livesimply
Member
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2013
- Messages
- 142
Thanks—very helpful. Think I'll look for a local roaster.Speciality grade refers to various ways of judging coffee quality -varying by country- but really only means it's not commodity grade. Grading coffee has little to do with pesticide use and is generally based on type of processing, uniformity of size, size, elevation, and cupping score (a way of quantifying flavour quality).
You can have organic non-specialty but you can also have coffee that is not "certified organic " but that uses little or no chemical pesticides. Organic certification is expensive and many small farms can simply not afford it as they're barely making money as is. If you've got a local toaster that is very transparent and actually knows the people who grow their coffee you can talk to them about pesticide use on those farms.