Coffee Glossary
Great coffee uses a lot of words. Here's what they actually mean.
Tasting Terms
Acidity
Not sourness — though the two can overlap if something's gone wrong. In specialty coffee, acidity is a good thing: it's the bright, lively quality that makes a coffee feel alive in the mouth. Think of the difference between a flat, dull apple and a crisp, fresh one. Ethiopian coffees tend to have high acidity; Brazilian coffees tend to have lower. Neither is better — it's just a matter of preference.
Body
The weight of the coffee in your mouth — how thick or thin it feels. A full-bodied coffee feels rich and substantial, like whole milk. A light-bodied coffee feels clean and delicate, more like water.
Mouthfeel
Related to body, but more about texture — whether the coffee feels velvety, creamy, juicy, or crisp on the palate. It's a useful word once you start tasting coffees side by side.
Sweetness
No sugar added — this is the natural sweetness that develops in the coffee cherry and survives the roasting process. High-quality, carefully processed coffee has a noticeable sweetness without anything added to it. It's one of the main markers of quality.
Tasting Notes / Flavor Notes
The descriptors you'll see on our packaging — chocolate, stone fruit, blueberry, bergamot, and so on. These aren't added flavorings, of course. They're naturally occurring compounds in the coffee, shaped by the variety, the origin, the processing method, and the roast. Think of them as pointers: they tell you roughly what to expect in your cup.
Clean Cup
When a coffee tastes clear and bright without any muddy, fermented, or off flavours getting in the way, we call it clean. A clean cup lets the good things — sweetness, acidity, origin character — come through without interference.
Specialty Coffee
Technically, specialty coffee is coffee that scores 80 points or above on the SCA (Specialty Coffee Association) 100-point scale, as assessed by a trained taster called a Q-grader. More broadly, it's the term for the movement built around high-quality, traceable, carefully farmed and processed coffee. All of the coffee we roast is specialty coffee.
Cupping
The standard tasting method used across the coffee industry — by producers, importers, roasters, and buyers alike. Ground coffee is steeped in hot water in small bowls and tasted with a spoon. It sounds simple, and it is. It's also remarkably effective for evaluating and comparing coffees side by side. We cup every batch we roast.
Processing Methods
Processing refers to what happens to the coffee cherry after it's been harvested — specifically, how the fruit is removed from the seed inside (which is what we call the coffee bean). The method used has a major influence on the flavor in your cup.
Washed / Washed Process
The fruit is removed from the bean shortly after harvesting, and the beans are fermented in water to loosen any remaining fruit before being washed clean and dried. The result tends to be a cleaner, brighter cup where the character of the origin and the variety can really express themselves. Countries known for excellent washed coffee include Kenya, Rwanda, Colombia, and Honduras.
Natural / Natural Process
The whole cherry is dried in the sun, fruit and all, before the dried fruit is removed. The longer contact with the fruit adds sweetness and often produces fruity, jammy, or wine-like flavors. Our Brazilian coffees are natural process, as are some remarkable coffees from places like Ethiopia and Uganda.
Honey Process
A method that sits between washed and natural. The skin is removed, but some of the sticky fruit mucilage is left on the bean during drying. The result tends to be sweet and smooth — less fruity than natural, more rounded than washed.
Fermentation
During processing, coffee goes through a fermentation stage — either in water (washed coffees) or slowly as the fruit dries (natural coffees). This isn't a fault; it's a deliberate part of the process that builds complexity and depth. Controlled fermentation is good. Uncontrolled fermentation is what creates the unpleasant sour or rotten notes you sometimes get in lower-quality coffee.
Sugar Cane Decaf
Our decaf uses a process where ethyl acetate — a naturally occurring compound derived from fermented sugar cane — is used to remove the caffeine. It's a gentler method than many alternatives, and it does a better job of preserving the coffee's original character. The result is a decaf that actually tastes like coffee.
Origin & Growing
Single Origin
Coffee from one specific place — a single farm, cooperative, or defined region. The opposite of a blend. Single origin coffees let you taste exactly what that place, that variety, and that processing method produced. Most of our range is single origin.
Blend
A mix of coffees from different origins or lots, combined to create a balanced, consistent profile. Blending can be used to balance strengths and weaknesses, or to hit a flavor target that no single coffee quite reaches on its own.
Terroir
Borrowed from the wine world. Terroir refers to the combination of environmental factors — soil, altitude, rainfall, temperature, microclimate — that give a coffee its particular character. It's why an Ethiopian coffee tastes nothing like a Colombian one, even if they're the same variety and processed the same way.
