WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SPECIALTY COFFEE AND COMMERCIAL COFFEE
You can have the best coffee equipment in the world, professional level barista technique, and the most perfect grinder, but if you are using bad coffee, you will never have a good cup of coffee. But what is the difference between the grocery store coffee I was used to getting and specialty coffee?
The first big difference is the freshness. The amount of time from when the green coffee is purchased, to the time it was roasted, to when it gets bagged and loaded on trucks, sent to stock rooms at stores, wait for existing supply to finish, then gets shelved in the back and slowly moves its way to the front. It could be six months or more for that whole process to play out! While coffee is pretty much shelf stable for one years' time, its window for optimal flavor is around 2-3 weeks from the roast date. With specialty coffee you are often placing an order on a site, it gets roasted then sent out and arrives your door maybe a week after roast. This is perfect for freshness. You do not want to be drinking old grocery store shelf coffee, trust me!
The second and probably biggest difference between specialty coffee and the stuff from grocery stores is the beans themselves. For coffee to be labeled specialty grade it must have a cupping score of 80 or higher. The stuff on the grocery shelves is more commodity coffee, bought at a low price, roasted in giant batches, ground, then shipped out. It has to be cheap coffee, how else are the big companies like Starbucks supposed to pay all of the middlemen and still turn a profit?
Those two differences alone should be enough to convince you to try some specialty coffee and compare it to whatever coffee you currently drink. I promise that much like me, you will not be able to go back to that darkly roasted pre-ground garbage.
So, I challenge you, yes, YOU! Go get a bag from the grocery store and pick up a bag of specialty coffee and compare the two back-to-back. The differences will slap you across the face immediately.
If you are looking to try some small batch, roast to order, specialty coffee goodness, then you should check out our 12-ounce bags or Sample Pack options at Susquehanna Beans Coffee. The Coffees that currently excite me the most are our Dark Forest, Midnight Embrace, and TrailsHead Roast coffees. But do not just take my word for it, go try some for yourself!