Updated October 2026
The best coffee beans are found with these six purchasing tips. Buying is the most fun part of coffee, and if you want to drink better coffee, you first have to buy better coffee.
I score every coffee I try, and I use the six tips below every time I shop. They will help you find specialty single-origin coffee you love, whether you buy in New Zealand or from overseas.
The short answer
Buy specialty-grade, single-origin coffee from a named farm, with the variety and processing method on the bag, from a roaster who is open about all of it. Skip blends, check the roast date, and keep notes on what you like.
Blends are built to be consistent, and consistent rarely means extraordinary.
Read tip 1Look for care in growing, picking and processing, and for roasters who tell the farm’s story.
Read tip 2Rust-resistant varieties were not chosen for taste. Look for Gesha, SL28, Bourbon and friends.
Read tip 3Washed, natural, honey and fermentation each change what ends up in your cup.
Read tip 4Cut through the terroir marketing and learn what has really happened in each origin.
Read tip 5Roasters have preferences too. Find the ones who suit your taste and keep notes.
Read tip 6Tip 1
The first thing to understand is the difference between blends, commodity coffee, single origins and specialty coffee. Blends are designed to be consistent, and in achieving that they sacrifice extraordinary. In the same way, the average is always lower than the maximum in maths.
I score every coffee in Memento, a database app on my phone. My scores mean:
Below 50
Tip it out.
50–60
Okay.
60–70
Good, but not enough to buy again.
70–80
Very good. I would buy it again.
80–90
Excellent. I love it.
90–100
Wow. Mind-blowing.
My scores: single-origin coffees (blue) against blends (red).
You can see from the graph that blends almost always land between 60 and 70. There are exceptions: a couple of blends made 70–80, but only about 1% of the blends I have tried got there, and they were unusual blends.
A seasonal blend of two Ethiopian landrace specialty coffees. The seed size is fairly uniform, which minimises the usual problems with blending, so it is about as close to a single origin as a blend gets. It was excellent. I scored it 85, bought it several times, and watch for it each season. Atomic Coffee.
Roaster Logan Collinge knows the problems with blends and goes to great lengths to avoid them: high-quality specialty components with no cheap bulk fillers, each roasted separately and blended after roasting, roasted to a similar final density, with consistent bean size. I scored it 75. I would repurchase and recommend it, but I crave wow and excellent coffee, not just very good. Hammerstone Bedrock Blend.
Because of how I store my coffee, single-dosed and frozen, I buy plenty whenever I find something wow or excellent. That way I drink fabulous coffee I love for much of the year.
They are often bulked out with cheap commodity coffee.
The components have different densities and each needs a different extraction to be at its best, which is impossible in a single brew.
Now, this might upset most roasters. You will never find a wow coffee in a blend, you are unlikely to find anything excellent, and even very good is a stretch. That is why I avoid blends.
I acknowledge people have different requirements. Some want to find a blend they like and drink it forever. Many find dialling in annoying: with the fixed recipe method it can take most of the bag to get an acceptable shot, and varying roast levels turn into sour under-extractions for light roasts and bitter over-extractions for dark ones. Sticking to a tried-and-trusted blend works better for them.
The Coffee Recipe Series resolves those issues, and I think blend drinkers are missing out on how varied and excellent coffee can be. Most people have no idea how extraordinary coffee can be. Almost all cafes in New Zealand serve a generic blend, so most consumers have never tasted what special coffee is like.
People like to poke fun at people who take coffee too seriously, but the SCA Coffee Taster’s Flavor Wheel is no joke. You will never taste much of it in a generic blend, and yes, the grinder matters too: see how to choose a grinder.
Background
Specialty coffee is coffee graded 80 points or above on a 100-point scale by a certified Q Grader (CQI) or SCA cupper. It is the prime pick of the world’s coffee, roughly 3–5% of global production.
Score on the 100-point scale, and what it means:
90–100
Outstanding. Specialty grade.
85–89.99
Excellent. Specialty grade.
80–84.99
Very good. Specialty grade.
Below 80
Not specialty grade.
A 350 g sample of green coffee is checked for defective beans. Primary defects (such as black or sour beans) are the serious ones. Secondary defects (such as broken beans) are minor.
To qualify as specialty, the sample must have zero primary defects and five or fewer secondary defects.
The coffee is roasted, ground and steeped in hot water. Certified Q Graders then score attributes such as aroma, flavour, acidity and body.
Specialty grade is the top tier of green coffee quality. Estimates suggest no more than about 5% of green coffee in the US market makes the grade.
