What Is “Specialty Coffee”?

Coffee is the second biggest traded commodity in the world, only second to the other black stuff oil. Coffee is traded on the stock exchange and has a “C” price, this c price is what sets the baseline for commodity coffee.

The biggest risk to coffee is farmers not being able to afford to be farmers or to employ people to help on the farms. Coffee farming is very labour intensive with over 90% of all coffee being hand picked and hand sorted as well as having to be transported out of hard to get to area’s to be processed and sold.

Speciality coffee is even more labour intensive, as to gain the title of speciality the coffee not only has to taste amazing but it has to be free from defects and to make both of these happen the best cherry’s have to be hand picked at the right time and then once processed, sized and dried, they are hand picked of visual defects. Speciality coffee does not follow the C price but relies on honest people recognising the quality of the coffee and the effort that has gone into ensuring that quality and then paying for that to make sure that those farms and farmers can carry on producing some of the best coffee in the world.

The SCAA defines specialty coffee in its green stage as coffee that is free of primary defects, has no quakers, is properly sized and dried, presents in the cup free of faults and taints and has distinctive attributes. In practical terms this means that the coffee must be able to pass aspect grading and cupping tests.

First, the role of those in the value chain after the farmer. Do they merely preserve the inherent quality of the coffee, or is their job to enhance or improve on that quality? Increasingly, I think that at every step we are responsible for one or more of the following: the preservation, transformation, or revelation of quality. Thus, roasters may be responsible not only for the preservation of the quality delivered by the farmer, miller and exporter, but they also need to meet their obligation for transforming the quality potential of the green bean to the realization of the roasted version. Similarly, the barista is responsible not only for the preservation of all the quality attributes of the roasted coffee but also for the revelation of those attributes to the consumer. This is not only through the transformation to a beverage in the brewing process, but in the total experience of drinking that beverage in the café environment.

Second, we are faced with the need to assess the sustainability of specialty coffee. That is, even if a coffee results in a great tasting beverage, if it does so at the cost of the dignity, value or well-being of the people and land involved, it cannot truly be a specialty coffee. This concept more than any other may be most fundamental to our assessment of what makes a coffee special, but is perhaps the most challenging to assess empirically. Nonetheless, we must continue to strive not only to understand but to measure all that makes a coffee special.

Published by the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) – June 2009

Speciality coffee is graded and scored by the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) through a network of qualified Q graders. Because of the attention and care that they require, speciality coffees are sold at a premium and bought by roasters or coffee traders directly.

How is it scored?

Green coffee is graded on the basis of visual inspection and cupping after being roasted. Visual inspection involves taking a 350g sample of green coffee beans and counting defective beans; defects can be Primary (e.g. black beans, sour beans) or Secondary (e.g. broken beans). Coffee qualifies as ‘speciality’ when it has zero Primary defects and less than five Secondary defects. Cupping is a process that involves roasting the coffee and simply brewing it by adding hot water to the ground beans; specific scores for each of the attributes such as the coffee’s sweetness, lack of defects, acidity, balance, mouthfeel, and flavour are assigned by certified Q graders.

Scoring is out of 100

65-79 – Commodity coffee that will usually be sold in supermarkets and as instant coffee.

80+ – Speciality coffee that is deemed to be ‘Very Good’ & ‘Excellent’. These coffees have a more balanced flavour through the cup.

90+ – Speciality coffee that is deemed ‘Outstanding’. Coffee this good is exceptionally rare and commands a high price. Less than 1% of coffee produced in the world falls within this range.

Pricing

Pricing of coffee can be very controversial as it can be seen as a very basic correlation between C price and cup score, but this doesn’t take into consideration effort from farmers, producers, importers etc. It can also be based on relationships between farmer/producer/importer and the coffee roaster, with a roaster choosing to support those people by potentially paying a higher price than the “traditional market” would or by continuing to buy coffee from those people year on year to ensure they are able to sell their produce and have some stability. 

Pricing then gets more complicated when taking into account the rise in “experimental” and “funky” processed specialty coffees. Some of the more developed coffee regions are able to produce some very different and unique coffees which are demanding a high price currently, this could then lead to other coffees being overlooked or price squashed. It can also lead to other farmers and producers “having a go” or being talked into trying to produce these kinds of coffees, which is very high risk for them as if they go wrong then it is a lost crop with no or very little money, or the volume may be very small so not desirable for importers or roasters so potentially demanding a low price compared to the effort and equipment that goes into there production.

Then there is the perception of coffee from the general consumer, this goes across all coffee grades not just specialty. Consumers looking at the price of coffee either for home use or when buying a cup of coffee from a cafe and asking “why should I pay that price?” With the never ending quest to deliver “value” to customers or not wanting to the the most expensive in the area, challenge the status quo or to be able to make a profit themselves can lead to business pushing for “cheaper” coffee be that lower grade, old crops etc, this can lead to caping the market and potentially losses to the farmers and ultimately loss of farmers, a decrease in the amount of coffee being produced, which will lead to higher demand and thus a higher price! 

Thus there is no easy answer to pricing!