Getting coffee graded?

[drawknife]

I've recently been asked by a friend to help his family's green coffee graded according to SCA guidelines.

I'm happy to do it and, while I do know a Q grader who might be able to help me get the ball rolling, I'd like to know what the process is like before I start pestering anyone.

Could someone enlighten me as to the general way this process would work?

 

[Musicphan]

You can have two components of grading any green coffee... one is simply taking a 300g sample and sorting through all the beans and seeing how many defects are within that 300g sample. It has to have less than a certain amount of defects to be called Specialty coffee. The second component is a cupping score - that's where the Q graders typically have good pallets to do this. The first 'calibrate' their taste buds with peers to make sure they score like coffees with like scores. Then it's as simple as cupping a set of 5 coffees. Keep in mind the cupping score while the intent is to be consistent, there is a bit of subjectivity in the score. This will get the family an understanding of how good the coffee is but every roaster typically will want samples and roast/cup the coffee themselves. I will only buy green from a) one Importer that i trust b) Coffees I have evaluated and cupped

 

[voltagecoffee]

I am also interested in hearing about this. SAving for notifications.

 

[wmark]

1. What is the country of origin ?

2. Is coffee machine sorted or hand sorted ?
i.e. Coops in Guatemala now use a mechanical sorter that analyzes every bean for defects to be passed or rejected.

3. What is defect rate ? As mentioned above.

4. What are cupping scores of the coffee ? ....and I don't mean from some unknown biased entity. Is there a national organization that scores the coffee ? A cup of excellence organization ?

At least this is a start