What is Specialty Coffee?

Kava's mission is to help you discover, rate and share specialty coffee. But what even is specialty coffee?

You'd be forgiven for thinking that specialty coffee is - as often portrayed in the media - a hipster aesthetic found in brunch-spots alongside avocado toast. But it runs much deeper than that.

It's a Quality Thing

Specialty coffee is objectively better.

Not in my opinion, but in the assessment of an independent coffee expert known as a Q-Grader. Q-Graders are trained like sommeliers to assess coffee, checking for defects and observing the aroma, flavor, acidity, sweetness, moisture content, body, cleanliness, finish, and overall balance to produce a score out of 100.

This scale and the grading process are independently determined by the Specialty Coffee Association to ensure consistency.

Primary defects include things such as:

• • Black or sour beans.
• • Dried cherry/pod.
• • Foreign matter such as sticks and stones (you'd be surprised how many foreign objects can find their way into a bag of green coffee beans).
• • Beans that have been affected by fungus or insects.

"Allowable defects" can include:

• • Partially black, sour, or unripened beans.
• • Broken or chipped beans.
• • Remnants of husk through incomplete hulling.
• • Water damage.

It Starts With the Farmers...

Specialty grade coffee tends to be shade-grown at high altitudes, as opposed to conventional coffees which can be grown in the sun on flatter, easier to work, land at lower altitudes to increase yields. Additionally, the picking and sorting is typically done by hand to ensure the quality of each bean.

All this means more work for the specialty coffee farmer, but results in them achieving significantly higher prices for their coffee.

This is more ethical and sustainable, allowing and encouraging better treatment of workers and less environmentally damaging farming practices.

... Continues With the Roaster...

Of course, the green coffee beans are only the first step. The roaster has a huge part to play in how the finished coffee will taste.

Whilst it's impossible to make great coffee from substandard beans, the reverse is not true. It takes the skill of an experienced roaster (and often a certain amount of trial and error) to select the best roasting profile for each lot of beans. Of course, what is "the best" is both somewhat objective and subjective, with each individual roaster having their own preferred flavor profile and being restricted by the peculiarities of their roasting machine.

The same lot of green coffee can be transformed into wildly different tasting finished coffees depending on the equipment and roast profile used. So it's important to get to know the flavor profile of different roasters, to find those that align with your preferences.

Specialty coffees will generally have a lot more specific information on the bag. You will often find:

• • Roast date to indicate how fresh the beans are.
• • Country of origin and either the region or producer name.
• • Cultivars (Varieties) of coffee present e.g. Bourbon, Geisha.
• • Process used e.g. Washed, Natural, Honey, Anaerobic.
• • Tasting notes.

This can sometimes seem intimidating at first, but as your knowledge of coffee grows, this information can help you identify which coffees you're more likely to enjoy.

When rating a coffee on Kava, it's simple to specify the roaster, origin, beans, and flavor profile, making it easy to build up a picture of not only your preferred coffee profile, but also the profile of each roaster.

... And Finishes With the Barista

Of course there is one final step. The brewing of the coffee.

Each barista has their own recipes, techniques, skill, and consistency. In fact, it was the inconsistency in the taste of the same coffee prepared at the same coffee shop by different baristas that gave me the initial idea for Kava.

I realized that a one-time rating, for example on some other coffee apps or on Google Maps, was insufficient to quantify how good the coffee was. Every day it was slightly different, whether brewed by the same barista or not.

Tiny differences in factors like dosing, tamping, water temperature, pour height, grind size, or time since roasting can result in significant differences that can improve or detract from the enjoyment of your coffee.

By rating each coffee, Kava builds up a much clearer idea of how consistent a coffee shop is and which beverages they prepare best, helping you to find the right place, whatever style of coffee you're in the mood for.

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Let's take a look at a few of the things that specialty coffee is not:

Specialty Coffee Is Not a Style

Specialty coffee is often associated with Nordic-style light roasted coffees brewed as pourovers. But it's so much more than that.

It can be dark roast. It can be Robusta. It can be made as a latté. It can come in a pod. It can be a blend of origins. It can be a subtle and complex washed coffee, or it can be a funky natural anerobic coffee fermented with fruits.

Once you remember that the important thing is the quality of the green beans, and not restricted to any one type of processing, roasting, or brewing method, you can open up a huge range of different coffee experiences.

Single-Origin Coffee ≠ Specialty

Some coffee shops will try to dupe you into thinking that you're drinking specialty coffee by talking about single-origin or single-estate coffee.

Whilst it's generally a good thing to have a coffee that represents a particular place, in isolation it is no guarantee of quality. Just because all the coffee comes from one farm - rather than being blended across farms, regions, or even countries - doesn't mean that the coffee is any good!

I'd rather have a specialty grade coffee that has been carefully blended, than a single-estate coffee of lower quality.

Not All Specialty Coffee Is Equal

As highlighted at the start of the article, if a coffee scores 80+/100 then it can be called "specialty". But of course, there's a world of difference between an 80 point coffee roasted on large scale and a 90+ coffee roasted by a tiny, quality-obsessed roaster.

There are specialty coffees that are processed and roasted to appeal to "conventional" coffee drinkers, and there are more complex or unusual coffees aimed at a more esoteric market.

This is all to say that just because a coffee is rated as specialty, doesn't automatically mean that it is going to be a mindblowing cup. But that just makes the whole coffee discovery journey more interesting.

Specialty Coffee ≠ Small Production

Whilst it's true that specialty coffee cannot be produced at the same scale as conventional coffee, that doesn't mean it has to be tiny production.

There are plenty of farms and co-operatives that can produce specialty grade coffee on a scale large enough to satisfy larger coffee brands. This has led to some of these bigger companies trying to enter, or co-opt, the "specialty" coffee market.

Although these coffees may check the boxes of being specialty coffee and we applaud any efforts to produce higher quality, more sustainable coffee, at Kava our mission is to champion the independent specialty coffee industry.

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You Will Taste the Difference

Specialty coffee is often associated with lighter roasts. This is not just a stylistic thing preferred by coffee snobs, it is again rooted in the higher quality of the beans.

Lower-grade, conventional, coffees are often roasted much darker, to attempt to mask the unpleasant flavors caused by defects with the more pronounced flavors produced by the roasting process.

However, this leads to a somewhat one-dimensional flavor profile, and often high levels of bitterness that will see many coffee drinkers reaching for the sugar bowl. Until I discovered specialty coffee I thought all coffee was dark and bitter. I never even considered that it could be naturally sweet.

Like the best food or wine, the best coffee is all about sourcing the highest quality ingredients and preparing them as carefully and sympathetically as possible to allow the quality and complexity to show through.

By using a lighter (but not necessarily light) roast, the complexity and flavor of the beans is allowed to shine through, rather than being hidden behind the roast flavors.

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Join the Community of Coffee Lovers on Kava

Kava is the best place to discover specialty coffee. Use our interactive map to find specialty coffee shops, wherever you travel. Rate your coffees, and share your ratings, comments and images, with your friends and followers on Kava.

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