Have you ever wondered what makes specialty coffee different from the regular coffee you can find on supermarket shelves? Country of origin, price, variety, or perhaps the roasting date of the beans? The answer is a little more complex, so in today's article we present the key differences between specialty coffee and industrial coffee.
How does specialty coffee differ from supermarket coffee?
There is no doubt that industrial coffee is cheaper than specialty coffee. However, price is only a reflection of the quality of the beans, which is composed of several key factors.
Freshness of the raw material
The taste of coffee depends largely on its freshness. Specialty coffee consists of carefully selected beans from the latest harvests, which have the most complex and pleasant taste and aroma. To ensure freshness, specialty coffee is often contracted at least a year in advance, which means even before the beans are harvested.
Industrial coffees are often so-called "past crops", meaning beans from old harvests, even several years ago. This type of product will certainly not taste as good as specialty coffee from the current harvest, roasted a few days earlier – we write more on the blog about why the freshness of beans after roasting matters so much.
Transparency
Transparency means concrete data about the beans. The packaging of every specialty coffee should contain information about the product's origin (along with the name of the specific farm in the given region), botanical variety and, of course, the bean variety. This data is important because the taste and quality of coffee are composed of many elements that ultimately affect the consumer's sensory experience. In addition to the mentioned information, on the packaging of specialty coffee we can find information about the altitude above sea level at which the plantation is located, the bean score in the SCA scoring system, the roasting date, and even the harvest date. We write more in a separate article about what this transparency in specialty coffee actually means.
In the case of coffees that we see on supermarket shelves, things are completely different. International companies roasting industrial coffee buy many beans from different farms and regions, and then mix and roast them together. Therefore, it is useless to look for information on the packaging regarding the country of origin, roasting date, or even the bean variety. When buying industrial coffee, we actually don't know exactly what we are buying.
Quality
This may sound like a trivial truth to some, but it is hard not to agree that high-quality coffee simply tastes better. There is no wonder, since specialty beans are treated with extraordinary care at every stage – from cultivation and harvesting, through transport, to the roasting process in a professional roastery and sale. For coffee to be called specialty, it must pass a rigorous inspection conducted by experienced coffee classifiers (Q-Graders) – according to the SCA scale, specialty beans cannot have any primary defects and only allow occasional secondary defects in the sample.
Such strict requirements are not applied to industrial coffee, which receives beans with a greater number of defects – including damaged or mold-affected ones – as long as they fall within the acceptable quality standards. This does not mean that supermarket coffee is unsafe for health – strict, legally binding limits on the content of mycotoxins (e.g., ochratoxins A) in roasted coffee apply in the European Union. This means rather that the bean selection there is much less restrictive than with specialty coffee, where defects are rejected long before they reach the legally permissible limits.
Taste
All the aspects mentioned above affect the taste. Specialty coffees are roasted on an ongoing basis, depending on the volume of orders and customer demand, so the beans retain their full taste and aroma for longer. Professional roasteries most often offer only whole bean coffee, which is recommended to be ground directly before brewing so as not to lose volatile compounds, which are aromas responsible for a large part of our sensory experience. The vast majority of industrial coffees are ground and dark roasted (so that it always tastes the same and thus masks its imperfections). To hide a flat sensory profile, artificial aromas are added to some of these products.
Is specialty coffee better than supermarket coffee?
Although tastes are not discussed, in our opinion – and the opinion of millions of people around the world – yes. In the case of specialty coffee, the emphasis is placed on the quality and taste of the beans. In the case of industrial coffee – on price and quantity. Everyone, even people who have no knowledge about coffee, will easily notice the difference between specialty beans and regular supermarket coffee. So is it worth paying a few more zlotys and enjoying the excellent quality and taste of coffee and having clear information about the origin or roasting date of the beans? We leave the answer to you – and if you want to check it without guessing, browse our specialty whole bean coffee or conveniently select beans as part of a subscription.
Sources
- FAO, Green Coffee Classification and Grading (criteria for primary and secondary defects for specialty coffee) – fao.org
- Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/1370 – maximum permissible levels of ochratoxin A in roasted coffee – eur-lex.europa.eu
Leave a comment