READING A COFFEE PACKAGE

Of course coffee can be bought from all kinds of outlets, from supermarkets to coffee shops, not to mention roasting houses themselves or specialist websites. To ensure you end up with the coffee that best meets your expectations, it is useful to be able to interpret the information on the package…

Decoding the label

The label on a package of coffee provides the information you need to help you pick a quality coffee.

Beware of marketing ploys

“Coffee strength”

Unless it comes with further explanation, this term (accompanied by a number scale or terms like full-bodied, sweet, etc.) is little more than marketing speak and tells us little about the coffee’s flavor profile. The coffee’s strength is a function of the dose of grounds and the process used to brew it, so it depends on the manner of preparation. On packaging destined for the mass market, strength is essentially synonymous with “roast level” or “grind fineness”—in other words, it is used to mean bitterness.

“100% Arabica”

A good coffee will always be Arabica.

“Slow-roasted”

Certainly, slow roasting is better than flash roasting, but this doesn’t tell you whether the roast profile is a successful one. The fact is, a twelve-minute roast can, depending on the profile, give better results than an eighteen-minute roast. So slowness is not necessarily synonymous with quality.