Coffee Glossary · Quality
Defects (Green Coffee)
Physical faults in green coffee counted under grading systems like the SCA's: category 1 (primary) defects — full black beans, full sour, pods, fungus damage — and category 2 (secondary) — partial blacks, insect damage, broken beans, husk, quakers. Specialty grade under SCA rules allows zero category 1 defects and at most 5 secondary equivalents per 350 g. Defects trace back to specific failures (unripe picking, fermentation problems, poor drying, insect pressure), so a defect count is a diagnostic of the whole supply chain, not just a score.
Related terms
Quakers
Unripe beans that sneak through sorting and refuse to roast properly — staying pale tan while their…
Grading (Green Coffee)
The classification of green coffee into commercial tiers by measurable criteria — screen size, defect count,…
Hand Sorting
The final human quality gate: workers — overwhelmingly women, at origin after origin — picking defective…
Bean Density
How much mass a coffee bean packs per volume — measured in g/L or judged by feel and appearance (tight,…
Cupping
Coffee's standardized tasting protocol: coarse-ground samples steeped in bowls under strict ratios and…
MASL (Meters Above Sea Level)
The standard measure of coffee-growing altitude, and one of quality's strongest predictors. Higher farms are…
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