Why did we change from traditional coffee to specialty coffee? Because we didn't know about all this and it was impossible for us to go back after learning about it.
Coffee, one of the world’s most beloved flavors, begins life as a bright red cherry. Each cup of coffee we enjoy comes from a single harvest of several cherries, which contain coffee seeds. It takes about 50 seeds to make a single coffee. And the fruit must be picked at its perfect point of ripeness to ensure its sweetness and aromas. This meticulous process is just the beginning of what separates specialty coffee from commercial coffee.
How to recognize that a coffee is specialty and what does it mean to you?
Commercial Coffee: Efficiency on a Large Scale
- Reduced Traceability : It is more difficult to trace the exact origin of these beans. You usually won't find much information on the packages.
- Even Roast : Beans are typically dark roasted to hide imperfections and homogenize the flavor, which will have a charred taste.
- Mass Production : Focuses on maximizing efficiency and reducing costs, often at the expense of quality.
That's why you'll find big brands serving 1/4kg of coffee for 2 or 3 euros in supermarket chains. Or a coffee for 1 euro in a bar. It's materially impossible for that to be good coffee, just because of the time it takes to make a good coffee from the harvester to the roaster.
Specialty Coffee: A Commitment to Quality
- Selected Seeds : In specialty coffee, each green seed is selected without any imperfections. Any defects, such as moldy, fermented or rotten flavors, must be discarded before roasting.
- Traceability and Freshness : This coffee offers full traceability from its origin and is offered with the most recent harvest and roasting possible to preserve its complex flavor profiles. It should be consumed soon, between 1 and 3 months after roasting.
- Selective Cultivation : They are grown in ideal microclimates that favor the superior quality of each grain.
This coffee, obviously, has a higher cost, because quality takes precedence over mass production. It is an artisanal coffee, where there is a real benefit in the processing chain and where the coffee is of a superior quality, with uniform green beans without defects. This coffee will cost you a minimum of 2 or 3 euros in a restaurant and 1/4kg will be around 10-50 euros depending on its quality (be careful, there are more expensive ones!)
Impact and Sustainability
- Specialty coffee promotes sustainable farming practices and improves the living conditions of farmers.
- In contrast, commercial coffee may not sustain these practices, prioritizing mass production and cost reduction.
Conclusion: Opting for specialty coffee will not only allow you to enrich your palate with pure and well-defined flavors, less homogeneous and more diverse, with floral and fruity notes, but it also supports a more ethical and sustainable business model.
At Black Jebena, all our coffees are specialty coffees, and all of them are from Ethiopia because it is the birthplace of coffee and we have enough varieties for you to discover an infinite world of aromas and flavors. All of them have full traceability and follow a micro-roasting process that takes into account the potential imperfections of the green bean. We roast in small batches to be able to detect possible imperfect beans. That is why, sometimes, you will see that we do not have coffee. Our time is limited and we want to continue roasting little by little, in an artisanal way.
If you are curious, we invite you to try them and open a new world of senses and pleasures, either in our physical store in Seville or by placing an order online.
You won't regret it!