Specialty Grade Coffee...What is it and why you should make the switch

Walk down the coffee aisle at your super market, and you will see an entire wall of slick packaging promising you the world as well as the old standbys with the red or blue containers. They show pictures of misty mountains, talk about golden mornings, and try to convince you they were picked by one guy named Juan. But if you flip one of those bags or plastic cans over to look for a roast date, good luck finding one. What you will find is a "best by" date stamped somewhere, usually dated a year or two into the future. That is your first clue that something is way off.

Here is the truth about grocery store coffee, by the time you toss that bag into your cart, it is already a museum piece. That coffee was harvested, shoved into commercial shipping containers, dumped into giant industrial roasters, packed into warehouse pallets, and left to sit under buzzing fluorescent lights for six to nine months. Coffee is fresh produce, not canned beans. After just a couple of months off the roaster, the delicate aromatic oils oxidize and vanish. In fact 30 days out even high end coffee starts to flatten out. What you are left brewing at six in the morning is stale, bitter, acidic brown liquid you need a handful of sugar to mask the harsh taste. Ask yourself why you put sugar and cream in your coffee? The answer usually is it is to harsh or to bitter or too tough to drink with out it. You should be adding those things to your coffee because you want to not because you have to.

To make matters worse, the big brands rely on what the industry calls commercial grade beans. In plain English, that means the bottom of the barrel. It is the stuff harvested indiscriminately with massive machines, full of defects, unripe, and broken beans. The big conglomerates do not care because their solution is simple, roast the daylights out of it until everything is charred black and the defects are covered up. They are fighting for profit not a great cup of coffee. That bitter, acrid bite people put handfuls of sugar and a cup of flavored creamer in to cover up is not bold coffee. That is the taste of scorched, low grade beans that lost their soul half a year ago. We drink that stuff because of habit or frankly because its cheap. It's not a sales pitch it's the truth. In fact its my truth.  Before realizing specialty coffee existed i got the cheap stuff cause it was cheap and I didn't know any better. Then the awakening happened and well then things changed in my house.

Simply good coffee does not need a chemical cocktail of artificial syrups to taste incredible, and that is where specialty grade coffee comes in. The title specialty grade is not a marketing term we cooked up one nite. It is an official global standard. To earn that title, green coffee must score 80 points or higher on a rigorous 100 point scale evaluated by certified experts. It has to be virtually defect free, and harvested with actual care. Only a small fraction of the world’s coffee beans make the cut, and that elite fraction is the only thing we allow near our roaster. (want more detail on specialty grade coffee see this link) 

When you brew specialty grade coffee that was roasted just days ago, your entire morning changes. You do not get that sour, gut churning punch or that burnt ash aftertaste. Instead, you get real, complex flavor straight from the soil, natural notes of dark cocoa, toasted nuts, crisp citrus, or smooth brown sugar. It hits clean, fuels your focus, and gives you the honest horsepower you need to tackle a hard day's work without having to mask it in a pint of milk or behind a handful of sugar.

At Iron Horse Roasters, we treat coffee with respect, precision, and zero cut corners. We only source specialty grade beans, roast them in small batches by expert hands, and pack them up immediately so they hit your doorstep at peak flavor. No sitting on dusty distribution racks. No stale mystery blends. Just fresh, honest, unapologetically great coffee built to get your engine running. Our specialty grade coffee starts out as the worlds best beans and can never ever show up to your door stale.  

Stop settling for 6-12 month old grocery store shelf warmers and experience what a real cup of coffee is supposed to taste like. Head over to Iron Horse Roasters grab a freshly roasted bag of one of our single origins or amazing blends, upgrade your morning and taste the difference specialty grade coffee makes in your cup.

Every single person that drinks a mug of Iron Horse Coffee at our home says the same thing "wow" that's good coffee....and then becomes a customer.

Pat Guerra