Coffee grading is a sorting system, not a quality verdict. It sorts green beans by physical characteristics so a buyer knows what a bag will look and roast like. It does not tell you how the coffee tastes.
Freshly roasted by Gray Cup, our roasting partner — ships across India.
Indian washed Arabica grades
| Grade | Screen size | What it means | |---|---|---| | AAA / Plantation A | 17+ | Largest, most uniform beans, low defects. Roasts most evenly. | | AA | 16+ | Large, uniform, low defects. The specialty workhorse grade. | | A | 15+ | Solid commercial-to-specialty; slightly less uniform. | | PB (Peaberry) | round bean | A single round seed instead of two flat halves (~5% of a crop). Often denser; roasts a little differently. | | B+ / B | 14+ / 13+ | Smaller, more size variation. Blend and commodity use. | | BBB | 12+ | Lowest washed grade. Instant coffee, low-cost blends. |
Naturals, honey and HSD lots use their own labels (often "AA Naturals", "AA HSD Specialty") because the sorting is done on the finished natural/honey bean.
What grade does tell you
- Roast evenness — uniform size = uniform heat transfer = fewer scorched and underdeveloped beans in the same batch.
- Screen consistency for your roast curves.
- Defect ceiling — higher grades cap primary/secondary defects.
What grade does NOT tell you
- Cup quality. Terroir, farming, picking ripeness, fermentation and drying decide flavour. A carefully farmed A beats a careless AAA.
- Processing character. Grade is size; process is taste.
- Freshness. A AAA lot from two crops ago is still stale.
Koraput lots by grade
Roasted equivalents
Don't roast? The graded Koraput Arabica above is also sold roasted and ready to brew on Odisha Coffee's roasted coffee page, and roasted to order by Gray Cup.