Why is it so difficult to get good coffee?

There are just a few factors that distinguish between excellent and terrible coffee: how and where the coffee is produced, how the coffee is picked, how the coffee is processed and sorted, among other things.

A significant role is played by roasting, with over-roasting being a primary contributor to the bitter, burned flavor of the majority of mass-market coffee products. Right now, though, let us concentrate on what occurs at the source: the point at which the coffee’s narrative starts.

We’d want to point out that when we say “excellent coffee,” we’re referring about speciality grade coffee. In this view, “excellent” coffee is not a question of personal opinion; rather, it is defined by a set of well defined standards that establish what constitutes high-quality coffee products. Specialty coffee, on the other hand, is tremendously tasty and satisfying.

When it comes to cultivating high-quality coffee, location is more important than you would imagine. What’s known as the terroir of the coffee is determined by factors such as climate, soil, and altitude; much like with wine, the qualities and tastes of coffee are a unique product of its surroundings.

Many coffee businesses mass manufacture coffee at low elevations (where it is simpler to grow and process) in order to save money. Compared to the side of a mountain, a length of flat terrain is more easier and less expensive to travel through.

However, this is not ideal for speciality coffee since, once again, altitude has a role in the flavor profile. A harsher environment exists at higher elevations, making it more difficult for the coffee crop to grow in a timely manner. Coffee produces more complex sugars and more complex tastes as a result of this aging procedure.

In reality, most of the 800+ naturally occurring taste and fragrance chemicals that exist in coffee do not have a chance to develop at lower elevations, so you’re only receiving a very small portion of the whole coffee experience unless you’re sourcing high altitude speciality grade coffee beans.

Unripe fruit is something you may like.

Rather of starting out as the seed of a fruit, the coffee bean begins its life in the heart of a coffee cherry fruit, before being roasted and ground into deliciousness.

When it comes to coffee, it is important to pick it at its peak of maturity, just like you would with any other fruit you consume. When done properly, this harvesting procedure is often done by hand over a 3-4 week period to guarantee that each fruit is perfectly ripe at the time of plucking. In order to produce high-quality coffee, it is necessary to go through this step.

Mass market coffee businesses, however, harvest complete coffee trees in a single day, regardless of whether or not the beans are fully ripe. This is done to save money and speed up the harvesting process.

As a result of the tougher rules on sorting and processing that speciality coffee is subject to after harvesting, the amount of flaws and immature beans in a particular batch of specialty coffee is dramatically reduced as compared to non-specialty coffee production.

Additionally, it implies that sorting and preparing speciality coffee takes more time, work, and consideration. Because of this, speciality coffee producers are able to demand higher prices for their beans, while large coffee corporations are able to find lower-cost alternatives.

Finding a variety of coffee beans might be challenging.

When you look at the coffee available in most supermarkets, it’s easy to assume that just a few nations are involved in the coffee production process. As a matter of fact, the same five nations produce over 70% of the world’s coffee.

As a result of terroir, the coffee grown and exported by more than 50 nations throughout the world may taste radically diverse and distinct, with flavors such as blueberry and fig, honey, chocolate and almond being among the most prevalent.

So, why is it so difficult to get coffee from most of these countries? The solution to this question may be obvious to you already. Because it is mass manufactured and cultivated at lower elevations, coffee from the main 4-5 coffee producing nations is less expensive than other coffee (which make for easier terrain to transport the coffee).

Although small-scale mountain-top coffee farms provide most of the world’s coffee industry’s variety, they are more costly and take more work to cultivate, harvest, discover, and buy than larger-scale farms. These coffees are also more difficult to find and purchase.

In turn, this makes it nearly impossible to find coffee from countries such as Malawi, Papua New Guinea, Burundi, Ecuador, and Myanmar in your local grocery store or coffee shop because the majority of coffee companies are unwilling to pay the premiums necessary to support high-quality coffee production in far-flung, underdeveloped areas.

So order coffee from across the globe.

Identify a coffee firm that will handle the procurement of coffee beans for you if you want to explore the enormous world of coffee. It was the goal of the Atlas Coffee Club’s membership to expose the whole globe of coffee (rather than just the 4-5 major coffee producing nations), providing you access to coffees that are not typically available on the market.

Every month, we feature both the coffee and the culture of a different nation among the world’s 50+ coffee producing countries. For this reason, in order to expand the world of specialty grade coffee, we collaborate with farmers who are passionate about quality, paying them above fair trade prices so that they can continue to invest in their production and their communities, and produce high-quality coffee on a year-round basis. Three wins in one day! A great day!

Throughout the year, we are hard at work selecting coffees for you using a meticulous process that identifies high-altitude, specialty-grade single origin coffees that are in peak season, hand-picked at peak ripeness, have something unique and flavorful to offer, and stand out from the crowd of competitors.

Every year, after cupping upwards of 300+ specialty-grade coffees, we narrow it down to just our top 12 favorites, which we then share with our newsletter subscribers.

In order to produce distinct roast profiles for each coffee, we begin by picking what we believe to be the most intriguing coffees in terms of both taste profile, quality, and originality. Here, we strive to highlight the characteristics that distinguish each coffee as distinct and exceptional, allowing the subscriber to find and brew the greatest representation of coffee from each region.