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Equator
In 1995, when partners Brooke McDonnell, Maureen McHugh, and Helen Russell began roasting coffee from a garage, they set out to build a high-impact company focused on quality, sustainability, and social responsibility. As a Certified B Corporation, Equator supports quality-of-life initiatives in coffee-growing regions, including its founding of Panama’s Finca Sophia farm and partnering with World Bicycle Relief.
Coffee Talk
You can find great coffee picks at your local coffee house, but usually only from one roaster at a time. (Plus, there’s always someone trying to hijack a table before they even buy anything.) So you might want to try an online coffee shop like Trade, where you can support independent coffee roasters across the United States and discover new kinds of amazing coffee, all from the comfort of your own home.
Trade offers specialty coffee from craft coffee roasters from all around the United States. We carefully select our coffees to heighten your coffee drinking experience, whether you’re a coffee newbie or an experienced home brewer.
Our coffee subscription service takes care of everything from selection to shipping. And if you want to personalize your coffee selection, we have plenty of ways to help. When you shop for coffee online with Trade, you can choose between organic coffee, single-origin coffee, whole beans, ground coffee, and a variety of unique blends. Our quiz will help you find new coffees that we think you’ll love, and you can have them shipped as regularly as you want.
You can also buy great coffee online by browsing through our coffee collections like medium roast, decaf coffee, or our customers’ most popular choices. Every collection we make is curated by our coffee experts, so you’re always in good hands with us. We are certain that there is the perfect coffee for every coffee lover.
Trade stands for quality coffee, roasted for maximum freshness to make your taste buds happy.
Specialty coffee is a term coined by Erna Knutsen in 1974, refers to any coffee that receives a quality grading score of 80 percent or higher. While “premium” or “gourmet” seem like they’re synonymous with “specialty,” they simply are marketing terms with no defined standards. Specialty coffees are grown in specific and ideal microclimates, and have distinctive and unique flavor profiles, with little to no defects.
Coffee undergoes many scoring processes by professionals who achieved their Q Grader certification from the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI). Coffee is first graded when it's green. If there are defects the coffee is determined to be “not-specialty grade”. For those specialty coffee beans that pass green grading, they are sample roasted and cupped. (Cupping is the official term for critically tasting and scoring coffees. The official cupping form is standard worldwide, and where the 100-point scoring system comes from.) A coffee’s dry fragrance, wet aroma, flavor, aftertaste, body, acidity, balance, and overall impression are taken into consideration while uniformity issues, defects and taints, will lower the overall score
To properly bring out the unique flavors of freshly ground coffee beans, specialty coffee needs to be brewed with a little extra care. Here are a few brewing techniques for making a quality cup of coffee at home:
- Pour-over: This method involves pouring hot water over freshly ground coffee beans through a cone-shaped filter. It allows for precise control over the water flow and extracts oils and flavors resulting in a clean, pleasing cup of coffee.
- French press: This is the preferred method for many coffee drinkers all over the world. It involves steeping coarsely ground coffee in hot water and then pressing a plunger with a built-in filter screen to separate the brewed coffee from the grounds.
- Espresso: Under high pressure, hot water is forced through finely ground coffee beans. As a result, it produces a concentrated and bold shot of coffee that is often used as the base for specialty drinks such as cappuccinos and lattes.
No matter which brewing method you choose, using roasted specialty coffee beans is key to quality coffee at home.