At the earliest time, coffee was mostly made into low-quality instant coffee bags, or mixed with seasonings such as milk to make coffee special notes. The popularity of coffee specialty has changed the supply and demand sides of the industry. Most of the early coffees were named after the export ports of origin, such as Santos in Brazil and Mocha in Yemen. These coffees are transported by sea to local roasting factories in consuming countries for roasting, and then enter cafes of all sizes. However, even the coffee at the same export port will have different production levels at the upstream end.
At the beginning of the 20th century, with the improvement of consumers' taste level, the coffee industry began to pay attention to the production history. From a wide range of producing countries and planting areas to more detailed coffee plantations, cooperatives and fruit processing plants. Transparent production history can avoid mixed coffee, which comes from a single producing area and will not be mixed with other producing areas in the production process, and is called "coffee per unit area". The focus and significance of "single product coffee" lies not in whether coffee comes from a single producing area, a single processing plant or a single variety and batch, but in the transparency and traceability of its production history.
The proposal of single product coffee is a win-win situation for the industry, which greatly reduces the opportunities for consumers to buy coffee beans, encourages producers to grow better quality coffee beans, and enables baristas and bean roasters to clearly understand their own brewed coffee. However, a single cup of coffee can only be screened by the classification of origin, and it is not really selected from the quality. Therefore, even single-product coffee will have differences in quality because of different production conditions.
Special coffee
Therefore, single product coffee only shows that the product has a transparent production history and still cannot be used as a guarantee for high-quality coffee beans. In order to solve the problem that single coffee can't solve, many coffee lovers begin to advocate specialty coffee. "Fine coffee" inherits the foundation that single coffee attaches importance to "production history", and emphasizes that the coffee planting environment is like a wine manor, and "terroir conditions" and "microclimate" have great influence on quality. The definition of fine coffee will change with the taste of the consumer market.
For example, 1978 defines fine coffee as "cultivating coffee beans with unique flavor under special climate and geographical conditions." In 2009, the American Fine Coffee Association redefined: "Those who pass the cup test with a score of 80 or more are called fine coffee. With the alternation of generations, new technologies and new ideas will continue to flood into the coffee industry, and coffee lovers will continue to find new answers for fine coffee.
General name information of fine coffee
In the world of fine coffee, we pay special attention to the variety, origin and treatment methods of coffee, because these will greatly affect the flavor of fine coffee beans and how we roast and brew these coffee beans. So baristas are used to marking the following information on their names:
Country of origin: Ethiopia, Brazil, Indonesia, etc. This must be written.
State/province/county/village of origin: this part depends on the situation, such as Hambella or Yegassheffield, if any, it will be written.
Manor of fine coffee beans: for example, Hope Manor and Emerald Manor. But not every kind of coffee bean is produced by manor, and sometimes it may be produced and sold by cooperatives and processing plants, so this topic is unnecessary.
Treatment methods of fine coffee beans: such as sun exposure, water washing, semi-sun exposure, wet planing, honey treatment, anaerobic treatment, etc. Due to fermentation and chemical changes, these treatments will change the acidity, aroma and bitterness of coffee. So this is also very important and necessary information.
Variety of fine coffee beans: Fine coffee is almost all Arabica, while ordinary cheap coffee or instant coffee powder is Robusta Robusta coffee. However, because there are thousands of different varieties of coffee beans in Arabica, and most of them have not been discovered and cultivated, sometimes the specific varieties of coffee are not necessarily listed (for example, the varieties of coffee beans in Ethiopia are usually collectively referred to as Ethiopian native varieties), unless they are particularly famous varieties, such as bourbon, Tiepika and Guixia.
Grade of fine coffee beans: For example, G 1 in Aricha G 1 in Ethiopian Sunshine is Ethiopia's own grading method for coffee beans, and G 1 stands for grade 1, which is the highest grade. Each country has different classification methods, so there is no need to mark information. Basically, fine coffee is almost the most advanced coffee bean in that country.
Why should we drink good coffee?
In the past, people's impression of "coffee" was nothing more than "bitterness", which came from the flavor impression caused by "deep roasting" in the second wave of coffee trends. With the changes of the times, coffee culture has evolved into the third wave of promoting "moderate and light roasting", in which a new proper term "fine coffee" appeared, simply defined as "high-quality coffee that can show the unique flavor of the producing areas". In the past, the second wave of culture "deep roasting" lost the flavor of coffee producing area because of serious coking, and it was impossible to clearly distinguish the quality of coffee and understand the characteristics of coffee producing area. At present, the third wave of coffee trend mainly focuses on the "fine coffee" with moderate and light roasting, which reduces the coking taste, highlights the flavor characteristics of coffee producing areas, and allows us to enjoy the real charm of coffee, which is why we should drink fine coffee.
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