Gourmet Coffee

When you hear a gourmet coffee, what do you expect to see or taste? Refined coffee making you spend a fortune to enjoy it? The fact it could be found in a place where only initiates know? Or do you think it can be served in expensive restaurants only and usual people could never in their lives reach for it? If yes, then let me clear some things up for you.

Let's start from the word "gourmet". It seems that everyone these days uses the word but no one knows its original meaning.

Gourmet

A person who cultivates a discriminating palate for the enjoyment of good food and drink (but it's not our case)

A class of restaurant, cuisine, meal or ingredient of high quality (to underline the most essential), of special presentation, or high sophistication.

From: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So, does this all mean that gourmet coffee is something very special and fine? Yes, in a way but this term includes much more meanings than it is supposed to do.

When we are talking about gourmet coffee, we mean that coffees are grown all over the world and of course they differ one from another because of different climate, soil, cultivation, the chemicals used to help it grow and being protected from insects. If so, we should call gourmet coffee every coffee grown on our planet. It is true, in a way, but let's take into consideration only coffee processed by people who love their work.

The roasting process is important as well because of the kind of roasting, the device the bean is roasted in and the roaster which, too, may seriously influence this process. This second explanation why gourmet coffee is what it is has more to do with the term “specialty coffee”. Every coffee is special because of the reasons I gave you above and thus it should bear “specialty” name rather than “gourmet”.

When we speak about gourmet flavored coffee, it means nothing else but a coffee which was roasted and then added one or another flavoring by the roaster and cannot be repeated by another one.

Of course, gourmet coffee is a highest quality coffee. It has to be of a superior level and its processing implies high expenses which make it really costly. A good true coffee should be grown and processed by people who love their work and know what's what, giving it only the best nursing, careful roasting and grinding. And if a coffee possesses special tasting characteristics, nothing on earth would spoil it. Only then it can be considered a superior quality coffee!

See also: Blending Brewing Coffee Recipes Cupping Flavored Coffee Grinding Latte Art Roast Process