Five Reasons Why You Should Switch to Speciality Coffee

Speciality coffee… is it for you? (yup)

If you love coffee, you’ll be familiar with the elation – the utter joy – of drinking really good speciality coffee.

You take a sip and it’s wonderful. Fresh, flavourful, and 100% fantastic. It’s like fireworks in your mouth! And it makes you very happy.

And then there’s the experience of drinking low-quality coffee. It’s flat, disappointing and just a bit mehhh. More deflated tyre than firework illumination…

Want more Experience A? Want to put Experience B to bed forever? Then you need to make the switch to speciality coffee!

This might sound a bit fancy but don’t worry – speciality coffee is easy to understand, easy to brew and even easier to drink! It’s your kinda coffee, coffee lover!

What is speciality coffee?

Hey there. We’re Two Chimps, a UK speciality coffee roaster based in Rutland. So, what’s this speciality coffee that’s sounding so great?

Speciality coffee is the best kind of coffee. The term refers specifically to beans awarded 80 points or more by a certified coffee taster or Q-Grader (coffee’s answer to the sommelier). They only award high scores to coffees that taste interesting and vibrant. Flat, dull coffees receive 80 points or less and fall headfirst into the ‘commodity coffee’ category.

Here are some of the key features setting speciality apart:

• The farmers pick the coffee by hand to ensure only the ripest beans
• Single-origin rather than a hodgepodge of beans
• Vibrant, flavourful taste
• Expertly roasted in smaller batches (this helps to bring out the coffee’s natural sweetness)
• Pays the producers a fair price

What is commodity coffee?

Commodity coffee is the other type of coffee. It’s what you find in some supermarkets, chain café cups and most instant blends. Drink commodity, and you’ll probably be drinking low-quality robusta beans. These bitter, high-caffeine beans don’t taste great. They’re cheap and easy to pick, though, which is why they make their way into commodity bags.

Five reasons to choose speciality!

Weighing up the pros and cons? Wondering whether you should buy from a speciality coffee roaster?

Here are five reasons why you should!

Better flavour and natural sweetness

Speciality coffee tastes miles better than commodity instant. Why? It’s largely down to the beans.

Speciality coffees usually feature single-origin arabica beans. These are the quality cousin of bitter robusta. They tend to grow at higher altitudes (this is where the best coffee-growing conditions are) and taste sweeter and way way way more flavourful.

Speciality coffee farmers pick their arabica coffees by hand to ensure only ripe beans make it into your bag. Much like any fruit, ripeness is key for perfect flavour and bucket-loads of sweetness! Commodity coffee tends to be strip-picked, which gives a messy jumble of ripe coffee beans plus sour-tasting under-ripe ones. The result? A very unexceptional commodity coffee.

Freshness guaranteed: fresh is best!

What comes after picking and processing? Roasting!

Make the switch to a speciality coffee roaster, and you’ll get freshly roasted coffee every time. Here’s why:

• We roast in small, 12kg batches each week. This means our roasted coffee doesn’t spend weeks hanging around the roastery before you enjoy it.
• Commodity roasters, on the other hand, roast in bulk. Their low-graded roasted beans are bagged and stored for months before dispatch. There’s a fair chance they spend another couple of months sitting on supermarket shelves, too.

Freshness is key when it comes to coffee. Old coffee will start to taste dull and uninspiring. Think back to that deflated tyre experience…

We generally recommend drinking coffee within 12 weeks of the roast. It’s not ⚠dangerous⚠  after this point; it just won’t taste as good!

Speciality coffee is Kind Coffee

We can’t hide the fact that speciality coffee costs a bit more. But what does this tell you? That your speciality coffee roaster is paying the growers a fair price.

Here at Two Chimps, we pay between 30 and 150% more than the ‘going rate’ for our speciality beans. This helps to make sure the farmers receive a high price and gives them the chance to invest in their business, future and livelihood.

On the other side of the coffee coin is the C-price. This is the price for commodity coffee traded on the New York Stock Exchange. It can fluctuate radically and has nothing to do with quality. It’s all about quantity with the C-price. Yo-yoing prices put commodity farmers at risk of unstable incomes, making it almost impossible for them to plan ahead.

Coffee that’s better for the planet

Choose speciality coffee from Two Chimps, and you get a gold star for greenness!

That’s because we’re a carbon-neutral roastery. We use rigorous third-party verification to ensure we’re doing everything possible to reduce and offset our carbon emissions.

Recycling is another plus point of choosing an ethical coffee roastery like ours. You’ll receive your Two Chimps coffee packed in bags made from recyclable LDPE. Each bag has a nifty valve in the back to allow the unwanted gases to escape and keep your coffee fresh! And you know how important that is…

Create a plan to make life easier

All this freshness and recyclability and flavour doesn’t need to come with faff. Because you can enjoy hand-roasted speciality coffee delivered straight to your door!

Purchase single orders online, or make life really simple with a no-strings-attached Two Chimps coffee subscription. Other coffee subscription clubs might tell you which coffee to choose or only send out wholebeans. But set up a Two Chimps coffee plan, and you control every step! Select:

• Your coffee
• How often you receive it
• How much you receive
• The device it’s ground for

This is a no pomp and jargon kind of subscription. We’re a helpful bunch, too. Got a question? Not sure which grind size to pick or how much coffee to order? Just get in touch – we’re always on hand to help!

Dealing with real people… It’s just another reason to choose a speciality coffee roaster over those big-name instants!

Like the sound of it? Want to find out more about fresh, no-fuss speciality coffee subscriptions? Hit the button below!