Coffee bean selection tips from a coffee bean hunter! There are four main principles for selecting coffee beans.

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Green coffee beans are an agricultural product, which means that even beans from the same farm may not be of the same quality in each batch due to various subjective and objective conditions. How to avoid buying green beans from becoming a random or gambling-like situation has always been a challenge for professional bean finders/green bean buyers. Bean finders must use proficient communication skills, quality judgment ability, and the ability to cope with situations year after year to solve problems, avoid uneven quality, and ensure that the best quality green beans are purchased at a reasonable price.

The purchasing process is full of variables. If a buyer spends a lot of money but buys poor quality green beans, it is nothing more than the following situations:

1. The test sample does not match the delivered product.

Second, blind buying! Buyers do not do any cupping to select beans, or only rely on second-hand flavor information to make purchase decisions.

3. Buyers often believe that the quality of green beans should be the supplier's commitment and responsibility, and often only confirm the quality at the time of delivery (sampling inspection), but ignore the storage details after arrival, resulting in quality problems after inventory.

Small-batch roasting businesses must remember: 4 pillars of green coffee quality

Like most emerging markets in Asia, small coffee roasters have become the mainstream in Taiwan's coffee circle in recent years. Take Taiwan as an example. There are about 3,000 self-made roasting shops that use small coffee roasters. Most of them start with 1 kg small coffee roasters, unlike American coffee roasters that generally use 15 kg coffee roasters as the mainstream. This scale of roasting beans is also reflected in the small purchase volume and highly diverse bean purchase strategy of Taiwanese coffee roasters. However, in practice, if there is no certain amount of purchase volume, it is impossible to establish a direct relationship with the source of raw beans. Small bean dealers will hardly have the opportunity to conduct pre-shipment samples, trial roasting and PSS cupping (Pre Shipping Sample) from the country of origin.

However, skipping the step of "inspecting and cupping samples" is very dangerous when purchasing green beans. No matter how famous and popular the green beans are, placing an order without doing cupping and inspecting the quality will become a so-called "blind purchase".

Blind purchases can easily lead to different perceptions of quality between the two parties. Buyers may argue with green bean dealers because the quality of the goods is not as good as expected, which only adds to the trouble. Trust is important in the market, but the quality of green beans is easily affected by the external environment, and any link may cause quality changes. Therefore, cupping and inspection of green beans before purchasing are very important.

I suggest that every green bean buyer refer to the "Four Pillars of Green Bean Quality" as a checklist before making a purchasing decision, and confirm that they have implemented the relevant work in every link, which will naturally reduce the tragedy of wrong purchases.

The first pillar is cupping identification; the second pillar is the condition of green beans. Check the real-time quality of green beans at key time points, and test the samples by trial roasting, and cross-compare the two. The following tools and testing standards are also applicable to every link after procurement.

Essential tools: density and moisture content tester

Essential action: visual inspection of the appearance, color, and smell of the green beans

Must-Do Cupping: Cupping and Recording of Small Roast Samples

Although defects or flaws in the appearance of raw beans can be observed visually, how much impact do defects have on quality? Imagine that if you report to the supplier that there is a problem with a batch of beans, the other party will definitely ask: How is the flavor? Being able to describe accurately will help communication and find the problem point. Whether you are looking for beans yourself, sharing in a group, or buying beans from a supplier, there must be someone in the team responsible for cupping and quality assessment.

I have fully introduced the details of cupping in Part 2 of my previous book, The Bean Hunter. The main items for checking the condition of green beans include:

The production areas receive newly processed samples from the beginning of the season, samples from the main harvest period, mature samples, key pre-export samples PSS, arrival tests, tests during warehouse storage, and finished roasted product tests; they even compare new beans from the same source with present beans (Present Crop), or older beans (Past Crop) tests, confirm the consistency of the source in the new and old years, and test "complaint batches" with quality issues... The above work all belongs to the quality judgment of green beans at different time points, referred to as the green bean status!

The transportation process is the third pillar. Especially when transported by sea or in hot climates and high humidity, quality often deteriorates. The bean finder must find out whether the quality has declined due to transportation, and only then can he ask the supplier to improve or switch to other sources of beans based on this conclusion.

Comparison and inspection of raw beans just delivered is very important, especially for self-roasting companies that adopt the "menu-based purchase of raw beans". You will not know how long the raw beans stay in the place of origin before arriving at the supplier's warehouse. Although low-temperature storage has become the standard storage environment for high-priced raw beans, there is a lot of unknown information about how long the purchased batch stays in the supplier's warehouse and the condition of the raw beans before shipment. It depends on the inspection of each batch after the spot is received. If there is any abnormality, feedback must be provided and filed for follow-up tracking or future purchases!

The storage environment is the fourth pillar. Taiwan and most of Asia have extremely hot and humid summers. Even the best green beans will decline due to the storage environment. It is not easy to maintain the quality of green beans. When coffee farmers hand over excellent green beans, it is very important for buyers to control the temperature and humidity after taking over. Cooperation from the source to the bean warehouse is indispensable!

When there is a problem with the quality of green beans, the process of inferring the cause through cupping is like a puzzle. Whether it is harvesting, post-processing or other processes, if you are not careful, a piece of the puzzle will be missing. If the missing piece is the edge of the whole puzzle, the quality difference is not big for commercial beans. Commercial beans have reasonable shortcomings. However, as long as the boutique beans are not required and maintained, the quality will definitely have a perceptible difference, which will eventually be reflected in the customer's reputation. If there is any abnormality, feedback must be given and filed for follow-up tracking or future purchases! It is necessary to improve the storage environment and establish cupping and record information for green beans in the new environment for subsequent quality inspection and comparison every season (at least once).

Source: "Bean Hunter 2: International Coffee Judges' African Adventure", published by Xiele Culture

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