How to read a coffee label

A specialty coffee label tells you where the coffee grew, who grew it, how high, which plant variety, how it was processed and how dark it's roasted. On our coffees, the product page is where you'll find all of that. Each line predicts something about the taste. Higher altitude usually means denser, slower-ripening beans and more complex flavor. Learn the lines and you can pick coffee before you taste it.

What each line tells you

Label line	What it means	What it predicts
Origin and region	Country, then the area inside it	Broad flavor style of that place
Producer	A cooperative, a single farm, or a microlot	How traceable the coffee is
Altitude	Meters above sea level (masl) where it grew	Density, acidity, complexity
Varietal	The coffee plant variety	Flavor potential and structure
Process	How the fruit was removed and the seed dried	Clean vs. fruity, light vs. heavy
Roast level	How far it was roasted	Origin flavor vs. roast flavor
Grade	Export grade, such as SHG, EP or Excelso	Bean size, growing height, sorting

Origin and region

The country tells you a lot, and the region tells you more. "Colombia" covers huge differences in height and climate. "Planadas, Tolima" narrows it to one mountainous area. As a rough guide, Central American coffees lean clean and sweet with clear acidity, Colombian coffees lean balanced with caramel and chocolate, East African coffees lean floral and fruity, and Indonesian coffees lean earthy and heavy. Those are tendencies, not rules.

Co-op, farm or microlot

A cooperative is a group of small farmers who pool their coffee to process and sell it together. Most of the world's coffee comes from smallholders, and co-ops give them the scale to reach specialty buyers. A co-op coffee is traceable to that group and region.

A single farm (or estate) coffee comes from one property. More traceable, and the coffee reflects one set of decisions.

A microlot is a small, separately kept lot, usually from one plot or one picking, processed on its own instead of being blended with the rest of the crop. There's no official size or definition; it's a trade term. When a microlot comes through Venus' Rare Ground, the monthly post will say what makes it one.

Altitude

This is the line people skip, and it shouldn't be. Air gets cooler as you go up, roughly 6.5°C for every 1,000 meters. Cooler temperatures slow down how fast the coffee cherry ripens. A slower-ripening cherry has more time to build sugars and acids, and the seed inside grows harder and denser. Denser beans tend to taste more complex, with brighter acidity and more going on. Lower-grown coffee ripens faster and tends to taste softer and simpler.

Typical ranges for arabica:

• Below about 1,000 masl: lower-grown; often soft, mild, lower acidity.
• About 1,000 to 1,200 masl: mid-range.
• About 1,200 masl and up: what's usually called high-grown, where most specialty arabica comes from.
• Above about 1,800 masl: very high-grown; often dense and intensely bright, if the farm can grow coffee there at all.

Latitude shifts these numbers. Close to the equator you need more height to get the same cool conditions; farther from it, coffee grown lower can behave like high-grown coffee. Grades like SHG (Strictly High Grown) and SHB (Strictly Hard Bean) are labels for high-grown, dense coffee, though each country sets its own cutoff.

Varietal

Coffee varietals are like apple varieties. Same species, different trees, different fruit. A few you'll see on our product pages:

• Typica: one of the two original arabica lineages most varieties descend from. Tall, low-yielding, known for a clean, sweet cup.
• Bourbon: the other original lineage, named for the island of Bourbon (now Réunion). Known for sweetness and a round body.
• Caturra: a natural dwarf mutation of Bourbon found in Brazil. Compact, higher-yielding, often bright.
• Catuai: a Brazilian cross of Caturra and Mundo Novo. Compact and productive.
• Castillo: developed in Colombia to resist coffee leaf rust. Now one of Colombia's most widely planted varieties.
• Catimor: a cross of Caturra and the Timor Hybrid, bred for rust resistance and yield.

Process and roast

Process. Washed, natural, honey, wet-hulled or anaerobic. The short version: washed is clean, natural is fruity. Full detail on the processing page.

Roast level. Light keeps origin flavor, dark adds roast flavor. Full detail on the roast levels page.

Worked example: our Colombia

Here's what the Colombia Single Origin product page tells you, line by line.

1. Origin: Planadas, Tolima, Colombia. A mountainous region in the south of Tolima.
2. Producer: Café del Macizo, a group of 59 growers working together since 2003. A co-op. Traceable to that group, and to small farmers working together.
3. Altitude: 1,500 to 2,100 meters. Solidly high-grown, with some of it very high. Expect a dense bean and real acidity.
4. Varietals: Caturra, Castillo, Typica. A Bourbon-descended bright variety, a rust-resistant Colombian workhorse, and one of the original sweet lineages.
5. Process: washed and sun-dried. Clean cup that shows the altitude and variety clearly.
6. Grade: Excelso EP. Excelso is a Colombian export grade based on bean size. EP stands for European Preparation, meaning extra hand-sorting to remove defects.
7. Roast: medium. Enough roast for caramel sweetness, not so much it covers the fruit.
8. Tasting notes: dark chocolate, mango, peach. Which is about what the lines above predict: high-grown, washed, medium roast gives you clean chocolate with fruit on top.

FAQ

What does masl mean on a coffee bag?

Meters above sea level, the altitude where the coffee grew. Higher usually means denser beans and more complex, brighter flavor.

Why does altitude matter in coffee?

Cooler air at altitude slows ripening, which gives the cherry more time to develop sugars and acids and makes the bean denser. That tends to mean a more complex cup.

What's the difference between a co-op coffee and a single-farm coffee?

A co-op coffee comes from a group of small farmers who process and sell together; a single-farm coffee comes from one property. Both can be specialty grade.

What is a coffee varietal?

The variety of coffee plant, like a variety of apple. Typica, Bourbon, Caturra and Castillo are common ones.

What does SHG mean?

Strictly High Grown, a grade for coffee grown above a set altitude. Each country sets its own cutoff.

What does EP mean on a coffee label?

European Preparation, a grade meaning the coffee was hand-sorted to remove defects beyond the standard export requirement.

Next: read How Honorguard coffee is made, or open a product page and read it line by line. Shipping is free on every website order.

Coffees this applies to

Full label details on the product page: Colombia Single Origin, Summer's Costa Rica Single Origin, Lucca's Peru Decaf, Nemo's Bali Single Origin. Changes monthly: Venus' Rare Ground.