Higher Grounds Trading Co.’s Commitment to Quality:

A fine cup of coffee is a work of art.

From the selection of the beans to creating the ideal cup profile to roasting each small batch to order, we take the utmost care to ensure that you will find quite the plentiful taste profile with every cup of our fair trade, organic, and shade-grown coffees.

Choosing the Right Bean

Everything from soil quality, to tree species, to growing elevation, and processes used in the farming cooperative affects coffee quality.

In any given country, the profile of a coffee can be altered simply by the manner in which the beans were dried, fermented, or stored. For this reason, Higher Grounds logs a lot of travel miles, tasting coffees, meeting growers, and hiking through the dense shade grown organic coffee fields of friends down south to choose the right beans that will meet the high standards of our discriminating consumers.

Once we track down the ideal growing cooperative that is producing some of the finest quality coffees in that particular region we stick with them, encouraging further quality improvement and creating long-term relationships.

Small Batch Roasting with Fair Trade Coffee

Before delivery, our importing cooperative, Cooperative Coffees, sends a sample of each bean to Coffee Lab International. There, our friend and professional Cupper, Mane Aves slurps, spits, and analyzes each organic coffee to ensure that it is of the specialty grade we demand.

Upon arrival at our roastery in the woods, each organic coffee and fair trade coffee is cupped to determine the ideal roast profile. A green coffee bean, like a grape used to produce the finest wines, must be coaxed, and coerced during the roasting process in order to transform it into a fine cup of coffee worthy of a specialty grade distinction.

Each batch of our fair trade, organic, and shade-grown coffees are small-batch roasted to order. Immediately after roasting we package all of our coffees in bags with one-way valves – sealing in the freshness and preventing the coffee from losing its distinct characteristics. With a 30-pound, made in the U.S. of A drum roaster, beans with the distinction of being the best 5% in the world, and a commitment to quality, Higher Grounds is sure to deliver consistency with every batch.

For a crash course on the most important coffee related terms when tasting coffees please visit our coffee terminology page.