r/SpecialtyCoffee

I've been cutting down caffeine for the past few weeks and swapped to decaf for my 2nd-3rd cup of the day. I love my current decaf beans but I want to try more variations...I feel like it's a bit harder to find a good decaf I actually will like. Any recommendations for a good quality decaf I can try next?
I usually like light-bodied coffee with fruity notes, but if there's any other interesting notes, I'd love to try as well :)

Been chasing a good cup for about eight months now, mostly Kalita Wave, and no matter what I did the coffee always tasted kind of muted and one dimensional. Fresh beans, good grind, decent water, still flat.

Turns out my kettle temp was way off. I was eyeballing "just off the boil" instead of actually checking, and my gooseneck apparently loses heat fast because of the thin walls. Got a cheap thermometer last week just to see what was going on and I was pouring at like 178F instead of the 200-205F range I thought I was in.

Dialed it in properly this weekend with a washed Ethiopian I've had sitting around and it was like a different bag of coffee. Actual florals showing up, more sweetness, way more definition between sips instead of everything blurring together.

Feels obvious in hindsight but I really thought temp was the variable I could fudge a little since everyone talks so much about grind size and ratio. Lesson learned, guess I'll actually use the thermometer instead of leaving it in the drawer.

Anyone else had one variable turn out to be the hidden culprit after ignoring it for way too long?

I can read “blueberry, jasmine, bergamot” on a bag and understand the words individually, but then I drink the coffee and think… okay, where exactly am I supposed to be tasting all of that? 😂

Did this get easier for you with experience, or did you just stop caring about the notes?

I drank instant for most of my life and never thought about it. What got me curious was cafés: their coffee tasted different to mine and I could not work out why. Three years later I have a lever press, a hand grinder and far too many opinions, so I wrote down the things I wish someone had told me at the start.

A few things that took me embarrassingly long to learn:

- Pressure does not come from the machine. It comes from the coffee resisting the water. If your grind is too coarse there is nothing to push against, and no amount of pulling slowly fixes a fast shot.

- Acidity is not sourness. Acidity is brightness and it is a compliment. Sourness is under-extraction, and the fix is to grind finer rather than to buy different beans.

- Crema tells you about freshness, not quality. Robusta reliably produces more crema than arabica whatever the cup tastes like.

- Rest your beans. Roughly 2 to 5 days for a dark roast, longer for light, longer again for espresso. Published sources genuinely disagree here, so I put the disagreement in rather than inventing a clean rule.

It is written for someone who knows nothing, so if that is not you it will be too basic. There is an interactive slider for roast levels that I am quite pleased with.

Full disclosure, it is on my own site: https://www.shashwa7.in/coffee

Please remove if not allowed.

Hello, I am a Doctoral Student and nearing completion of my academic journey. I would like to ask for some assistance. I need to conduct some interviews with small business coffee shop owners. If this is something anyone is interested, please comment or perhaps message me. I appreciate any help or guidance, and again, if this is not allowed, please remove.

Thank you!

I'm trying to find a simple way to categorize specialty coffees for people who don't know much about coffee.

For example, someone might buy a very citrusy, floral coffee and make a latte. The coffee may be excellent, but the milk can completely change the experience, making them think "I bought the wrong coffee." I don't want to simply categorize coffees as "for milk" vs. "for filter", since a floral coffee can also make an amazing straight espresso.

I'm thinking more about categories based on the experience/profile of the coffee rather than origin or processing.

Some initial ideas:

**- Daily** — balanced, sweet, familiar, easy to drink.

**- Selection** — more distinctive and expressive, but still approachable.

**- Exploration** — unusual, surprising or experimental.

**- Decaf** — its own category.

But I'm not attached to these names or structure.

**If you had to create 3–5 simple categories for specialty coffee aimed at non-coffee nerds, what would they be?**

I'd love ideas that communicate the experience rather than technical details like origin, varietal, washed/natural/anaerobic, etc.

