What is specialty coffee?
No, it’s not a marketing gimmick! Every bean that passes through Stitch must adhere to strict and certain criteria before we can call it ‘specialty coffee’.
What is specialty coffee?
“From traceability to roasting, packaging and brewing, the wider definition is all about ensuring a coffee’s integrity and quality throughout every step of the supply chain. ”
Just getting into the world of specialty coffee? The bare bones definition is this: any coffee that a certified Q Grader scores 80+ points (out of 100) in the international ranking system established by the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) in 2004 can be called a ‘specialty coffee’. But there’s also a lot more to it than that!
From traceability to roasting, packaging and brewing, the wider definition is all about ensuring a coffee’s integrity and quality throughout every step of the supply chain. In this entry, we’re breaking down the journey and letting you in on the quality control process that’s going on behind every coffee sold at Stitch Coffee.
ETHICAL GREEN BEAN SOURCING
This is the ‘why’ behind traceability, and the reason specialty coffee roasters like ourselves are big on only sourcing coffee from suppliers that can tell us exactly what farm or washing station a batch of beans comes from.
Traceability serves a dual purpose; it not only tells us something about the quality of the coffee, but also the quality of the lives that produce and harvest them. Unfortunately, exploitation of coffee producers is not unheard of in the industry, which is why Stitch Coffee work with suppliers like our friends Melbourne Coffee Merchants who are committed to paying the farmers fair prices for their premium coffee.
This buying behaviour prioritises creating a stable and sustainable supply chain over profits, which goes a long way in ensuring that Stitch Coffee customers are the beneficiaries of consistently high-quality (and delicious!) coffee.
Q GRADING AT FARM & SUPPLIER LEVEL
Speaking of green bean sourcing, Stitch Coffee works solely with suppliers or farms who have Q Graders on staff (those certified by CQI to score the quality of coffee). Q Graders have the important responsibility of making a sensory evaluation of a green coffee lot, where everything from bean size to aroma and (of course) taste will contribute to the green coffee score. This in turn determines price point. Stitch Coffee does not consider purchasing a coffee if it scores under 80 points. Moreover, the biggest tool in a Q grader’s arsenal is cupping.
For those unfamiliar with the term, cupping is the technical process that EVERYONE in the coffee chain—producers, suppliers, buyers, Q graders, and coffee aficionados in general—use to evaluate the quality of a coffee. As pictured above, cupping involves roasting only a small portion of a larger batch. The person cupping then brews the coffee with hot water and determines quality against criteria like cleanness, acidity, mouthfeel, and flavour comparisons (cupping multiple coffees at the same time).
ENDLESS CUPPINGS FOR QUALITY CONTROL
However, the quality control does not end there. After grading, our Head of Coffee Nameru will select the team’s favourite lots for purchase and request pre-shipment samples for cupping…the first cupping of many!
Pre-shipment: with this first cupping, Nameru not only double checks the assessment made by the Q grader but determines the tasting notes. While the supplier and producer would have determined tasting notes prior to this cupping, Nameru’s may differ slightly as every specialty coffee roaster will have their own quirks/recipes for roasting coffees. If the coffee passes this first cupping, we then approves the beans for shipment to Australia.
Landed: hey, anything can happen when a product moves across the sea over the span of a few weeks! For this reason, our team will cup a landed shipment sample of the coffee (i.e. when the coffee arrives in Australia). This assessment is to check for potential defects that may have arisen from change of environment during transport and ensure the tasting notes. We are ensuring that the quality of the coffee remains the same as the first cupping.
Post-dispatch: the third cupping happens when the lot arrives at the warehouse, and for reasons very similar to the second cupping (checking for defects that may occur as the coffee travels from the dock to the roastery).
Post-roasting: another critical cupping is the one that happens after we roast the beans in our Loring or Probat drum roasters! This cupping is to ensure that the batch was roasted according to our recipe and is a weekly occurrence (since we roast a new batch of coffee every week).
BREWING
Our cute kettles with gooseneck spouts and fancy scales aren’t just for show—every barista at Stitch Coffee takes a lot of pride in fulfilling a specialty lot’s potential. We do this by brewing up the best coffees possible in our QVB and Broadway cafés!
Not only do we fit out the cafés with the best equipment (La Marzocco espresso machines, Wally Milk steamers, Quinspin, Origami drippers, the works!), but train our baristas to brew specialty coffee in a variety of ways: espresso, pour over, batch brew and even lesser known options like nitro brew and cold brews are available to enjoy at Stitch!
Moreover, our baristas are some of Sydney’s finest! Our team is passionate about coffee, and constantly training in order to improve their abilities. To help each and every barista grow to their full potential, Stitch Coffee also hosts regular staff training sessions on everything from cupping to filter coffee that are run by our Head of Coffee Nameru, and Head Barista Fon.
SUSTAINABLE PACKAGING & GIVING BACK
While some in the industry would close out their definition of specialty coffee at roasting, Stitch Coffee likes to think of the bigger picture, which includes how we package our end product!
It’s no secret that climate change is a huge problem for the coffee industry. Rising temperatures is creating water scarcity in coffee-growing regions and endangering the existence of Arabica coffee. For this reason, sustainability has become a core value of our business, and we show up for the Earth in two ways:
- We design the majority of our packaging to be either reusable, home compostable, or recyclable (you can learn more and discover how to safely dispose of Stitch Coffee packaging here).
- We donate 2.2c for every kilo of coffee roasted in our roastery to World Coffee Research (WCR).
While 2.2c may not sound like much, keep in mind that we roast (on average) over 15 tonnes of coffee every month, with every small donation contributing to the larger goal of preserving Arabica beans for decades to come. For those who are unfamiliar with WCR, they are a non-profit industry body (specializing in agriculture) that funds research around creating/strengthening resilient varieties of coffee and methods for stabilising supply chains —ensuring quality, profitability, and sustainability for farmers—in the face of climate change.
Past the strict definition, Stitch Coffee believes that specialty coffee is so much more than a score above 80—it’s our life’s work! It’s been thrilling to see the specialty coffee industry become mainstream in Australia over the past decade, which is largely thanks to you, the consumer. We’re here to give you your flowers, as the demand for specialty coffee by enthusiastic coffee fans has directly contributed to fostering a community committed to expecting only the very best from every part of the supply chain.
The journey doesn’t end here! Explore our incredible range of specialty coffee online or in our cafés: Stitch Coffee QVB and Stitch Coffee Broadway.
