HOW COFFEE COMPANIES GRADE COFFEE BEANS
Research tells us that the grading of coffee beans across coffee companies within each country producing and exporting coffee beans, is influenced by specific industry standards that are set up by a government organization or related agency. These standards include legal guidelines/rules and ongoing monitoring of the coffee trade practices. Quality Control officers perform the inspections. Many countries have a Coffee Board Authority of sorts responsible for carrying out these tasks; they report to government ministries, e.g. Trade & Industry or Agriculture.
A brief look at grading systems
Coffee bean producing countries have their own way of reporting the quality of coffee beans. For instance, Brazilian coffee companies classify bags of coffee beans by species, the Port from where the beans were exported. In addition, they report the degree of quality of a defective bean and the number of defective beans is registered per 300grams, e.g. Standard 3 would hold 12 defective beans in a 300gm sample; bean size, colour, shape, density, roast and cup quality, year of processing, process methodology, year of the crop and a Lot.number are included in the assessment.
Indonesia used to use a Dutch system but no longer refers to this. It describes the type of bean e.g. R=Robusta; how the beans were processed e.g. DP=dry processed: grade numbers 1 & 2 = high grade, 3 7 4 is medium grade and 5 & 6 are lower grades; a description is also given as to whether or not the beans are polished and bean sizing is Large, medium or small (L, M, S).
Colombia has a far simpler method of coffee grading. Region of origin is printed on the bag and beans are sorted by size. It’s that simple
Fair Trade Coffee companies and grading
There are a number of Fair Trade coffee companies or co-ops around the world. A current reference, at time of writing this article, listed the Certified Fair Trade coffee producers as: Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Tanzania and Uganda. Fair Trade Coffee is a whole other topic in itself.
The Ethiopian coffee companies generally take a more simplex approach to grading by reporting only the following: processing, region where produced and a grading of 1 – 8, representing a specific amount of defects. An example of Ethiopian coffee beans is, Ethiopian Fair Trade Coffee.
Finally, consider that there are many Coffee Trade terms used by coffee companies when grading coffee beans but in general these terms that are used to describe green coffee beans and their features are not standardized globally. The meaning of these terms may be taken in different ways. To overcome this problem, it is not uncommon for a number of definitions to be provided in a grading report.
Author: Helena is a freelance writer, copywriter and copyeditor for several websites. She writes prolifically about coffee, cafes, beauty, fashion, health and lifestyle.
Article Source ©bean4coffee.net
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