What are the characteristics of specialty coffee?

We are certainly wondering what to buy for our loved ones or friends during this period of frantic search for the right gift? Good specialty coffee will be a perfect gift for a passionate coffee lover looking for new flavors, as well as those just discovering particular varieties and blends. Coming back to the purchase of high-quality coffee especially for Christmas, as we have already read from Mickiewicz - freshly roasted coffee has always reigned supreme in Polish homes.

Why is a local coffee roastery a better choice than buying coffee in a hypermarket?

In the last two decades, blends that Poles have never had the chance to taste have appeared on our large-format stores. Similarly, in smaller discount stores we can find quite decent producers.

Even the most visible coffee producer, which, like a huge corporation, reaches every corner of the globe with its products, will not give us with its McDonaldized product what a smaller coffee roastery can offer. Why? Well, when mass producing, a large manufacturer, even if it wanted to, is unable, due to economic considerations, to focus on small, local producers from East Africa or South America. They are unable to deliver such batches of coffee that it would be a standard product on the tables and in the hands of baristas from Japan to the United States.

A coffee roastery that also runs an online store is able, with today's modern and fast communication methods between business contractors, to receive a sample and learn almost everything about local environmental conditions and methods of harvesting and selecting beans, washing and preparing coffee for shipment. Thanks to this uniqueness of the product and less rush than large competitors, the coffee roastery is able to offer such a selection of unique blends as specialty coffee.

Specialty coffee – the only and true door to the world of original coffee

Specialty coffee is "artisanal" coffee - we would say using a term that has been used to distinguish food products (e.g. craft beers) from mass production for almost five decades. Already in the mid-1970s, Erna Knutsen (a coffee connoisseur, admirer and culinary critic) used the term "specialty coffee", thus defining: beans growing in specific microclimatic conditions, as well as the method of their harvesting and subsequent treatment during the so-called post-production.

As we well know, every food product striving for perfection has its own gradation scale, including quality, taste and the degree of content of active or health-promoting ingredients. Peppers have their own Scovill scale, grading the strength of capsaicin, or simply - spiciness. Similarly, specialty coffee is rated on a 100-point scale, taking into account factors such as:

• freshness of the harvest (specialty coffee is transported to the roastery as soon as possible after harvesting and drying);
• speed of firing and delivery to the customer's hands;
• grain standard;
• originality (specialty coffee with a given name and origin is characteristic and unique);
• quality control.