Ethiopian coffee grading, explained.

An Ethiopian coffee grade is a composite. It is not a score for how the coffee tastes, and it is not a size classification. It is the outcome of two separate assessments run on the same sample: a raw, or physical, evaluation of the green bean, and a liquoring, or cup, evaluation. Both feed one number, which is why two coffees that taste quite different can carry the same grade, and why a coffee can cup beautifully and still be held back by its raw score.

The raw assessment counts defects. Blacks, sours, pods, insect damage, foreign matter and broken beans are identified in a weighed sample and converted into a defect count using an equivalence table, so that several partial defects add up to one full defect. Screen size distribution and moisture content are recorded alongside it. The cup assessment scores the brewed liquor for cleanliness, acidity, body and flavour, and records the presence of any cup fault.

This matters commercially because the two halves fail differently. A raw defect problem is usually a sorting or drying problem and is visible in the sack. A cup fault is usually a fermentation or storage problem and is invisible until you brew it. When you buy Ethiopian coffee (including the washed and natural lots described on our coffee page, grown in Amaro) you are buying both results, and you should ask to see both.

Ethiopian export grades run from Grade 1 at the top to Grade 9, with coffee falling below the bottom of the scale classified as Under Grade and generally directed away from export. The bands are conventionally read as follows.

What the bands do not tell you is the exact defect allowance behind each number. Those thresholds are set by the national grading authority, differ between washed and natural coffee, and have been revised over time. Any table on a supplier's website that states them as fixed constants is quoting a snapshot, and possibly an old one.

The grade on an Ethiopian export document is issued by the national coffee authority's liquoring and inspection function. It is not assigned by the exporter, and it is not the buyer's own cupping table. Export shipments require a quality certificate from that authority, and the grade recorded on it is the grade that governs the contract.

For much of the last two decades the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) sat at the centre of this system, taking delivery of coffee, grading it and selling it through auction. That structure achieved price transparency and a reliable clearing mechanism, but it pooled coffee by grade and catchment, which severed the link between a specific farm or washing station and the bag that arrived at destination.

Reforms from 2017 changed the route. Vertically integrated operators (growers, cooperatives and exporters who control their own supply) were permitted to export directly rather than through the auction, provided traceability is maintained. This is what makes single-station and single-lot Ethiopian coffee possible at all, and it is the reason a station-level record is worth asking for by name.

Zoebar Business Group owns its washing station in Amaro, which places cherry intake, processing method, drying and lot formation under direct control rather than sourced through an intermediary. How that record is carried through to the bag is set out in traceability, and the stage-by-stage sequence is in process.

These three specifications appear on almost every green coffee contract and are frequently confused with the grade itself. They are inputs to it, and they are also contract terms in their own right, enforceable separately from the grade.

Screen size

Screen size is bean size, measured in sixty-fourths of an inch and expressed as the screen a bean is retained on: a screen 16 bean sits above a 16/64-inch perforation. Contracts are usually written as a minimum screen with a stated tolerance for the percentage permitted to pass below it. Larger screens do not mean better coffee. They mean more uniform roasting behaviour, which is why roasters specify them.

Moisture content

Moisture is the percentage of water remaining in the green bean. Too high and the coffee is exposed to mould growth and rapid staling in transit; too low and it has usually been over-dried, which flattens the cup and loses weight the seller has already paid to produce. Green coffee contracts specify a maximum, and the figure that binds is the one written into your contract and measured at the agreed point, not a general industry range quoted from a website.

Defect count

Defects are identified in a weighed sample and totalled using a full-defect equivalence table, so that a number of minor defects convert into one full defect. Because the equivalence table and the sample size are both set by the grading standard in force, a defect count is only comparable against another count taken under the same standard. Comparing an Ethiopian raw score directly against a Brazilian or Colombian one is a category error, not a shortcut.

The most common misreading in Ethiopian coffee buying is treating the grade and the SCA cup score as the same measurement expressed differently. They are not. They are produced by different people, under different protocols, for different purposes.

• The grade is a regulatory export classification combining raw defects and a cup evaluation, issued by the national authority and recorded on the export certificate.
• An SCA cup score is a 100-point sensory evaluation against the Specialty Coffee Association protocol, where 80 points and above is designated specialty.
• A grade travels on the export certificate. A cup score travels on a cupping form, and whose form it is matters as much as the number on it.

A coffee can therefore be Grade 2 and cup at 86, or Grade 2 and cup at 82. The grade sets the floor; the cup score is the differentiation above it. When a supplier quotes only one of the two, they have chosen which number flatters the lot. Ask for both, and ask who cupped it and when.

A complete Ethiopian offer should let you reconstruct the coffee without a phone call. Working through it in this order surfaces an incomplete offer quickly, and the gaps are usually more informative than the entries.

1. 01Origin, stated to zone level, and whether that zone is the growing area or the trading category. These are frequently not the same thing.
2. 02Processing method (washed or natural) stated per lot rather than for the offer as a whole.
3. 03Harvest year and harvest window, so you know the age of the coffee at arrival rather than at offer.
4. 04Grade, with the issuing certificate available on request.
5. 05Screen size specification, with its tolerance.
6. 06Moisture content, with the point of measurement named.
7. 07Defect count, and the standard it was counted under.
8. 08Cup score, with the cupper and protocol identified.
9. 09Packing, lot quantity and the number of bags in the lot.
10. 10Incoterms rule and named place, which decide what the price actually includes.

The last point is the one that most often derails a first shipment, and it is covered in the Incoterms guide. The documents you will need once terms are agreed are set out in the importer's documentation checklist, and the timing of all of it against the crop year is in the harvest and shipping calendar.