What is boutique coffee? Is the flavor difference between commercial coffee and boutique coffee obvious?

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Qianjie-brief introduction of Commercial Coffee and Fine Coffee

As a proper term, boutique coffee (specialty coffee) was first put forward by Ms. erna knustsen, who is known as the godmother of boutique coffee, in the Tea and Coffee monthly (tea& coffee trade journal) in 1974, which showed that "only in the most favorable microclimate and soil and water can we cultivate boutique coffee with unique flavor". The aim is to distinguish it from the commercial coffee in New York futures market.

In 1972, Ms. Knudsen and six others, including donald n. Schoenholt, co-founded the American boutique coffee association scaa (specialtycoffee association of america), and the word "specialtycoffee" became a global language. Knudsen has always been opposed to the coffee industry blindly pursuing the invariance and monotonicity of flavor with low-cost formula beans, ignoring the unique "terroir" of coffee from different producing areas, that is, different soil, variety, climate, and soil and water, resulting in different coffee flavor, which is the soul of fine coffee. Without the unique regional flavor, it is not fine coffee, but ordinary commercial beans or canned coffee (large canned coffee beans or powder).

Boutique coffee does not refer to the boutique of coffee, although it does taste better than ordinary coffee. It means that only those coffee beans that exceed a certain standard (such as 85 points) after being scored by professional tasters (cup testers) can be called boutique coffee, and they can be traced back to planting manors, treatment plants, batches, planting height, treatment methods and so on must be transparent.

Ms. Knudsen first put forward the concept of boutique coffee, emphasizing the relationship between upstream planting environment and coffee quality. Today, the American Fine Coffee Association has redefined the concept of boutique coffee:

Carefully select the most suitable variety and plant it in the altitude, climate, soil and water environment that is most conducive to the development of coffee flavor. Careful washing and sun processing, select the most advanced raw beans without defects, and deliver them to customers with zero defects in the transportation process. After the superb craftsmanship of the roaster, it leads to the richest regional flavor, and then brews delicious coffee in a recognized way of extraction.

According to this definition, the connotation of fine coffee not only includes the most core factor of planting environment, but also includes three key processes: raw bean treatment process, baking process and extraction (brewing) process. In short, boutique coffee should be a high-quality coffee with "good raw beans, good roasting and good extraction".

The so-called commercial beans generally refer to the purchase of a large number of raw beans in the same producing area, taking beans in the sun, less work, short time, high output, low quality of commercial coffee beans, high defect rate, low price is its advantage, in terms of price, high-quality coffee beans are several times more expensive than commercial beans, from a cost point of view, the profit space of choosing commercial beans will be larger.

Knowledge: in terms of coffee flavor, the taste of coffee obtained from commercial beans is much lower than that of high-quality coffee beans. Generally, commercial beans are chosen to be used for blending. After mixing beans, they can be used to make Italian coffee such as lattes and kapos.

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