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Government of countries which export coffee
usually operate or advise a department or agency which establishes a
standard, regulates and monitors the coffee trade, and assesses bean
quality through quality control inspectors. In many countries, the
administrator is a coffee board authority; in others it is an institute,
possibly under the control of the ministry of agriculture or of trade
and industry. Grading Coffee
Unfortunately, there is no
international standardization of coffee quality, as coffee is graded by
a set of characteristics peculiar to each producing country. A sample of
beans is taken from a bag, judged according to that country's standards,
and the sack of beans from which the sample was taken is given a quality
rating, good or bad, depending on the outcome of the assessment. The
characteristics by which most coffee is graded are appearance (bean
size, uniformity, color); number of defective beans per sample; cup
quality, which of course includes flavor and body; and whether the beans
roast well and evenly. Because the classifications of grades and the
descriptive terminology differ from country to country, and the
standards of quality are only relevant within that country's range of
coffees, it is not easy to interpret a coffee's true quality without
some familiarization of the particular country of origin's grading
system. There is at least one constant, uniform reference from country
to country: all countries determine bean size with standardized screens,
so the buyer doesn't have to guess how large is large or how small is
small from the producer's relative point of view.
A coffee may bear an exotic regional
name, and/or may be classified by the processing (washed or unwashed).
It may have a descriptive title, or just an alphabetical letter or two,
possibly followed by a number. For example, in certain countries where
the coffee industry has been nationalized, the grading system may seem
to be rather uninspiring, as in Kenya, where a bag of coffee may be a
washed "AA", with a number to denote one of ten cup-quality classes; yet
this ordinary-sounding coffee is acknowledged by most experts to be
consistently one of the world's best coffees. In India, however, a
Plantation A - assume "washed" because an unwashed is designated
"cherry" - was one of the highest qualities available, but was not in
the same league as the Kenyan. India, however, has recently changed to a
free market, so it remains to be seen what grading system will be used.
Most Caribbean and Central American
countries indicate quality by words denoting altitude: Costa Rica's
eastern regions produce LGA (low grown Atlantic), MGA (medium grown
Atlantic), HGA (high grown Atlantic) while the western slopes grow HB
(hard bean), MHB (medium hard bean), GHB (good hard bean) and SHB
(strictly hard bean); the harder the bean, the higher the altitude and
the price! The best plantations of Costa Rica can label their own bags
as well denote the altitude, and both Costa Rica and Nicaragua also use
exotic regional names. Nicaragua also indicates classifications of
quality and altitude with titles like Central Bueno Lavado (MG), Central
Altura for high grown, and Central Estrictamente Altura (SHG). Guatemala
is a bit more obscure with its altitude designations, since the
adjectives, which sound purely descriptive, indicate altitudes beginning
at 700m and rising to 1,700m: Good Washed, Extra Good Washed, Prime
Washed, Extra Prime Washed, Semi Hard Bean (SH), Hard Bean (HB), Fancy
Hard Bean and Strictly Hard Bean (SHB).
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