The Specialty Coffee Journey: Farm to Cup

Keep Reading To Find Out Why Bruvi® B-Pods® Are Made With Specialty Coffee

If you aren’t entirely sure what is meant by specialty coffee, this would be a great time to go back and read our post on specialty coffee basics. While we enjoy talking about what specialty coffee means, we think it’s equally important to understand the beautiful process of maintaining the highest quality standard from farm to cup. Here’s how that happens.

Farm

This is where it all begins. Most producers have spent decades learning from their land and refining farming techniques to produce the specialty coffees that we use exclusively in our B-Pods. These coffees must be grown in specific altitudes and climates, with great attention to detail, to receive the specialty coffee designation. Also, they must be completely free of defect, picked at optimal ripeness and treated with care throughout the process to ensure the quality is never compromised. At the end of the day, the producer’s hard work pays off as they will get top dollar for these coffees that will help support their families and the broader communities within these growing regions.

Green Coffee Buyer

Once the coffee leaves the farm, the next step is when it reaches the green coffee buyer. This is someone who has been certified as a Q grader by the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) for their ability to objectively score Arabica coffee based on a series of sensory tests. During the evaluation, a coffee either receives the specialty grade mark, scoring 80+ points, or becomes like the 95% of coffee in the world which is lower grade commodity coffee. At Bruvi, this is the important step where our team of green coffee experts evaluates and identifies the best specialty grade coffees at any given time to feature in our pods.

Roaster

Once the green coffee is purchased, it is then sent to a coffee roaster that uses a combination of art and science to get the desired quality and flavor out of the final roasted coffee. Coffee roasters will develop a deep knowledge and understanding of that coffee by focusing on the impact of each variable throughout the roast process. Once the desired profile is reached, the roaster documents all aspects of that roast to make sure it can be precisely replicated in the future. At Bruvi, our team of expert roasters run countless sample roasts until they find the ideal profile that brings out the best that each coffee has to offer. That is the final roasted coffee that makes its way into our B-Pods.

Cup

Let’s do a little summary of how we got here. First, the bean was perfectly grown and processed to meet the highest quality standard by the producer. Then, a green coffee buyer hand picked specific coffees for their quality and flavor profiles. Lastly, the roaster took these green coffee beans and determined the ideal roast profile to showcase the desired flavor.

Now that we are all caught up, we reach the last step where the coffee is actually brewed (by a barista or you at home!). While everything has been done meticulously to this point, this is where you can make or break your coffee. Use the wrong brew ratio, brew time, grind size, water temperature or even brew method and all that hard work beforehand can go down the drain. While baristas in your favorite coffee shop receive comprehensive training to learn how to do this with expert level procession, we know that is not the case for your average Jane or Joe. With Bruvi, we make it as simple as picking a pod and pressing a button. The expertise needed to deliver the perfect cup, also know as the Golden Cup Standard*, is already pre-programmed into your Bruvi brewer. Our smart brew technology recognizes individual pods and automatically adjusts the temperature, pressure, brew time and water injection to ensure the optimal brew.  Press a button and feel confident knowing that your coffee is brewed to perfection, every time!

*As defined by the Specialty Coffee Association