If you’re a coffee enthusiast, you’ll definitely have your own list of the best coffees that suit your taste buds. And once you have tried some of them, you’ll surely crave more until it becomes a cycle of seeking the best quality products. In your journey, you may have already come across Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. It’s one of the popular variants in the rare and expensive category. Because of its cost, it’s really essential to gather more information and details to ensure that you are really getting what you’re paying for.
So, before you add one to your cart, here are four noteworthy pieces of information to take into consideration before buying Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee.
1. It’s highly specific.
From the name itself, this coffee is literally grown in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. These can only be harvested from four specific parishes, which are St. Mary, St. Thomas, St. Andrew, Portland, and nowhere else — which is why it’s very delicate and rare. Aside from that, in order to be considered as blue mountain coffee, it should specifically grow above altitudes of 3,000 and under 5,500 feet. In order to produce these gems, the growers and roasters of these beans really go the extra mile with much effort.
2. There’s no such thing as cheap Jamaican Blue Mountains Coffee.
Cheap ones don’t exist. It’s as simple as that. As mentioned earlier, this coffee is very specific from where it is grown, and it requires certain altitudes to be considered legit. But more than that, to produce one, it undergoes a labor-intensive process that makes it more expensive.
Unlike other coffee beans that are separated by using a machine, blue mountain coffee is separated by hand. Yes, manually. Roasters check each bean to carefully identify undesirable qualities such as size, defects, and more. In order to be approved, every bean should be the same exact size without any signs of imperfections. To make it short, it should be picture-perfect. It takes time, right? No wonder why the price is high.
3. There are knock-offs.
Because of its expensiveness, there are roasters that produce cheap options and claim it as blue mountain coffee. However, just like what’s stated earlier, if it’s cheap, something’s not right. To avoid being scammed with fake products, we recommend checking this list from Sip Coffee House — it ranks the best brands of legit Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee.
4. It’s an internationally protected brand.
Before this coffee can be produced in the market, there will be a panel of experts that manually inspects the product to formally approve them. This panel is known as the Jamaica Coffee Industry Board or JCIB. This panel has its own specific set of rules and regulations to follow upon inspection, and even a blind taste test is conducted to carefully assess its quality. Right after all the tests, an official seal will be given to formally approve the product.
Final Words
Before you purchase Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, always ensure that you’re getting it from legitimate sellers that have the seal. If it doesn’t have one, it’s probably not authentic. Since it’s expensive, it would be best to take extra measures to be able to take a sip of what you’re paying for.
