How green coffee is graded

The Specialty Coffee Association's green grading protocol defines 'specialty' physically: a 350 g sample with no category 1 defects and at most 5 full category 2 defects, no quakers in the roast, moisture between 9 and 13 percent, and a cup free of faults. Lower bands (premium, exchange, below standard, off grade) widen the defect allowance. The facts here are restated from FAO's public post-harvest compendium and importer pages rather than from the SCA document itself.

Most of Central America grades arabica by the altitude at which it grew, on the premise that cooler, higher farms give denser 'harder' beans. Guatemala, Costa Rica and Peru use the Hard Bean ladder (SHB, FHB or GHB, HB, MHB), while El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua use High Grown (SHG, HG, CS). The metre thresholds differ by country, as the table shows, and the designation says nothing about defects or cup, which are negotiated separately through preparations such as EP (European Preparation).

Brazil's official system (Instrução Normativa MAPA nº 8 of 11 June 2003) classifies raw green coffee by species group, bean shape and screen, cup ('bebida') and type ('tipo'). Type is set by counting weighted defects in a 300 g sample, screens run 10 to 19 for flat beans and 8 to 13 for peaberry (moca), and the beverage scale runs from estritamente mole down to rio zona. Export descriptions such as 'Santos NY 2/3 screen 17/18 strictly soft' combine type, screen and cup; the IN 8 text itself gives the vocabulary and procedure, while the defect-to-type table is reproduced in the FAO post-harvest annex and importer charts.

India names its green coffee by species and process first ('Plantation' is washed arabica, 'Cherry' is unwashed, 'Parchment' is washed robusta) and then by shape and size letters (PB, A, AB, B, C), with Blacks, Bits and Bulk as residual grades. The Coffee Board of India administers export registration and ICO certificates of origin, and the distinctive Monsooned Malabar preparation has its own AA/A/Triage grades.

Colombia regulates export quality through the Comité Nacional de Cafeteros, enforced by the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros. The legal floor is 'Excelso de Exportación', defined by screen size (above 14, half the beans above 15), a defect count on a 500 g sample and a 12% moisture ceiling; a 2016 resolution widened the undersize tolerance from 1.5% to 5% to match Green Coffee Association contract terms. Supremo, EP and UGQ are trade preparations layered on top of Excelso rather than separate legal grades.

Ethiopia grades export coffee on a 1-to-9 scale set by the Coffee Liquoring Unit for lots passing through the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX), which standardised coffee as a commodity from 2008 and loosened traceability rules from 2017. Grades 1 and 2 are the specialty tiers, almost always washed, and grades 3 to 9 are commercial, dominated by naturals; the grade is defect- and cup-based rather than screen-based, and it ignores flavour descriptors.

Hawaii is the only US coffee origin with state-law grades. Chapter 4-143 of the Hawaii Administrative Rules lets the Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity certify green coffee as Extra Fancy, Fancy, No. 1, Select, Prime, No. 3, Natural Prime or Mixed Natural Prime, each paired with a protected district name (Kona, Ka'u, Hamakua, Maui, Kauai, Molokai, Oahu or Hawaii Island). Grading weighs cleanliness, colour, roast, defects, minimum bean size and moisture; coffee below Prime may not use a geographic name, and the Prime defect allowance tightened from 20% to 15% on 1 July 2020. Certification is voluntary: about half of Hawaii's green coffee was certified in 2024-25, and Prime made up 72% of certified volume.

Kenya sorts washed arabica mechanically by bean size and shape into letter grades (E, AA, AB, PB, C, TT, T) and then has licensed liquorers assign a cup class, so an AA is a size, not a quality promise. The screen ranges in the harmonised East African standard EAS 130:1999 differ slightly from the importer shorthand (AA as 17-18, AB as 15-16), which is why published tables disagree. Coffee is sold through the Nairobi Coffee Exchange auction or by direct 'second window' sale, and grade names are the same ones used in Tanzania and Uganda.

Smaller origins publish their own grade words, usually a mix of screen size and defect count. Jamaica's Blue Mountain numbers, PNG's A/X/Y letters, Congo's Kivu numbers, Ecuador's Superior/Especial/Selecto and Yemen's AA/A are the ones a buyer most often meets; all are restated here from a single importer reference chart and should be checked against each national board.

Peruvian exporters describe coffee with the Central American altitude vocabulary (SHB above 1,350 m, HB 1,200-1,350 m) while the national standard NTP 209.027 'Café verde. Requisitos', revised in 2024 and amended in 2025 with an implementation guide (GIP 101:2026), sets physical grades by defects and sieve. Peru is also the largest exporter of certified organic arabica, so certification labels often matter more than grade in its trade.

Rwanda's exporters grade washed Bourbon by screen into High, Medium and Ordinary and overlay cupping-score tiers, while Burundi borrows the East African AA/AB/C letters. Both countries sell most coffee through washing-station lots where the station name matters more than the grade.

Indonesia's national standard SNI 01-2907-2008 grades green coffee purely on physical defects: a 300 g sample is scored with weighted defect values and placed into Mutu 1 to Mutu 6, with 4 split into 4a and 4b. Export names such as 'Sumatra Grade 1' or 'Sulawesi Grade 1' refer to this ladder (Grade 1 being 11 or fewer defect points), while cup quality is assessed separately. The system replaced the older 'OVEIP' colour-based classification.

Tanzania grades arabica on the same British-derived letter system as Kenya, with the Tanzania Coffee Board running the Moshi auction and direct-export licences. Both the EAS 130 regional standard and importer charts describe AA as the top size with AB the main commercial grade and PB separated by shape; robusta from Kagera is graded separately.

Vietnam's national standard TCVN 4193 ('Cà phê nhân', green coffee) has been revised in 2005, 2012 and 2014. It grades arabica and robusta by the share of beans retained on specified round-hole sieves and by a total defect value on a 300 g sample, with a 12.5% moisture ceiling and rules on how much arabica, robusta and excelsa may be mixed per grade. In practice robusta is traded on screen size and black-and-broken percentages.