
To review: The information given by the roaster can let you know what’s important to them. Highlighting the farmer, the method of processing, details of coffee varietal and processing methods. All of that information shows they source high quality coffee and they take that information into consideration when selecting and roasting the coffee.
This is what we do at Floreo Coffee as well as bring our customers on this journey and help people appreciate all the hard work that goes into making incredible coffees. Thank you for following along and supporting our journey.