The Cup of Excellence is a competition where each country’s best lots are scored and auctioned. You can use the results to find great farms, farmers, varieties and processes.
In New Zealand, when I wrote this in 2023, the only vendor I knew of stocking COE winners was Coffee Tech, and you can spend insane sums: one geisha lot was nearly $2000 for 200 g of roasted coffee. It scored 94.5, but it was three years old!
You can also buy COE-winning farms’ coffee from overseas vendors that ship to New Zealand. I have used Cypher Urban Roastery several times. One 2023 example was 500 g of Santa Rosa for NZ$75 plus shipping, which is not unobtainium. Buy more to pay less on shipping, single-dose it and freeze it.
That coffee came from El Guatalon, at Belen Village, Santa Rosa de Lima, 35 km from Guatemala City. The farm covers 50 hectares: 10 grow coffee and the rest is natural forest reserve of pine, cypress and other trees. The Juarez family has grown coffee there for over 60 years, now in its fourth generation, and El Guatalon ranked 14th in COE Guatemala 2023. Do your homework and you can find great coffee.
So, do I only buy COE winners? Hardly ever. There are an estimated 25 million smallholder coffee producers worldwide, and most never enter: the cost is prohibitive and the chances of winning are slim, so it becomes more of a marketing exercise for those who can afford it. There is plenty of great coffee without paying over the odds for COE winners. See why don’t more producers market their coffee?
Single origin is often simplified to coffee from one producer, crop or region in one country. Single farm and single estate mean the coffee comes from one farm, mill or co-operative. Some labels give the estate name, the specific lot or paddock, or say it is a micro-lot (a particular variety or process from a specific farm). Read more: everything you need to know about single-origin coffee.
Look back at my graph: a single origin can score worse than a blend because the variation is much bigger. Buying at random can go badly, so how do you improve your odds? That is what tips 2 to 6 are for.
Tip 2
Careful attention to how coffee is grown, selectively picked and processed is essential. Some farmers do everything possible to produce the best coffee they can. Research who is winning the Cup of Excellence and seek them out.
Look for roasters who sell coffees that speak to the farmer’s care and attention.
A delicious coffee I have bought from several different vendors. From the roaster’s description:
“Margarita has been producing coffee for over 15 years. She was able to access a farm where she could grow some agricultural products for her family and gain an income. In 2007, she started cultivating her first crops of Caturra and Bourbon. Her farm, El Mispero, is located in the village of Coipa at 1700 m.a.s.l.”
“This micro-lot bourbon is harvested following strict ripeness criteria, later floated, and hand-sorted to remove any defects. Cherries were exposed to 30 hours of underwater fermentation before being pulped. The parchment was gently washed and dried under temperature-controlled conditions until ideal moisture content was achieved.”
Special care.
A great variety.
Selectively picked.
High altitude, which tends to mean better coffee.
The same coffee is often available from several roasters in NZ:
A great variety that is poorly picked and processed will not be perfect.
Esplendorosa Estate
Don Carlos
Los Naranjos Café
Rigoberto Herrera, Café Granja La Esperanza
El Guatalon
Santa Lucia
Tip 3
Rust-resistant varieties have not been chosen for taste, so pay attention to the variety on the bag.
Also good: Yellow Catuai, Ethiopian landraces, Bourbon, Pacamara, Marcaturra, Ethiosar and Caturra.
Robusta, and Catimor and Castillo, which carry robusta genetics and typically taste of spice, green and hay.
Maragogipe and Pacamara are giant beans that need heavy fertiliser to do well, so they only shine with an excellent grower.
Look at which varieties are winning Cup of Excellence competitions in each country: different countries grow different varieties.
Tip 4
How the coffee cherry is processed after picking changes flavour as much as the variety does.
The fruit is removed before the seeds are dried. Typically cleaner and brighter.
Dried inside the whole fruit. Typically fruitier and heavier.
Some or all of the sticky mucilage is left on, or the coffee is deliberately fermented, to build sweetness and unusual flavours.
Figure out what you like. I think washed processing was only developed to cope with growing coffee in countries that cannot do good naturals, and that it removes fruit flavours that should be there. But I am biased.
Fermentation is underutilised and holds great potential, as it does with wine and cheese. Listen to Lucia Solis.
Tip 5
First, know that there is a lot of misleading marketing around terroir. These three episodes of Lucia Solis’s podcast are a good antidote:
Then find out what has gone on in each country. A few of my notes:
Good specialty coffee, but not-so-good varieties.
Lost coffee skills due to war.
