Special coffee, also called “Speciality Coffee,” is a category in the world of coffee that means it is a carefully chosen coffee of the highest quality. These coffees have been grown and processed so that you can enjoy the best tastes and drinks. “Attention to detail” and “dedication from seed to cup” are the best ways to describe speciality coffee.
As in the world of wine, everyone cares that you get the best glass, from the vineyard to the waiter. From the farmer to the barista, everyone in the coffee world has worked hard to ensure you get the best cup of coffee.
If you have never had speciality coffee before, you should try it. You won’t be sorry.
How to determine that coffee “is special”?
After the ripe fruits of the coffee plant have been picked and processed, they must be tested to find out how good the drink is. Speciality coffees have “high cup quality,” which means they have delicious flavours that show how hard the people who make them worked to grow the best coffee beans.
Do you know what coffee tasters are? Like famous wine sommeliers, coffee tasters use their senses to figure out how good a cup of coffee is. To be considered a speciality coffee, it must get more than 80 points in a cupping session run by trained cuppers.
What does a special coffee taste like?
Speciality coffee has more fruity flavours, a stronger but still pleasant acidity, and a good balance of sweet and bitter that stays on your tongue for a long time. Speciality coffees have more complex flavours that you can try to figure out if you stop to do so.
When you try a cup of speciality coffee, you’ll notice a big difference; the flavour will be rich and more intense than commercial coffee.
The speciality coffee could cost more and might only be available as roasted coffee beans. If you are a coffee lover and want to enjoy speciality coffee, you may have to invest in the Best Automatic Espresso Machine for home use. By getting a coffee machine, you can experience the richness and flavours of a special coffee anytime at home, brewed with the preciseness of an expert barista.
Differences between commercial coffee & speciality coffee?
If you have already asked yourself, we leave you the answer. Commercial coffee has more traditional flavours and has not undergone as selective a process as speciality coffees. The latter have adequate conditions, from the soil where the coffee is grown to how the drink is roasted and prepared.
The process to produce a speciality coffee
To understand what “special coffee” really means, you need to know a little about how it is made.
So, what steps are needed to make a special coffee?
We want you to know how hard everyone works to ensure the best coffees are made. Continue reading the article for a step-by-step summary of what must be done to make a special coffee.
Farms and producers
Like all plants, coffee grows best in certain climates and conditions. Speciality coffee is grown on farms that have the best conditions for growing coffee. The people who grow coffee work hard every day of the year to make sure the plants are in the best shape possible.
Imagine you have a fish tank. If you want your fish to be healthy and happy, you need to spend money on a tank with aeration, plants, fish of different species, and lighting to have a nice place to live. Compare this to a coffee farm, where the people working there must give the plants the best conditions for growth to make a great cup of coffee.
Grains used to make your favourite drinks are grown on farms. Coffee is a fruit, and for it to be of the best quality, it must be picked when it is fully ripe.
Drying and benefit
After the coffee is picked, it goes through several steps to prepare it for the drying stage. This process is meant to get rid of some of the water in the coffee and start bringing out the flavours of the grain. Processors are very picky and pay close attention to the drying process every day.
The benefits are where these stages are built up. They might be on the farm or belong to someone else, but they work for the producers. Farmers in countries that grow coffee are given jobs because of the benefits. Another reason to buy local coffee is to help the farmers in your country.
Women play an important part in the benefits. Because of their senses, they can sort the coffees and choose the best beans. In the long run, these will make a great cup of coffee.
Quality Assurance
This is where the coffee’s score, or overall quality, is decided. Again, the best grains are chosen, and a set of rules for tasting are followed. Tasters know how to use their senses to discover everything about a coffee. This shows how the hard work and effort of the producers lead to a high-quality, speciality coffee.
Storage
Coffee must be kept in a controlled environment so it doesn’t go bad. By keeping and storing coffee well, they can ensure its quality will stay the same over time. If you don’t store a speciality coffee the right way, it can lose many things that make it special. Most of the world’s best roasteries and coffee shops get their coffee from places that export the best coffee. If you store that coffee well, it will keep its special qualities.
Roasting of coffee beans
During this part of the process, the coffee gets all the flavours that make it a special coffee. When roasting a special coffee, it aims to bring out all of its best qualities. For a speciality coffee to taste its best, the roaster may devise a special way to roast it.
Preparation of drinks
The barista’s job is to bring out all of the coffee’s flavours and show appreciation for the work that went into making the speciality coffee beans. That is why present-day entrepreneurs who start a coffee shop try to experiment and play with different parts of a speciality coffee to find the best way to make it. With this work, their cup often becomes as good as possible. Even though coffee shops are the last link in the chain, they let us try our favourite drinks made with the best coffees.
Conclusion
Speciality coffee is made with a lot of hard work and dedication for almost a year. As customers, we need to know how good a special coffee is and back the national coffee industry. The work of the people who make the product is to ensure we can enjoy it. After reading our article, we encourage you to get started in coffee and support local businesses.