Buying & Brewing the Best Coffee Beans

Whether you're a veteran speciality coffee lover, or you're just discovering the world of freshly brewed coffee, you'll want the very best coffee beans you can get your hands on, which will be why you've ended up here, probably after searching for something along the lines of “best coffee beans in the UK”.

But what does best coffee beans actually mean? I don't think it means what many people think it does.

It certainly (in my opinion) doesn't mean coffee beans that came out of a civet's bum – and some of the brands of coffee beans in the UK that many people think are among the best coffee beans, well, let's just say I wouldn't quite agree.

I'll explain why, and by the end of this post, you'll have a much better understanding of what “best coffee beans” really mean.

In this post I'm aiming to help my fellow coffee botherers (my term for all of my fellow coffee loving friends) with the following questions:

What is the best type of coffee beans?What is the best species of coffee beans?What is the best form to buy coffee beans?Where is the best place to buy coffee beans in the UK?What is the best way to freshly brew coffee beans at home or in the office?
You might not even have realised you had these questions, but by the time you're finished reading this post I think you'll agree that you did, even if you weren't aware :-).What is the best type of coffee beans?
I could be referring to all sorts of things by “type” of coffee beans, but what I'm specifically referring to here, is commodity vs speciality.

If you think there are just coffee beans & that's that – just how there are just peanuts, and there are just grains of rice etc., then actually you're kind of right if you're referring to commodity coffee – but you're very wrong when it comes to speciality coffee.

Commodity Coffee AKA Commercial Coffee
One market that coffee is produced for, is known as commodity coffee, or commercial coffee. This is the original coffee market, which is linked to what is regarded as the first wave of coffee. For more on the waves of coffee see waves of coffee explained.

Commodity coffee beans are priced by the stock market, and traded purely as a commodity like wheat or oil, meaning that quality doesn't impact the price. The market sets the price, and a bag of coffee beans is simply a bag of coffee beans – quality doesn't come into it.

Commodity coffee is traded and roasted in huge batches, and it's usually roasted darker, not because that's the roast profile that brings the best out of that coffee bean, but because roasting dark hides a multitude of sins (taste defects) and ensures batch consistency.

This kind of coffee ends up in jars of instant, disk capsules or pods (not all of them, to be fair), and in bags of pre-ground or whole bean sold via the FMCG industry (fast moving consumer goods, supermarkets and large online retailers). It's just coffee, there's really not much other than the brand name and the packaging to distinguish this kind of coffee, other than the mix of Robusta and Arabica. Whether you're a veteran speciality coffee lover, or you're just discovering the world of freshly brewed coffee, you'll want the very best coffee beans you can get your hands on, which will be why you've ended up here, probably after searching for something along the lines of “best coffee beans in the UK”.

But what does best coffee beans actually mean? I don't think it means what many people think it does.

It certainly (in my opinion) doesn't mean coffee beans that came out of a civet's bum – and some of the brands of coffee beans in the UK that many people think are among the best coffee beans, well, let's just say I wouldn't quite agree.

I'll explain why, and by the end of this post, you'll have a much better understanding of what “best coffee beans” really mean.

In this post I'm aiming to help my fellow coffee botherers (my term for all of my fellow coffee loving friends) with the following questions:

What is the best type of coffee beans?What is the best species of coffee beans?What is the best form to buy coffee beans?Where is the best place to buy coffee beans in the UK?What is the best way to freshly brew coffee beans at home or in the office?
You might not even have realised you had these questions, but by the time you're finished reading this post I think you'll agree that you did, even if you weren't aware :-).What is the best type of coffee beans?
I could be referring to all sorts of things by “type” of coffee beans, but what I'm specifically referring to here, is commodity vs speciality.

If you think there are just coffee beans & that's that – just how there are just peanuts, and there are just grains of rice etc., then actually you're kind of right if you're referring to commodity coffee – but you're very wrong when it comes to speciality coffee.

Commodity Coffee AKA Commercial Coffee
One market that coffee is produced for, is known as commodity coffee, or commercial coffee. This is the original coffee market, which is linked to what is regarded as the first wave of coffee. For more on the waves of coffee see waves of coffee explained.

Commodity coffee beans are priced by the stock market, and traded purely as a commodity like wheat or oil, meaning that quality doesn't impact the price. The market sets the price, and a bag of coffee beans is simply a bag of coffee beans – quality doesn't come into it.

Commodity coffee is traded and roasted in huge batches, and it's usually roasted darker, not because that's the roast profile that brings the best out of that coffee bean, but because roasting dark hides a multitude of sins (taste defects) and ensures batch consistency.

This kind of coffee ends up in jars of instant, disk capsules or pods (not all of them, to be fair), and in bags of pre-ground or whole bean sold via the FMCG industry (fast moving consumer goods, supermarkets and large online retailers). It's just coffee, there's really not much other than the brand name and the packaging to distinguish this kind of coffee, other than the mix of Robusta and Arabica.