What specialty grade means
Specialty grade coffee is coffee that scores 80 points or more out of 100 on the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) cupping scale and passes a green-bean inspection with almost no defects. Trained graders taste it and inspect it. Below 80 it's commercial coffee. Every coffee Honorguard sells is specialty grade.
The scale at a glance
| SCA cup score | What it's called | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| 90–100 | Outstanding | Rare, usually tiny lots, priced to match |
| 85–89.99 | Excellent | Distinct, clean, memorable coffee |
| 80–84.99 | Very Good | Specialty grade: clean, sweet, no faults |
| Below 80 | Not specialty | Commercial or exchange-grade coffee |
Those bands come from the SCA's long-running cupping form, the one most of the trade still quotes.
How a coffee earns the grade
Two tests, and a coffee has to pass both.
First, the green beans get inspected. Before anything is roasted, a grader takes a 350-gram sample of green coffee and sorts through it by hand, counting defects. The SCA splits defects into two groups. Category 1 (primary) defects are the serious ones: fully black beans, fully sour beans, dried whole cherries, fungus damage, foreign matter like sticks or stones, and severe insect damage. Category 2 (secondary) defects are smaller: partly black or sour beans, broken or chipped beans, immature beans, shells, and light insect damage. Several secondary defects count together as one "full defect."
To be specialty grade, the sample has to have zero primary defects and no more than five full defects in total. Then a 100-gram sample is roasted and checked for quakers, which are underripe beans that won't brown properly and taste like peanuts and paper. Specialty grade allows none. Moisture content is checked too, and has to sit between 9 and 13 percent.
Second, the coffee gets cupped. Cupping is a standardized tasting. The coffee is roasted to a standard light roast, ground, steeped in hot water in a set ratio, and tasted with a spoon. Graders score fragrance and aroma, flavor, aftertaste, acidity, body, balance, sweetness, uniformity across cups, and clean cup, plus an overall score, and subtract for any taints or faults. Add it up and you get a number out of 100. Under the SCA's grading standard, a specialty coffee also has to show at least one distinctive attribute in the cup.
Who does the grading
Trained cuppers. The best-known credential is the Q Grader, a cupper licensed through the Coffee Quality Institute using the SCA's protocols. Q Graders pass a long series of tasting and smelling exams and have to recalibrate every few years to keep the license. Importers, exporters and roasting companies also have their own trained cuppers who score coffee the same way.
What the grade rules out
Here's the practical version. A coffee that clears the 80 line doesn't taste like burnt rubber, moldy bread, ferment, or wet cardboard. It hasn't been padded out with underripe or broken beans. It came from cherries that were mostly picked ripe and handled well afterward. That's the floor.
What the grade doesn't tell you is whether you'll like it. An 84-point Kenyan and an 84-point Sumatran taste nothing alike. The score measures quality, and taste is still your call.
The newer system
In late 2024 the SCA formally adopted a new cupping system, the Coffee Value Assessment (CVA). It separates describing a coffee from scoring how much the tasters like it, and it replaces the cupping form the SCA had used since 2004. The 80-point line from the older form is still the shorthand most of the trade uses for "specialty."
What I hold Honorguard to
Every coffee we sell is specialty grade, SCA 80 points or higher. That's the line, and I don't sell below it. I won't sell coffee I can't stand behind. I can't stand behind drivel and I never will. If you want to drink swill I have nothing against you, it's just not my cup of tea, so I will never sell it.
What I won't do is put a made-up score on a bag. You won't see "87 points" on our product pages unless we actually have that number for that lot, and right now we don't publish per-lot scores. "Specialty grade" is the claim, and it's true for every coffee we carry.
FAQ
What does specialty grade coffee mean?
It means the coffee scored 80 or more out of 100 on the SCA cupping scale and passed a green-bean inspection with zero primary defects and no more than five full defects. It's a quality floor, not a flavor description.
Who decides if coffee is specialty grade?
Trained cuppers, usually licensed Q Graders, using the SCA's grading and cupping protocols. Importers and roasting companies also employ cuppers who score coffee the same way.
Is specialty coffee the same as gourmet coffee?
No. "Gourmet" has no definition and anyone can print it. "Specialty grade" refers to a specific score and defect standard.
Is a higher score always better?
Higher means the graders found it cleaner and more distinct, not that you'll like it more. An 85-point coffee you enjoy beats a 90-point one you don't.
Does every Honorguard coffee score 80 or higher?
Yes. Every coffee we sell is specialty grade. We don't publish individual lot scores.
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Coffees this applies to
Every coffee we sell: Summer's Costa Rica Single Origin, Colombia Single Origin, Lucca's Peru Decaf, Nemo's Bali Single Origin, Cairo's Breakfast Blend, Stubby's Boston Cowboy Blend, Chopper's Zero-Dark Espresso, Venus' Rare Ground.