Commodity coffee

Commodity coffee refers to commercial-grade coffee, which is the type you most commonly find on supermarket shelves. Unlike specialty coffee, which focuses on precision and transparent sourcing, commodity beans from various farmers are blended into massive lots, prioritizing low cost over unique flavor. It is often roasted very dark to mask defects and standardize the taste, resulting in a cup dominated by straightforward bitterness and notes of cocoa or tobacco. These beans are traded purely as a global market commodity, much like oil or sugar. It is the mass production of this segment that shaped the traditional, bitter expectation of what coffee tastes like.