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Specialty Coffee
Specialty coffee is the highest expression of high-quality coffee. Only the finest coffees can aspire to join the specialty family. Visit the 7Gr. shop to discover and savor the selection of coffees by Lot Zero and roasted by Chiara Bergonzi.
We Taste Every Coffee before Bringing it to Market.
Before marketing a high-quality coffee, it is essential to taste the roast to verify that it reflects the desired flavor.
Cupping is carried out both in “Brazilian” style and using the extraction methods recommended in the product data sheet.
The Characteristics of Specialty Coffee
The term “specialty coffee” encompasses a family of premium coffees with specific characteristics. To earn the name “specialty”, a coffee must have no primary defects and may have up to 5 secondary defects in a 350-gram sample of green coffee taken for analysis.
Variation in bean size must not exceed 5%; in 100 grams of roasted coffee analyzed, there must be no color variation (presence of quakers).
Finally, on tasting they must score at least 80 points on a scale from 0 to 100, and they must possess clearly distinctive organoleptic attributes.
All this requires strong synergy across the entire specialty coffee supply chain, from cultivation to extraction in the cup.
How Origin Influences Flavor
Coffee is a living product that absorbs and often alters the substances it draws from the soil and the environment where the Coffea plant grows. Soils and environments have particular features that differ depending on their origins. Thus, coffees differ not only by country of origin but by the characteristics of each cultivation.
Processing Methods and Their Influence on Flavor
There are many processing methods; the most cited and commonly used are the natural, washed, and semi-washed methods.
Coffee processed by the natural method tends to be sweeter and more bitter in the cup but less acidic; body increases, as can any astringency in the cup.
When coffee is processed by the washed method, it usually shows pronounced acidity, less bitterness and sweetness, and body and any astringency are markedly reduced.
With the semi-natural method, acidity, sweetness, and bitterness sit halfway between the two methods just mentioned, though certainly closer to a natural process. Body and any astringency likewise fall between a washed and a natural method.
How Roasting Affects Specialty Coffee
Roasting is a crucial step to bring out the best in the cup when working with specialty coffee. A darker roast delivers a mostly bitter taste, whereas a lighter roast results in greater acidity. The roaster can decide whether to emphasize acidity, bitterness, sweetness, or balance in the final beverage, and whether to make the aromatics more pronounced or flatter; in short, this is the stage where the raw material is shaped.
For specialty coffees, a “light” roast is usually recommended for the extraction of “filtered” coffee, whereas for espresso a “medium” roast is advised for a more balanced taste.
What does a specialty coffee taste like?
It is often assumed that specialty coffee tends to taste strongly acidic. However, remember that a coffee’s taste depends—as we have seen—on how it is grown, harvested, depulped, roasted, and finally extracted.
Specialty coffee is no exception: if roasted light it will certainly tend toward acidity, whereas if roasted dark the taste will be predominantly bitter. The reason people often think specialty tastes acidic is that very light roasts are sometimes used indiscriminately, without considering how the barista or home user will brew the coffee.
It should also be remembered that the person brewing the coffee has the power to adjust the taste of the prepared beverage, steering bitter or acidic coffees toward a good point of balance.
