Key Changes in SCA’s New Cupping Protocol

1. Four Separate Assessments (Plus a Combined Form)

Previously, cupping involved filling out just one form with limited coverage of information. Now, the SCA expands and creates each assessment to cover different sections.

• • Physical Assessment (green bean quality, defects)
  • Descriptive Assessment (what you taste and smell)
  • Affective Assessment (what you ‘feel’ about the taste)
  • Extrinsic (the coffee at farm level)

For practically, they also created a Combined Form that merges Description, Affective and Extrinsic into one sheet.

• • Good to know: For daily operations or routine cuppings, most roasters can use the combined form instead of running all the assessments each time.

2. Reducing Bias with Descriptive and Affective Separation

By separating what you observe (Descriptive) from what you feel (Affective), the new system tries to reduce personal bias during cupping. This is a positive move because traditional cupping often mixed objective tasting with subjective preference,   making it harder to get consistent results.

3. Expanding Scoring Scale

• • The quality scale has been expanded to a 1-9 scale from the previous 6-10 scale.
  • Sweetness is now rated independently, giving it more emphasis. (Previously, it was considered just part of the overall flavour.)

4. Changes to Balance and Clean Cup Scoring

• • Balance is no longer scored separately- it is now part of the Overall Impression.
  • Clean Cup is integrated within the flavour and overall scoring, rather than rated on its own. This change helps avoid double-counting the same coffee traits and streamline the evaluation.

5. Digital Tools

SCA has also introduced digital scoring tools to help with calculations of the final cupping scores.

Our Take on the New Protocol

We appreciate the SCA’s efforts to update the cupping protocol. Reducing bias and encouraging a more restructured evaluation are much-needed improvements. However, after attending a workshop on this new system, we found out this most important matter.

You need to establish your own internal reference profiles. In simple terms, when you first use the new system, you have to decide: “What does a ‘good’ coffee look and taste like for you?” Without that baseline, when you review your scorings- you might wonder, “ Is this good enough?”

Once you have a few coffees assessed and used them as internal benchmarks, future cuppings will make more sense. You can compare new coffees against these baselines.

Our honest confession?

• For daily roasting quality control, we will stick to our familiar cupping protocol.
• But for trying out new coffees and exploring exciting lots, we are definitely open to using the new Combined Form.

Change is hard, but if it leads to better coffee- we are willing to give it a short!

Disclaimer: The content below is based on our personal readings and understanding of the new SCA Coffee Value Assessment (CVA) system. We do not represent the views of SCA, nor do we claim any rights to their material. This article shares our own interpretation.

To find out more about SCA’s New Coffee Value Assessment, check out the following articles:

Part 1: About the New SCA Coffee Value Assessment System- An Overview

Part 2: How the SCA Coffee Value Assessment Works- A Brief Explanation

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