The story begins more than five years ago, when all I knew about coffee was that my dad liked loose coffee, my mum liked it from the machine and I liked it instant with two tablespoons of sugar and milk. At the popular and probably the biggest coffee shop chain in the world, I took only the big black. I thought a draught of 300ml espresso would get me on my feet. Of course, how else do I add the right amount of sugar to it. Although I only went there once every few months because the price scared me. Then I first heard about specialty, which seemed out of my financial reach at all. After all, how can you give so much money for coffee? Coffee is coffee. A bean, small, shiny preferably, because that's what the adverts said it was supposed to be and that's that. Still the conviction that Italian coffees are the best and that's the end of it, full stop.

And in fact Italian coffee at the time was the best for me. It was bitter, making it strong in flavour, and everyone, including me, thought it was exactly what it was supposed to be.

Until that moment came when, somewhat by accident, I found myself in the world of specialty. And everything I had previously known turned out to be largely a lie. I understood why people were so enthusiastic about coffee, which for me was just a supporting element of a morning cigarette or an apparent wake-up call during a hard day. I also understood why its, for most, exorbitant price, which, when broken down, is not so high after all.

You will probably ask why I think this? I will be happy to tell you.

It all starts at the very beginning of the journey of our favourite brew, which is nowhere else but at the coffee plantation. Specialty, or at least a large proportion of premium coffees, are coffees that usually grow not on perfectly level land, but on high mountain slopes. To get there, there is nothing left to do but walk in. It takes several or even a dozen people to make the harvest fruitful - that is, workers already have to be employed on the plantation. We have the first cost ahead of us.

The second cost is that you have to invest in the knowledge of your staff. So that they pick only the ideal coffee cherries that will meet our taste requirements in their final preparation. Knowledge - it costs the most.

The latter also translates into post-harvest time, as the coffee needs to be fermented properly and infrastructure is needed for this. Building and then maintaining such a place is a financially demanding undertaking. In addition, the green beans must lie in the right conditions so that they do not spoil. Specially adapted warehouses are used for this, with the right air circulation, temperature and humidity.

Once the coffee has established itself on the farm, it has to go to the place where all the magic happens: the roaster. There the roaster turns something that is not drinkable into something that becomes very drinkable! Of course, there are proponents of drinking green coffee, but I personally don't see the point of it. Let's compare it to eating a steak. Namely: you can eat it raw, but it definitely tastes better when it is fried.

The same is true for coffee.

Coffee is at its best when we roast it in the right way. Let's use the steak example again. You can eat it burnt, but it's at its tastiest when it's roasted "just right"! The situation is identical with beans. Store-bought coffees tend to be glossy due to the fact that they have been burnt, not roasted or roasted, as you prefer.

All the substances that should be in the bean seek an outlet under the pressure and temperature of the roaster. For this reason, preparing the perfect roasting recipe requires a great deal of knowledge and time on the part of the roaster.

However, before roasting can take place, the grain must first be obtained. This is also demanding work. You have to be careful not to get the wrong product. It is best to take green beans from a reliable importer. And it is fabulous if this is done in close cooperation with the grower, which is also an expensive business.

Once the roaster has the quality of the raw material he dreams of, he must process it properly thermally. Prepare a kind of recipe for firing the grain in a large oven. Most often, such kitchen games take place on a so-called sampler. This is a small cooker in which grain samples are fired so that large quantities of raw material are not wasted. When the profile on the sampler is ready, it has to be transferred to the large oven and the actual firing for distribution begins.

However, it is not that simple and requires work, skill, knowledge and the patience of the roaster. Why? Let me use another culinary example. Let's assume that you cook on a gas burner in your kitchen every day. One day you go to a party with friends. You have promised to cook your showpiece dish for them. On their cooker. You arrive and there's an induction hob. You're not happy, are you? Why? After all, both hobs give you heat, you can cook great on both. However, you know very well that the properties of these two burners are completely different from each other. It's the same with cookers. A different job needs to be done with each cooker. So the roaster has to embrace the relationship between, let's call it in kitchen style, "induction" and "gas".

After firing, of course, there are tests, corrections....

...testing, tweaking, testing, tweaking and, at the very end, distributing the beans further afield - to specialist shops and our homes. Now we can enjoy our favourite coffee, the price of which includes paying for the toil of the grower, his workers and the hard work of the roaster.

You will probably ask, why then is shop/industrial/commodity coffee so much cheaper? I hasten to answer!
The shop shelf is filled to the brim with packets of coffee. We see gorgeous packaging and colourful labels that usually contain only one piece of information about the origin of the bean. All they say is: 100% arabica. Or a fabulous name like 'Barista Edition' or some other specialist. Alternatively: a blend of beans from South America, Africa and Asia, i.e. from all over the world - guess where exactly. Probably not even the importer himself knows. What does this tell us about the origin of the coffee? Well, almost as much as nothing.

Inside such packaging, we will usually find coffees that have not been selected by hand, but by machine. What this really gives us is a lack of selection. The machine will pick up everything - unripe beans, ripe beans, overripe beans, twigs, insects, pebbles and so on. In this way, the harvested grain has no chance of undergoing any further quality selection, because the harvest itself is already of no quality.

Subsequently, these grains are mixed with others from different parts of the country and even the continent. They are then imported into molochs, which aim to standardise the sensory qualities of the grains. To put it in language that everyone understands, simply burning them. What's more, the moloch burns the grain in very large capacity batches, which reach up to several tonnes per hour! With this kind of, let's call it 'firing', there is no room for any quality control of what happens in the kiln.

In the end, we get a very low-quality product, the contents of which are practically unknown to us. The only thing you can pay for in this case is good marketing to persuade you to buy this mixture of unknown origin.

In a nutshell, this is where the differences between the price of specialty coffee and the coffee we have available in every big and small shop come from.

Remember, too, that by choosing specialty coffee you are supporting small, local businesses and people with a passion for the bean. And bear in mind that you don't have to drink a lot of high-quality coffee to experience its caffeinated power and unique flavour. Therefore, in this case, less is more.

Paweł Świderski,

known in the industry as Swider or Sad Swider. He has been dabbling in coffee since 2015. Finalist in many coffee competitions, including 2nd vice-champion of the Polish Brewers Cup 2019. A devotee of overflows, antitalent of latte art, privately a musician, photographer and nature lover.