Coffee Terms

Many words are associated with coffee. To the average drinker who just wants to have a cup in the morning, it might seem like a lot. To gain a true understanding of coffee and to get maximum enjoyment from coffee, however, one should have a fair understanding of many coffee-related terms. This brief guide explains some of the aspects of coffee and the coffee words associated with them.

Grades of Coffee

Grading, in coffee terms, is unfortunately pretty varied. A grading system is typically used so that the quality of an agricultural product can be checked. Every coffee-producing country, however, uses different grading terms. Most of the time, letters like grade A, B, C, are used. In some countries this letter system is used, but it is not uniform. Some examples of this are (with the highest to lowest grades for coffee):

Kenya: AA, A, B, etc. and

Columbia: Supremo, excelso.

If someone wants to understand what the grade from each coffee means, then they would have to memorize each country’s grading system. Due to this lack of a uniform grading system, understanding grading is not as easy with coffee as it is with other commodities.

“European” Coffee Names

Many coffees that are purchased have words on them like French, Italian, Continental, Viennese, etc. These words have nothing to do with the coffee’s origin but with the roast. These “European” roasts tend to be darker than most others, but one should not assume that French Roast coffee comes from France.

Different Market Names of Coffee

The difference between Sumatra coffee and Oaxaca coffee is not just flavor. The difference is in where they are grown. Sumatra’s name comes from the Indonesian island of Sumatra and Oaxaca comes from the region in Mexico. There are literally hundreds of different names for coffee that are named after the region from which they are grown.

Coffee Blend Names

Most of the coffee words that you hear are related to blend names. A blend is the mixture of two or more coffees together. These mixtures have names all their own which a lot of people are familiar with. Some of these blends give clues as to which coffees are involved. For example,

Mocha-Java is a combination of Yemeni mocha coffee and Java from Indonesia.

This kind of blend is intended to enhance the flavor since these two kinds of coffee have contrasting flavors that taste good when blended together.

Another type of blend is when expensive coffee is blended with inexpensive coffee. This is done primarily to make more money. This doesn’t, however, mean that the coffee tastes bad. It simply allows coffee sellers to sell more coffee at a more reasonable price. You might know some of these:

Jamaican Blue Mountain blends

Hawaiian Kona blends