Keeping Step with Innovations in Specialty Coffee

Specialty coffee is a coffee or coffee experience recognized for its distinctive attributes, and because of these attributes, has significant extra value in the marketplace. Specialty coffee is used to describe the highest grade of coffee available, and typically relates to the entire supply chain, single origin or estate coffee. Marketing specialty coffees and understanding what coffee consumers around the world are looking for can be challenging. This is why it is important for coffee exporters from the EAC to know the profile of potential buyers of East African specialty coffee.
The collaboration between ITC, through MARKUP, and the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) continues to flourish contributing to the increased adoption and export of specialty coffee from the EAC region.
The two organisations partnered again to conduct trainings in Burundi, Kenya and Tanzania from October to November 2021. From buyer requirements to consumer demands, the training helps coffee exporters familiarise themselves with global tastes and expectations.
Improved roasting skills are instrumental in improvement of the quality of the roasts. Therefore, coffee experts from companies and institutions in all three countries also had the opportunity to build upon their specialist knowledge in roasting for quality control in a laboratory setting. Students were tested in their understanding of and skills in designing and executing different positive roasted profiles as well their sensory recognition of roast defects.
Students were introduced to various chemical conditions and principles that cause physical properties. 13 participants in Burundi, 13 in Kenya and 10 in Tanzania passed the test for specialty coffee roasting at the intermediate level and qualified for SCA certificates.
Photo credits: ITC