Specialty coffee: discover the good coffee!

What is specialty coffee?

Specialty coffee is coffee considered to be "flawless in the cup." To determine this, the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) follows a very precise protocol to assign a score out of 100. Coffees with a score of 80 or higher are considered specialty coffees.

The Specialty Coffee Association?

The SCA is an institution created in 1982 in the United States. The American (SCAA) and European (SACE) branches merged in 2017 to create the SCA we know today, present all over the world.
The goal of the Specialty Coffee Association is to continuously improve the quality of coffee at every stage, from plant to cup, worldwide.
To achieve this, it is committed to remaining objective and respecting cultures and traditions, and brings together many actors who work to raise standards.
The association also organizes coffee championships in France and around the world.

The SCA rating system

The SCA's "Quality Score" is used by Q-Graders, the experts responsible for analyzing, tasting and evaluating coffee.

These are qualified professionals who assign a score from 0 to 100 points.
To earn the honor of being considered a "specialty coffee", the coffee must score at least 80/100.
From 85 points onwards, it is classified as excellent.
If it exceeds 90, it is an exceptional coffee, or even a high-level specialty coffee.

Traceability of specialty coffee

What is traceability for coffee, and for a product in general?

Let's start at the beginning! Traceability is the ability to identify the origin of a product and to trace its journey through a production chain. For coffee, this goes from the producer to the barista (or distributor), from the field to the cup.

The coffee production chain, a summary.

Producer: The one without whom nothing would be possible.
Processing: Harvesting and processing the fruit.
Export: Evaluation and sale of coffee.
Roasting: To make green coffee consumable and reveal its aromas.
Vending machine or Barista: And the finished coffee in your cup after passing through a vending machine (more or less large) or behind a bar.

The importance of traceability in coffee production.

It is first and foremost an economic issue! Professionals must be able to identify the coffees they buy/sell at any stage of the supply chain. And consumers should always be able to know the origin and the actors involved in this production chain in order to make an informed choice, in line with their tastes and values, when making a purchase.

Specialty coffee and traceability: a natural match!

Specialty coffee guarantees optimal traceability, from the producer's plot to your cup. With clear information on each package, you can better choose your coffee based on your tastes, knowledge, values, country of origin, variety, processing method, etc.

The culture of specialty coffee.

How do climate and culture influence the quality of your espresso?

Temperature, soil quality, amount of rain, coffee, like all crops, needs specific conditions depending on its variety.
In our latitudes, coffee cannot be cultivated long-term. This is why coffee plantations are found in the tropical belt where it finds all the conditions it needs to grow and produce quality fruit.
Arabica, for example, thrives at high altitudes (900 to 2000 meters) and in a temperate climate with temperatures around 15°C. Robusta (Canephora coffee variety) is more resilient: it grows below 1000 meters and can withstand temperatures up to 30°C. However, both Arabica and Robusta share a dislike for frost, preferring partial shade and a light breeze.
Regarding rainfall, ideally there would be several rainy seasons per year. However, too much precipitation can negatively impact the coffee cherries... A "happy medium" is therefore important.

The equator as an ideal!

Growing coffee trees is therefore not easy. That's why cultivating them in a place that meets all these characteristics would already be a huge advantage for any producer! And this, or rather these places, do exist: they are on the "coffee belt", which encompasses all the countries near the equator.
These countries form a patchwork of places that meet all the basic conditions for coffee cultivation, with the added bonus of specificities for each region, allowing this "belt" to see different types of coffee plantations flourish.

Origin and harvest.

Specialty coffee will always reveal its country of origin, but also, and above all, the producer who grew and harvested it.
To ensure optimal coffee cherry quality, manual harvesting is preferred, allowing farmers to select fruit that has reached ideal ripeness. Furthermore, for specialty coffee, only batches from the most recent harvest are selected. Because the closer the coffee is to its harvest, the better it is.

Roasting and preparation

Roasting reveals the aromas of coffee. Transforming a small, tasteless green fruit into a bean of happiness!
It is a series of chemical reactions that gives voice to 800 aromatic compounds, twice as many as in wine.
The roasting profile will have a definite impact on the characteristics of the "final product". Roasting brings out the aromas already present in the bean, which is why the choice of coffee variety beforehand is very important depending on what is expected from the final result.

The roasting process, in brief.

Without going into details that we will surely cover in a future article, roasting takes place in several stages:
Drying: A crucial step that will determine the success of all subsequent steps. It consists of evaporating some of the water content to facilitate the roasting of the coffee bean.
Maillard reactions: Named after the French chemist Louis Camille Maillard, sugar and amino acids cause the browning of grains in a series of complex chemical reactions at 150-160°C.
Caramelization: At 170°C, sucrose is transformed into glucose and fructose to allow the flavors to develop.
• First crack: Around 200°C, the beans begin to crack like popcorn under the effect of internal pressure. This marks the beginning of the development phase, during which the roaster shapes the flavor profile of their coffee, for example, by choosing when to stop roasting.

What is the SCA rating for a coffee?

It is done out of 100 points and includes 10 scores from 0 to 10 based on precise organoleptic criteria (which affect the senses).
• Flavors
• Flavors
• Body
• Residual taste
• Uniformity
• Balance
• Purity
• Candy
• General impression
Q-Graders (certified professional coffee tasters) assess each criterion during formal tasting sessions. As mentioned earlier in this article, a coffee becomes a "specialty coffee" if it scores at least 80/100. Coffees scoring above 90 are considered "exceptional coffees."

LePerco, specialty coffee!

At LePerco, all our coffees are rated between 83 and 84 by 2 Q-Graders from "Roasters United".
You will find all the information about origin, processing, variety or roasting directly on the package of your favorite specialty coffees.
And if you want to go further, visit our online store to learn more about the human story behind each coffee and how to taste them.