Yirgacheffe Grade Classification Based on Defective Beans - Are Arabica Coffee Beans Expensive?

FrontStreet Coffee's Guide to Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Grade Classification

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Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) Overview

The Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) is an agricultural market where buyers and sellers gather to trade, ensuring quality, delivery, and payment. ECX's vision is to transform Ethiopia's economy by becoming the preferred choice for global commodity markets. ECX's mission is to connect all buyers and sellers in an efficient, reliable, and transparent market by leveraging innovation and technology, founded on continuous learning, fairness, and excellence.

ECX has established regional warehouses throughout Ethiopia that provide crop collection, grading, and storage, before entering a unified trading auction platform for ECX registered members to conduct buy-sell transactions. The buyers here are actually private exporters. Since 2008, Ethiopia has required all private exporters to conduct coffee bean trading through ECX. Its only limitation is the inability to meet current buyer requirements for coffee traceability. Coffee traded through ECX is only divided by region and cannot tell you which processing station it came from, or it may come from many different processing stations mixed together and packaged in gunny sacks for auction in large batches. But after Speciality G1 undergoes the following strict selection process, would you still question its quality?

Ethiopia's Historical and Current Grading Systems

Ethiopia's old grading method was simply based on defect counts, with the highest grade for washed processed beans being Grade 1 - G1, and the highest grade for natural processed beans being Grade 3 - G3. The current grading system is established by ECX, combining physical attribute characteristics with cupping flavor characteristics for scoring to determine grade levels.

Coffee Classification by Processing Method

All coffees are defined into three types according to processing method (natural or washed):

a. Speciality (washed & unwashed): Few defects, high cupping flavor quality;

b. Commercial (washed & unwashed): Does not reach specialty grade, but is higher than domestic consumption grade;

c. Local/Domestic (washed & unwashed): Coffee with many defects (unripe beans), off-season, and poor storage resulting in relatively poor flavor.

Among these, Specialty and Commercial are targeted for export to international markets, while Local is for coffee sold in the domestic market.

ECX Specific Grading and Scoring Standards

A. Scoring Definition for Washed Processing Method

1. Physical characteristics account for 40%: defect count (20%), appearance size (10%), color (5%), aroma (5%)

2. Cupping quality accounts for 60%: cleanliness (15%), acidity (15%), mouthfeel (15%), flavor characteristics (15%)

B. Scoring Definition for Natural Processing Method

1. Physical characteristics account for 40%: defect count (30%), aroma (10%)

2. Cupping quality accounts for 60%: cleanliness (15%), acidity (15%), mouthfeel (15%), flavor characteristics (15%)

C. Overall Summary:

1. All coffees are first classified by processing method: natural, washed;

2. Each is scored according to physical characteristics and basic cupping quality into 9 grades: G1-G9;

3. Among these, G1-G3 undergo another cupping according to SCAA standards to more finely assess their flavor attributes. G1 and G2 scoring no less than 85 points are graded as Q1 level;

4. G1, G2, G3 scoring between 80 to 85 are graded as Q2 level, while all G1, G2, G3 scoring below 80 points are graded as G3 level;

5. Q1 and Q2 are classified as Specialty Grade for export. G4-G9 maintain their original grading unchanged and are classified as Commercial Grade for export together with G3.

Quality and Value Discussion

Many customers ask FrontStreet Coffee whether Arabica coffee beans are expensive. Certainly, high-quality Arabica beans are indeed expensive, but low-quality ones are also relatively cheap. This is why there's a coffee bean grading system to distinguish quality levels.

Knowledge Extension

"Acidity" is similar to astringency and to red wine, with the saying "sweetness is easy, good acidity is rare." However, as coffee temperature decreases, "acidity" will correspondingly increase.

FrontStreet Coffee's Philosophy

In short: FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee research house, happy to share coffee knowledge with everyone. We share without reservation only to let more friends fall in love with coffee. Every month, we hold three low-discount coffee events because FrontStreet Coffee wants to let more friends drink the best coffee at the lowest price. This has been FrontStreet Coffee's philosophy for the past 6 years!

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