The term "specialty coffee" has existed for 40 years. It is established, but it needs a contemporary classification. What was initially a technical, purely sensory analysis has changed. Today, fair trade relationships and more environmentally friendly production play an increasingly important role - but expectations are too high. Because in the end, it is actors who do something: a term does nothing at all.
What is specialty coffee anyway?
To define what something is, it sometimes helps to say what it is not. In the case of defining specialty coffee, that's easier. Specialty coffees are, for example, not coffee specialties - that which is often associated with exorbitantly decorated ice cream sundaes or dessert-like coffees. Specialty coffee refers exclusively to the product coffee.
Specialty coffee is first and foremost a quality characteristic that relates to the sensory quality and goodness of green coffee. Trained Q-Arabica-Grader undergo a challenging sensory-practical examination of the Coffee Quality Institute. In our team, Nadja Schwarz, Michel Indelicato, Benjamin Hohlmann, David Wistorf, and Philipp Schallberger have completed Q-Grader training. As of October 2025, there will be a new assessment form, the Coffee Value Assessment, which we hier discuss in detail.
Determining Sensory Quality Through Cupping
When three Q-Arabica graders evaluate a coffee according to the SCA's specified cupping protocol, the average rating is considered the final grading of a coffee.
Before tasting, we let the coffee steep for four minutes and then break the coffee crust
Coffees are rated on a 0-100 scale. This rating system was developed by the SCA in 1984 and was the first 100-point-based system for coffee. It has been visually revised several times since then, but the categories to be examined have barely changed. Today, the form is the global standard for sensory evaluation of coffee.
The quality and intensity of aroma, flavor, aftertaste, acidity, body, and the balance of various attributes are examined. It is also checked whether the respective coffee is free of sensory defects, the defects. Phenolic-medicinal, pea-like, or leathery notes come up again and again depending on quality and processing conditions.
An Old and a New Definition of Specialty Coffee
The pure focus on sensory analysis was especially decisive in the early stages of differentiation in the coffee market. The term itself comes from Erna Knutsen, now an icon in the coffee industry, who mentioned "specialty coffee" in 1974 in the Tea & Coffee Trade Journal. Eight years later, the SCAA, the Specialty Coffee Association of America, was founded. At the center of the early SCAA were high sensory quality and - what is now a minimum standard - origin designation.
According to the Coffee Guide, awareness of environmental issues grew in the 1970s, which led to programs and certifications focusing on ecological coffee production. In the early 2000s, quality became even more important, paired with barista training, transparency in supply chains, and the boom of newly founded coffee roasteries. What today is summarized as the "third wave of coffee" meant an even stricter focus on ever higher coffee quality. But according to the Coffee Guide, this is a misconception, because:
3rd wave coffee is an experience, specialty coffee is the product that is drunk in the process. (p.142)
A New Definition of Specialty Coffee?
Today it is much more difficult to provide a universally valid definition of specialty coffee. The expectation of what specialty coffee should be and fulfill keeps getting higher. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that the distinction between "mass-market coffee" and "specialty coffee" is made so often, and in the process the former is not only mixed with lower quality but also with unfair trade practices. The alternative to this, it sometimes seems, would be specialty coffee, and then it should do better with all the missed opportunities in mass-market coffee.
According to the graphic from the Coffee Guide - The Fourth Edition (2021), as quality increases, so does the chance of more sustainably produced coffee. "Specialized" coffee in this definition would be only more than 6% of global coffee production.
But everything - as so often - is neither black nor white. There are gray areas in the coffee industry too. Many "mass-market coffees" can have been produced with high ecological awareness. And the opposite is also true: many specialty coffees, that is coffees with a high degree of flavor differentiation, are probably delicious, but were produced with significantly less ecological care. Or as Johanna Jacobi said to me in a podcast:
There are things you cannot taste in coffee. For example, child labor, or glyphosate.
How can we enjoy something when we know that the social and ecological conditions do not match our ideas? The question of definition has increasingly become a discussion of values.
The social and ecological dimensions are today indispensable in a discussion about coffee quality. The vast majority of roasteries would probably tend to agree that coffee must convince not only sensorially, but also socially and environmentally.
