Good, Very Good, Excellent, Outstanding
The way we talk about coffee has been one of the biggest hurdles we’ve created between us and our customers. It begins with prohibitive vocabulary that our customers don’t understand ( see: “bloom”, roast profiles named after cities, cortado vs gibraltar, or hard-to-access flavor notes like “cheremoya” and “pomelo” for just a few examples) and seeps into professional development as well.
According to our cupping form, the worst scores a coffee can achieve correlate to the word “Good”. We use the word “Good” to mean “Bad” or “The Worst” on our scale of excellence, when our customers use the word “Good” to literally mean “Hey, this coffee tastes good”.
When was the last time you truly had an Outstanding cup of coffee? I don’t mean a subjectively outstanding cup of coffee, I mean a coffee that’s achieved at least 9/10 on every qualifier on the cupping form. I’ve been in coffee since I was 18 and I think I’ve tasted a handful of Outstanding coffees in my entire career, and have scored maybe the same amount above a 90 for the year I worked at Crop to Cup, an importer in Brooklyn, NY.
The SCA cupping form, for a refresher
What actually constitutes an Outstanding coffee? Historically as an industry, and in my own personal experience, we’ve scored coffees against whether or not they hold up to the qualities of a Gesha or a Washed Ethiopian, using these coffees as examples of the pinnacle of excellence. Don’t get me wrong, I love these coffees as much as the next geek, but I wonder why an impeccably grown and processed coffee that doesn’t exhibit these delicate florals, or rare fruit flavors, but maybe rather some well developed but simple bass notes of caramel and sugar has to languish in the valley of coffees scored as “Good” and “Very Good” (which, remember, correlates to “Bad” and “OK”).
When we as an entire industry grade coffees on a scale of excellence where the highest score is nigh unreachable due to hard to attain flavor profiles, coupled with the uphill battles plenty of farmers face to cultivate a coffee to achieve these scores, we have to start thinking:
What does that do to our industry, and a majority of coffees grown?
The dollar value of green coffee is ascribed to the score it achieves during cupping. Coffee pricing is currently undergoing a certified crisis, where the cost of coffee is below the cost of production. One piece of discourse I’ve yet to see turns the onus back on us and the system we use to grade and price coffee. Why are we still under the impression that a coffee that scores 85 points deserves a lower value than 88’s? 85’s are more common than 88’s, but they are still specialty, which by definition means that they’re a miracle of production. It takes an incredible amount of capital, labor, infrastructure and equipment to churn out 90+ coffees, and a majority of farmers do not have access to these systems to help them improve their quality to that level, therefore, an entire crop of mid-80 range coffees is a beautiful achievement of production.
85’s generally lack the flavor, mouthfeel and acidity qualities found in 88+ coffees as well, garnering them a score in the “Very Good” range of the form. I’ve made and drank more coffees that are Good and Very Good than Excellent or Outstanding. I’ve served a majority of customers who enjoy Good and Very Good coffees more than they do Excellent or Outstanding. There’s a reason for this.
This is because by and large, customers really enjoy coffee that tastes like coffee.
While I was on the Bloom tour this summer, I shared data that was collected during my time as the Director of Coffee while at Trade, a subscription company whose main customer base were coffee drinkers unfamiliar with Specialty Coffee. An overwhelming majority of coffees bought off the site were roasted to Medium, Medium Dark and Medium Light. The largest swath of coffees bought fell into a Taste Type (a merchandising system aimed to help customers navigate the 400+ coffees on site) named “Sweet and Smooth”, which were comprised of medium roasted blends. The next largest purchased category were all coffees pushed to second crack and expressing oil. These numbers were culled from tens of thousands of subscribers, from all over the country.
What Specialty Coffee values as Outstanding, and what a majority of coffee drinkers value as Outstanding couldn’t be on farther sides of a gigantic chasm. Our continued devotion to our current grading and pricing system, while does have its merits, continues to distance us from reaching our customers, and truly valuing the work of the producers we engage with. When our customers are telling us they find excellence in blends, medium and dark roasts, why aren’t we listening to them and changing our value system to reflect a more common understanding?
We should be proud of every coffee that scores above an 80, that we purchase at a premium above the C, that we serve to our customers, because they’re all miracles of production. Our current system continues to keep us from valuing every single coffee that scores above an 80. Why do we shun and devalue 82’s? Why can’t be be proud of our 82/100 scored coffee that serves a delicious purpose in a blend? Which coincidentally inherently has flavors that many coffee drinkers love?
Maybe once we change the way we talk about, value, and grade coffees, we will connect to our customers better, and will be able to refocus our purchasing practices in ways that support our all our farmers. Not just the ones who have the capital, land, infrastructure and labor to help them produce 90+’s.