Hi all, I brewed a coffee which has a roast date of 4th August and I brewed it today (11th August). I want to know what is the ideal time we should wait for before brewing after roasting. I have never gone in so much detail before so I don't have a clear idea, sharing my observations below

Brewed using an Origami through a Kalita filter

15gm light roast beans and 225ml water

1. During the bloom the coffee cloud/foam bulged a lot (I don't know the technical terms here, please help me what exactly is this called, thanks)

2. The coffee did taste bitter and very less after taste which is usually sweeter in my observations for most of the light roasts

I want to understand more about it and how much the gap between roasting and brewing matters.

Thanks in advance

I’m fairly new to specialty coffee and I’m trying to figure out what I actually like. I’m not trying to argue that any particular coffee or brewing method is bad. I think I may just have a somewhat unusual palate, and I’m hoping to find people who have had a similar experience.

My preference seems to be low acidity, sweet, chocolatey/nutty, with good body. One drink that I would repeatably call “Not bad” is a Starbucks Americano, which is probably a useful reference point. I generally don’t enjoy bright/fruity/acidic coffees or funky/fermented flavors.

I started keeping my own completely unscientific scoring system:
Sour Index (SI): 1–10, where 1 = extremely sour and 10 = not sour at all
Flavor Index (FI): 1–10, how much I enjoy the overall flavor
Body Index (BI): 1–10, how much body/mouthfeel I perceive
So far:
Ethiopian (can’t remember roaster): SI 1 / FI 1 / BI 3
Ceremony Antithesis: SI 2 / FI 2 / BI 4
Foxtail Colombian: SI 3 / FI 3 / BI 6
Starbucks Caffè Verona (preground grocery): SI 5 / FI 5 / BI 6
Belize Jaguar Espresso (bakeD Coffee House): SI 5 / FI 6 / BI 8 — probably my favorite so far. Very smooth, oily and full-bodied, although I still wanted more chocolate/sweetness.
Jamaica Blue Mountain: SI 6 / FI 4 / BI 4 — very smooth, but almost too bland for me.
Guatemala Red Pacamara: SI 3 / FI 2 / BI 5 — had a plum/fruit character that I really didn’t enjoy.

I also had a coffee shop make the same Colombian beans as a pour-over, French press, and Americano so I could compare the brewing methods. All three tasted sour/fermented to me when hot, although they became noticeably sweeter as they cooled. The pour-over was particularly unpleasant to my taste.

Then I tried a small experiment that made me think acidity really may be the main issue for me: I added a tiny amount of baking soda to a cup of coffee, and the change in perceived sourness was dramatic. Obviously that’s not a recommendation for how to brew coffee, but it made me wonder if what I’ve been interpreting as “bad coffee” is actually just a sensitivity to acidity.

I’ve also been using a blade grinder, which obviously isn’t giving me a great baseline for judging the coffee. I’m in the process of buying a conical burr grinder, so I’m hoping that will eliminate at least some of the variables.

At this point I’m basically wondering:
Are there other people who prefer low-acid, sweet, chocolatey/nutty, full-bodied coffee and don’t particularly enjoy the bright/fruity/funky characteristics that seem to be common in specialty coffee?

If so, what beans, origins, processing methods, or roast styles have you found that really work for you?
I’d especially appreciate recommendations for coffees I could try in smaller quantities. I’m happy to experiment — I’m just trying to avoid buying 12 oz bags of coffee that I’m unlikely to enjoy.

I know of some ok shops here in Norway I can order from, but in theory it would be better to order from the country they are grown, we have no toll from many coffee growing countries.

Since I'm not a professional, and I don't cup, I don't own a refractometer, and I can't reliably name more than three tasting notes. I'm just someone with a dependency who spent a week in Baoshan. So this comes down to three questions. Does it taste good. Is it comfortable to sit in. Is it worth going out of your way for.

