What is specialty coffee?
Hello Steemit people! Today I wanted to share with you a term that in recent years, due to the rise of the third wave of coffee, may have been used many times and many people are not clear what it really is.
So, what can we say is a specialty? Very rustically speaking we can say that specialty is something for which you would pay more than normally that product could cost and that can depend on two things: a specialty brand (place, services, etc.) and the product (quality).
In this specific topic I want to focus on the quality of the product; let's say that at a table we have two cuts of meat. One comes from a farm where the animal was mistreated, poorly fed and its healthy growth was not relevant, after this it happened to a butcher shop where they did not comply with any hygiene rules and they had no idea how to cut the meat and also of this in the place where you are going to eat it they prepare it badly marinated and with a horrible point of cooking. On the other hand, we have a beautiful cut of meat, cooked by a chef who left it at an excellent cooking point, which comes from an animal that was taken care of, and well fed. After all this, what would you consider as a specialty?
Something very similar happens with specialty coffee. Specialty coffee is one in which a lot of attention and care has been paid to all the steps in the coffee production chain, under quality standards of international associations (such as the SCA), with 0 defects and which obtains a score in a cup of 80 or more in base 100, awarded by a graduate Q grader (professional tasters).
Ok, very good, but now, what are those steps?
Everything begins in the field and in the hands of the coffee farmers: what species is going to be planted? Arabica or robusta? What variety? There are many things to take into account, from the height of planting to the type of soil.
After a good care during its growth, comes the part of the harvest, they must make sure to pick the cherries that are at their optimum point of maturation, neither green nor overripe, these will give us unpleasant flavors in the cup and we do not want that. This step is fundamental since it is the basis of the product that we will have in our hands and then in our cups.
When the cherries are harvested in the optimum state comes the part of the processing of the coffee that can be washed, semi-washed, natural or honey depending on the type of coffee and the flavor that one wants to obtain. After obtaining a certain moisture level in the grain and finishing its processing, the green coffee is ready to be exported. The next step is the toasting of coffee and in this is that it will determine a large part of the flavors, the personality and the character of the coffee. They can haunt light, medium, medium dark and dark toast. The last step in the chain is the preparation of coffee and this is where the baristas take the role, where we can get the best coffee we work with and show gratitude for all the effort that comes behind that cup or ... ruin it for complete usually happens. All this playing with preparation methods to determine which one fits best with our coffee.
I hope you liked this post and that it can be useful! Thank you very much!