An Example Definition
Accordingly, the new specialty concept probably really does need to be loaded with much more content, and sustainability becomes part of it. But sustainability is a big word and maximally vague. So it probably helps to separate things - as in this fictional example:
- We rate coffee X with 84 points and it is thus a specialty coffee according to the SCA rating scale. It has an intense aroma of blackberries, a delicate acidity, a soft body, and a long aftertaste.
- We source coffee X from a cooperative with 200 members that is certified organic and Fair Trade. The cooperative trains producers in the production of their own organic fertilizer, finances harvests with low-interest loans, and is concerned with contemporary education for children and professional development outside the coffee sector for parents
In this example, sensory quality is clearly separated from expectations for sustainable coffee production and sustainable business management.
Don't Make a Blend - Don't Mix
It doesn't help much to load the specialty concept so heavily that it becomes increasingly unclear. As a roastery, we have decided to only buy specialty coffee with more than 80 points because we have above-average sensory expectations for coffee.
With our partners from 18 Conejo in Honduras, the coffee is sorted by hand. The good ones in the pot, the bad ones in the trash - nothing mixed.
At the same time, we aim to immerse ourselves in each coffee chain, understand it, and enter into a partnership with the producers. This way, in the long term and together, we can tackle larger projects that focus on and try to improve the social, economic, and ecological dimensions. If we mixed these two interpretations of the specialty concept, sensory and sustainability, it would bring more confusion than understanding.
Specialty Coffee Also for Roasted Coffee?
Basically, the evaluation of coffee only applies to green coffee. With precise tasting, producers can be given differentiated feedback so they can improve their post-harvest processes.
Of course, the tasting method can also be applied to coffees roasted by roasteries. However, it should be noted that these are roasted too dark in the broad market to reach a clear result. Through dark roasting, coffee typically loses complexity and is overlaid by roasting notes.
Juan Boillat from the roasting team roasts according to individual roasting profiles for each coffee
Many roasteries refrain from roasting sensorially more complex specialty coffees because they may be targeting a different market. Because the taste of specialty coffees can differ marginally to drastically from an average coffee. When roasteries do choose these coffees, many roast them darker because the more complex, floral, and fruity notes are unfamiliar. Also, the erhöhte acidity in these coffees is rather unfamiliar and motivates many roasteries toward darker roasting. But if the fine differences are then leveled out again, from an economic perspective it would also be conceivable to roast "normal" coffee.
Specialty Coffee in Preparation
The preparation of specialty coffee can sometimes be a bit demanding. Yes, there are increasingly more specialty coffee capsules, but the process of preparation and the understanding of what happens in it remains outside. But that is precisely what many people are excited about when they approach a specialty product.
The cornerstones that make a good espresso are in preparation:
- the Mahlgrad,
- the ratio between Dosiermenge and extracted coffee
- the puck preparation to avoid Channeling
- and the Tampen
Particularly lighter roasts, which due to lower solubility often require longer extraction time for a balanced cup, require different recipes than darker roasted coffees. In As a rule, lighter roasted coffees can be ground significantly finer.
Filter coffee is more forgiving, which mainly has to do with the length of extraction. Depending on the system, this is min. 1:30 minutes (Aeropress) up to 5 minutes (Chemex). Specialty roasteries often focus on very characteristic coffees for filter coffee, where aromas are in the foreground, and these are easy to extract. To extract the full load of balance, however, you need more Detailverliebtheit.
Fazit
Die definition of what specialty coffee exactly is, was set in stone with the first version of the SCA cupping form in 1984. This tasting analyzed exclusively the sensory component of coffee.
40 years later, 40 years more climate change, 40 years more exacerbation of precarious working conditions, and 40 years of intensive agriculture, we are now at a different point.
It is understandable that a concept that creates differentiation is eventually loaded with even more expectations. However, the term will not solve anything, only the actors who handle the term "specialty coffee." Accordingly, we rely on a clear separation between sensory analysis and the design of the supply chain.
If specialty coffee is marketed in such a way that it could solve all problems, then that is not only a fraud against consumers, but also against the concept itself, which was never intended for expansion.
* More about coffee and climate change in this Video
** More about the greenhouse effect in this Blog