Altitude / m.a.s.l.
You'll often see coffee described by its growing altitude in metres above sea level (m.a.s.l.). Higher altitude generally means slower cherry development, which tends to mean more complex flavour and brighter acidity. Most specialty coffee is grown above 1,200 meters, although great farmers can create good quality at any elevation.
Varietal / Cultivar
Just like wine grapes, different coffee plants produce different flavours. The coffee plant species most of us drink is Coffea arabica, but within that species there are hundreds of named varieties — Bourbon, Typica, SL-28, Catuaí, and many more. Varietal character is one of the building blocks of a coffee's flavour profile.
Bourbon
One of the oldest and most celebrated coffee varieties, and an ancestor to many modern cultivars. Bourbon coffees are prized for their sweetness, balanced acidity, and complexity.
Heirloom / Ethiopian Heirloom
Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, and its forests contain thousands of wild and landrace coffee varieties that haven't been formally named or catalogued. When you see "heirloom" on an Ethiopian coffee, it means the trees are a mix of these native varieties — a genetic diversity that contributes to the unique floral and fruity complexity Ethiopian coffees are famous for.
Smallholder Farmers
The majority of the world's coffee is grown by smallholder farmers — people farming small plots of land, often just a few hectares. Many of the coffees we buy come from smallholder communities, either directly from a farm or through cooperatives and washing stations that pool and process their coffee together.
Washing Station
In East African coffee-producing countries, a washing station is a central processing facility where smallholder farmers bring their freshly harvested cherries to be processed — pulped, fermented, washed, and dried. The quality of the washing station has a huge influence on what ends up in your cup.
Cooperative
A producer cooperative is a group of farmers who work together — sharing equipment, processing infrastructure, and market access. Cooperatives allow smallholder farmers to produce better coffee and negotiate fairer prices than they could alone.
Direct Trade
We buy as directly as we can — visiting farms, building long-term relationships with producers, and paying well above commodity prices for exceptional coffee. Direct trade isn't a certification; it's a way of working. It means more transparency, better quality, and a fairer deal for the people who grow the coffee.
Traceability
You should be able to know where your coffee came from. Traceability means being able to follow a coffee back to its origin — the country, the region, the farm, sometimes even the specific lot or harvest. All of our coffees are traceable to farm or cooperative level.
Agroforestry
A farming approach that integrates coffee plants with native trees, shade canopy, and other crops rather than growing coffee in monoculture rows. It's better for biodiversity, better for soil health, and — because shade slows cherry development — often better for flavour too.
Roasting
Green Coffee
Unroasted coffee beans. Green coffee is what we buy from producers and importers; it only becomes the aromatic brown thing you recognise after it goes through the roaster.
Roast Profile
The temperature and time curve a roaster uses to develop a coffee. Different profiles produce different results — emphasising sweetness, acidity, or body, and drawing out or dialling back different characteristics. We develop custom roast profiles for each coffee we roast.
Light / Medium / Dark Roast
Roast level describes how far a coffee has been developed. Light roasts preserve more of the coffee's original character — more acidity, more origin flavour, often more complexity. Dark roasts develop more roasty, caramelised, and bitter notes, and the origin character becomes less prominent. We roast on the light to medium part of the spectrum, and every coffee type is treated with an individual approach.
Brewing
Filter Coffee
Coffee brewed by passing hot water through ground coffee and a filter — paper or metal. Filter brewing includes pour-over, Chemex, and batch brew. Filter coffees tend to be lighter in body and more delicate in flavor than espresso, and are often the best way to taste a coffee's origin character.
Espresso
Coffee brewed under pressure — hot water forced through finely ground coffee. The result is a small, concentrated shot with a rich body and, when done well, a layer of crema on top. Most milk-based drinks — flat white, cappuccino, cortado — are built on espresso.
Pour-Over / V60
A manual filter brewing method where you pour hot water slowly and deliberately over ground coffee in a filter cone. It gives you a lot of control over the result, and tends to produce a clean, bright, nuanced cup. The V60 is a specific (very popular) filter dripper made by Hario.
Batch Brew
Automated filter brewing — a machine that brews a full carafe at once. Used in cafés for high-volume filter service. When done well with good equipment and fresh coffee, batch brew can be excellent.
Cold Brew
Coffee steeped in cold or room-temperature water for an extended period — usually 12 to 24 hours. The slow cold extraction produces a smooth, low-acid concentrate that can be served over ice or diluted to taste.
