Let’s see… we have these supermarket chains or big coffee shops that offer like 20 brands and 100 varieties of coffee. And on the other side are some small family run businesses that can bring you one of the finest coffee beans of all the world. What’s my choice? I think that every one visiting my blog regularly knows the answer.
In drinking a Geisha coffee from Peru. The beans were produced in the Santa Teresa farm on the altitude of 1688m. The process of the coffee is natural and the roast level is light. Beans have been roasted on 3rd October 2022. That’s the information that I gain from the label.
And what is the information that you can receive from a big chain coffee distributors? Maybe best before date? But when were the beans roasted? It’s some vital information! How were the beans processed? Where they really come from? Maybe it says “Beans from South America. That’s all.
Interesting fact: Do you know that smaller coffee beans need less time to roast, so they are darker compared to the bigger ones?
I trust my Dabov brand because I know that the owner meets with the farmers and chooses the best beans that will suit his quality standards at a reasonable price.
What about the famous coffee brands, like Lavazza, Kimbo, Starbucks? They need a lot of coffee to meet the huge demand worldwide and they need to buy thousands of tons of coffee beans. But the finest coffee beans usually come into batches of no more than hundreds of kilograms or 1-2 tons max. That’s because the beans are specially selected and usually the finest first grade beans become the so-called specialty coffee and the 2nd and 3rd grade coffee is extracted to the big coffee producers. When they offer these beans, they are usually dark roasted so this quality difference doesn’t count at all.
Once someone gave a bag of Costa coffee beans to us. I was excited and even ground them on my hand grinder. I decided to go for a V60 then and after the first sip, I decided it was better to throw the coffee in the sink. The beans were terribly dark roasted and were very bitter. Not good, not good. Maybe they were gonna be OK-ish on the espresso machine, but V60 was a “nah” for them.
Eventually we decided to give the beans as a present to my wife’s father. He was okay with them.
So yes, specialty coffee is pricier than the mainstream brands, but my calculations show that the price difference will be no more than $20-25 per month. This is with the assumption that we consume about 1kg of beans per month. I’m willing to pay this difference and I love my coffee experience.
See you soon and have a nice day!