You hear it everywhere now when it comes to our growing niche coffee industry: specialty. But what does it mean exactly and how will we push its boundaries into even greater progress?
While we don’t currently roast our own beans, we have the distinct privilege of partnering and working with the very top roasters and coffee bad*sses in the southeast. We choose only specialty coffee roasters and try our best to highlight work done by fellow LGBTQ+ and BIPOC community members.
Specialty means any coffee that has achieved a score of 80 or higher out of 100 on a standardized score sheet by a panel of expert coffee tasters known as Q Graders. It’s generally accepted that only around 10% of all coffee produced reaches specialty grade.
To find a coffee’s score, it has to go through an expert tasting known as a cupping. But before it can even make it to that stage, coffee must be assessed in its green, un-roasted form. Graders examine a green coffee, looking for a variety of defects, evaluating its color and odor before designating it Specialty Grade or Below Specialty Grade.
Specialty coffee means better-tasting coffee in which roasters, baristas, importers, exporters, farmers and everyone else on the supply chain are treated with respect and value. This is the goal of “specialty coffee” not just as a quality designation, but also as a cultural movement.
Shop all our Specialty Coffee Partnerships here!
