What is Specialty Coffee?

In the broadest possible brushstroke, coffee usually falls into one of two categories:  1) Non-specialty coffee (sometimes called exchange-grade), and 2) Specialty coffee.  Non-specialty grade coffee is typically what you will find in a metal, plastic, or fiberboard can in a grocery store – your basic, generic, commodity-type coffee.   Nothing to write home about, it’s just sort of …. Coffee.  It usually requires cream and sugar to be palatable enough to be allowed past the gatekeeper of your mouth.

Specialty coffee, by contrast, is the top 2% of coffee in the world. It has higher standards of screening for defects, uniformity of size, color, moisture content, and to some extent, more rigid requirements for growing elevation, processing method, and so forth. Professional coffee tasters, or “Cuppers,” will put specialty grade coffee under a more demanding set of evaluation metrics including aroma, body, acidity, and overall taste.  The coffee must be free of any number of cup-faults and taints.  Specialty coffee is hand-picked, which involves considerable more cost of production, but it is the only way to secure the finest green coffee beans on the market.

Caffe Lusso Coffee Roasters sources only Specialty-grade coffee.  It has been that way since we roasted our first bean, and it will continue in the same tradition of quality and the passionate pursuit of delivering our signature taste.

Written By: Roast Master Philip Meech

Interested in trying specialty coffee? Just hit the shop tab above. Or go to our video review’s to check out some new specialty coffee we have in stock.