Exciting Times 4 Coffee in South Africa

We live in exciting times for the coffee industry here in South Africa. In the over 4 years since I tasted my first brew of specialty grade coffee; things have progressed at a slow but steady rate. With more and more people becoming aware that we can find good coffee and now over 4 years later there are about 20 specialty coffee micro roasters, roasting coffee to order. Not all f them are in pursuit of the highest grade, and have become price and profit based, but I am happy to say that there are a few purists that still hold quality at a premium.

The other good news is that it you can find fresh roasted specialty grade coffee at reasonable prices. If you consider that in green bean (unroasted form) specialty grade coffee is 50-100% more that expensive than the traditional coffee market, the fact that you can find specialty grade pure Arabica, at about 25-35% higher than the going rate for the budget coffees, it makes you realize that this is good value. Even more so when you realize that imported coffees in the South African market are much more expensive and paying over R200 per kilogram is a possibility, when the winner of the Specialty Coffee Associations coffee costs R240.00 per kilogram, it is highway robbery that lower quality coffees that are in most cases not even pure Arabica, can get away with charging these over inflated prices just because they are branded. That is the cost of marketing.

With the increase in the number of people purchasing higher quality brewing equipment in South Africa, we believe that we are seeing more South Africans take to heart the quality of the product that they invite into their mouth to tantalize the senses.

Over the next few blogs entries I will go through some of the required knowledge that more and more coffee lovers are requesting.

Although some of this information is available on the site by Quaffee, some will be in more detail.