Choosing Your Coffee

Uncommon Cafè, 2813 Seventh St.  at Berkeley

 All Coffees are not  alike! 

Where the Coffee is grown, the Grade of beans and a Roasting, which is an Artisan skill, all profoundly affect the Coffee's flavor and aroma.  We take great care in selecting which varietals to import. Our quality  control program helps us determine which are the finest quality Arabica beans. This we do periodically, by cupping the samples individually (coffee-tasting tests) in their roasted form. We also identify which beans best complement each other to create our Speciality blends. 

Because roasting is one of the most crucial factor in  producing a fine coffee, our roast-master must also determine which style of roast best suits a varietal. Small Coffee roaster, with small batch roasting, undoubtedly produces the best tasting Speciality Coffees

Four basic Roast categories: 

Light, Medium, Dark, and Darkest. 

These categories correspond to the European nomenclature: 

Vienna (our lightest roast); 

Full-City  (our medium dark roast); 

Italian (our dark, smooth roasts); and 

French (our darkest, smokiest, most developed roast).

Although certain coffees are roasted lighter to produce specific desirable characteristics (Kauai Peaberry and Kenya, for example), most coffees respond best to a darker  roast, which  emphasizes rich  and  mellow flavors. Accordingly, we prefer to roast the majority of our coffees in the dark range (Full-City to French blends) in order to develop the  rich,  smooth,  dark, delicious coffees for which we are known.