Lost coffee skills.
To get started, see the top coffee-producing countries.
Tip 6
Everyone used to think the roaster was the bee’s knees and the coffee did not matter: the roaster made the magic. Now we know better.
Roasters are people too, and they have preferences. Some roast dark, some light, some quick, some slow, and some try to make the best of each bean. They use different gear: drum, air, hybrid and infrared. The same beans go to several roasters, and some vendors do not even have a roaster and are just marketers.
Keep track of what you like and why. Roast level matters too: my coffee roast levels chart explains the range.
Put the six tips together and a good bag will tell you almost everything on this checklist.
1
A roast date beats a best-before date. Buy recently roasted coffee, and see how to store coffee beans to keep it fresh.
2
A named farm, washing station or co-operative is a good sign (tip 2).
3
Gesha, SL28 or Bourbon tells you far more than “Arabica” does (tip 3).
4
Washed, natural, honey or experimental (tip 4).
5
The more specific the better: country, region, even the lot (tip 5).
6
High altitude tends to mean slower-growing, denser beans, and coffee is seasonal, so look for a recent harvest.
7
Roasters who publish all of this are usually proud of their sourcing (tip 6).
“Blend” or “house blend”, no roast date, vague origins such as “South American”, and lots of flavour claims with nothing about the farm.
Where to buy
I buy most of my coffee online. These New Zealand roasters share information on the producer, variety and process:
I do not always buy within New Zealand: some producers and varieties I like are only available overseas.
I have all the NZ roasters’ websites favourited. I open the lot and scan for my favourite producers and varieties, looking for ones to tick off my to-do lists. Coffee is a seasonal product, so every year is a new experience.
For a longer (still incomplete) list, see NZ specialty coffee sources.
Being a coffee explorer is great fun. My goals are to try coffee from every producing country, to try every variety, and to seek out great producers. I use a few Memento databases on my phone to keep track, and I have had beautiful experiences and learnings I would not have found otherwise.
35 of 55
producing countries I had tried
35 of 64
varieties I had tried
Snapshot from June 2023, tracked in Memento.
The best way to save money on coffee is to make it yourself. A cup you make can cost about a fifth of a cafe cup, so you can buy higher-quality coffee and invest more time perfecting each cup. Great coffee at home can work out to around $1 per cup. Compare that with great wine or whisky, although coffee is too cheap, in fact. Listen to Slavery, Suffering, and Affordable Luxury: a history of coffee.
Because I single-dose and freeze my coffee, it stays fresh for over a year. When I find something I love I buy plenty, then drink a different coffee I love every day of the week.
Even the best coffee beans taste sour or bitter if the extraction is off. The Coffee Recipe Series matches a recipe to your beans’ density: taste your shot, move up for more extraction or down for less, and repeat.
There is no single best bean, but the best coffee beans are usually specialty-grade (80+ points), single-origin, from a named farm, with the variety and processing method stated, and roasted recently by a transparent roaster. Use the six tips on this page to find them.
Occasionally. In my scoring, blends almost always land between 60 and 70, and only about 1% of the blends I have tried scored 70–80. A well-made blend is consistent, but it rarely delivers wow.
Coffee that scores 80 points or more on the 100-point SCA scale from a certified Q Grader, with no primary defects and five or fewer secondary defects in a 350 g green coffee sample. It is roughly 3–5% of the world’s coffee.
No. Single origins vary much more than blends. The best are outstanding, but a random pick can be worse than a blend. Tips 2 to 6 improve your odds.
Gesha, SL28, Sudan Rume, Bourbon, Yellow Catuai, Caturra, Ethiopian landraces and Yemenia are good varieties to seek out. Be cautious with robusta, and with Catimor and Castillo, which carry robusta genetics and often taste of spice, green and hay.
Neither is better. Washed coffee is typically cleaner and brighter, and natural coffee is typically fruitier and heavier. I lean towards naturals and well-controlled fermentation, but you should work out what you like.
Look for a roast date rather than a best-before date, and drink beans within a few weeks of roasting if you can. I single-dose and freeze mine, which keeps them fresh for over a year. See my guide to storing coffee beans.
Hammerstone, Ikarus, Rocket, Ozone, Flight, Coffee Tech, Atomic, Red Rabbit, Excelso, Peoples Coffee, C4 and Havana all share producer, variety and process details. See the full list above and my NZ specialty coffee sources page.
Yes. Every coffee extracts differently, mostly because of its density. The Coffee Recipe Series gives you a starting recipe from your beans’ density, then you taste and move up or down the series.