Why Baoshan? Yunnan grows around 99% of China's coffee, and historically most of that was commodity-grade material headed for instant. The specialty slice is small and recent. Baoshan sits on the eastern flank of the Gaoligong range, and the estates cluster in a dry-hot valley called Lujiangba (潞江坝) on the Nujiang. That gives you something unusual: farms about an hour from a mid-size city, most with a café attached, most roasting and pouring what they grew. Estate-direct in the most literal sense.

Five places. Two in town, three in the valley.

1. Xiyin Coffee (希音咖啡), city center Best thing in town.

Went every morning. Mist Flower (雾花), Zi (紫), Blood Finch (血雀), and their dark-roast Americano all held up.

The word I'd use in Chinese is 不装, more like "doesn't put on an act." Enough seats, comfortable ones, nobody hovering. Reading, working, talking, staring at nothing. Fine for all of it.

Their other location, Sensory Research Society (感官研究社), is the fancier one. A narrow passage down the middle, a light well, transition spaces stitching the rooms together, and a long bar that makes coffee during the day and drinks at night. There's a Chinese internet phrase for that: 早C晚A. Originally a skincare thing (vitamin C in the morning, retinol at night), now repurposed as Coffee early, Alcohol late. This place runs it literally.

One catch: doesn't open until 10am.

2. Qiwei Coffee (气味咖啡), city center. Worth a stop if you're passing.

First visit was in heavy rain afternoon and I only had one thing, a tamarillo (树番茄) drink. Went back for an Americano, both VERY GOOD!!!

Also 不装. It's a Southwest Chinese vernacular house, forty-odd years old, renovated so the original timber frame and red brick are exposed again rather than buried under finish. Second floor is the better room

3. Huke Coffee Estate (乎壳咖啡庄园), Lujiangba valley. The best thing I did in Baoshan.

Staff pointed me at Miye (蜜野 "honey wild"). What I could actually pick out: big aroma, and a bright acidity that never turned sharp. That's the honest limit of my palate

I wanted to buy Xiangshan (响山) to take home. Sold out the day I went, next lot around December. Everything except the Yirgacheffe is their own crop.

Coffee, service, and the view down the valley all deliver, and it's really AMAZING. Rare that all three do.

4. Gongjiang Coffee Estate (贡江咖啡庄园), 15 minutes from Huke. Come for photos, but maybe Think twice for coffee

Small. The whole space is organized around a century-old banyan, which is genuinely the point of the place. But the amla drink I ordered (油柑, Indian gooseberry, big on Chinese drink menus the last few years) was unremarkable and not cheap. If you're shooting, come. If you're driving out specifically for a good cup, reconsider.

5. Xinzhai Coffee Estate (新寨咖啡庄园), great to photograph. The coffee, less so.

Navigation warning first, because I nearly got this wrong. Despite the name, it is not in Xinzhai village. It's in Bawan (坝湾). Huke and Gongjiang are the ones near Xinzhai. Don't type "Xinzhai" into a map app and start driving. Check the full name and confirm the pin.

The building is a 2018 project by TAO (Trace Architecture Office, Hua Li). The site had an abandoned 1980s cinema on it. It's organized as a loop of corridors, brick arches, and three courtyards strung together, and it's easily the best-built thing in the valley.

I got rain, so the interiors were dim. Brick vaults, corridors, and punched window openings are exactly the kind of thing that needs direct sun to read properly. In clear weather it would be a different building.

The coffee: I ordered a cold brew. Possibly because I arrived late in the day, it tasted like mung bean soup. The most distinctive cup of the trip. Not a compliment.$

Huke Coffee Estate

Huke Coffee Estate

Huke Coffee Estate

Lujiangba

Xiyin Coffee

Sensory Research Society

Qiwei Coffee

Qiwei Coffee

Gongjiang Coffee Estate

Gongjiang Coffee Estate

Xinzhai Coffee Estate

Hey, what are your recommendations for the best single-serve electric espresso grinder on a budget of around 300 euros?

I'm looking for as little dead space as possible and precise grind settings.