Caffè in grani
The term coffee beans refers to coffee that is roasted, dosed and packaged from green, but without yet undergoing the grinding process.
The coffee plants used to produce the mainly marketed beans are Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora (better known as robusta).
Arabica beans usually give the coffee a taste tending towards sour or sweet, as far as the espresso cream is concerned they give a lower cream volume than robusta but with greater stability, the bubbles that make up the cream are also finer.
Robusta beans, on the other hand, give the espresso a slightly bitter taste, the resulting crema is more voluminous and less stable than Arabica and with coarser bubbles.
Coffee, at the beginning of its life, is a bean enclosed within a fruit called drupe. Each drupe contains two green coffee beans inside it. Depending on the processing method used to extract the beans from the fruit, different flavours will be perceivable in the cup.
There are many known stripping methods, the most widely used being the natural, washed and semi-washed method.
The natural method gives more sweetness and bitterness in the cup but less acidity, more body and when present more astringency.
The washed method on the other hand brings more acidity but less bitterness and sweetness, body and any astringency is reduced.
Finally, the semi-natural method presents acidity, bitterness and sweetness somewhere between the two methods just seen, although these flavours are still closer to a natural method. Body and astringency also straddle the two methods described above.
When choosing the best bean coffee, attention must also be paid to the places of origin of the coffees that make up the chosen blend; knowing them, it is possible to expect certain flavours specific to the country of origin.
The last step before marketing is roasting.
A darker roast will lead to a predominantly bitter in-cup taste, a lighter one to a more acidic taste.
At this stage, an attempt is usually made to obtain a perfect balance between acidity, bitterness and sweetness from the raw material.
Caffè Specialty
Speciality coffees are very different from the commercial coffees we commonly find on supermarket shelves.
Speciality coffees are cultivated at higher altitudes, are traceable to origin or company, and are carefully processed once harvested.
The entire production chain is involved in this definition because at every stage of production, the aim is to achieve a standard that is considerably higher than average, without any defects in the beans and the final drink.
But the main difference with commercial coffees is strikingly evident at the moment of tasting. By their very nature, specialty coffees possess a complexity and richness of aromas and flavours that make them absolutely recognisable to the taste buds of even the most inexperienced palates.
To make it easier to compare the different origins, the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) uses a tasting procedure that gives each batch a score.
On a rating scale of 50 to 100, only coffees with a rating of at least 80 points are called speciality coffees.
The higher the score, the greater the reward for the coffee farmer and the motivation to improve quality at farm level.