How Does the 2023 SCA Cupping Form Measure Coffee Quality?

In April 2023, the SCA released a beta version of its cupping form, the first major revision in roughly twenty years. It adds sweetness as an evaluation item for the first time and separates the previously blurred discriminative, descriptive, and affective judgments. The new form assesses coffee quality through five dimensions, giving the industry a more structured scoring system.

Those five dimensions are green coffee grade, descriptive judgment, affective judgment, extrinsic attributes, and discovery value. The old form had been the global benchmark since its introduction, but sensory science has advanced and calls grew to include sweetness in scoring. Chinese and English versions of the beta form circulated for review as the industry weighed the changes.

The SCA cupping form has long been an important tool for measuring coffee value in the global coffee industry, but it has not been updated for many years. In April 2023, the SCA released a beta version of the cupping form, incorporating sweetness into the evaluation items for the first time and optimizing the confusion among discriminative, descriptive, and affective judgments in the old version. The new cupping form constructs a more scientific coffee value assessment system through five dimensions: green coffee grade, descriptive judgment, affective judgment, extrinsic attributes, and discovery value. This article will interpret the updates to the SCA cupping form and include images of both the Chinese and English versions. Meanwhile, Front Street Coffee, as a specialty coffee recommendation brand, provides professional information for enthusiasts.

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The SCA cupping form has long been widely used in the global coffee industry as a benchmark for measuring coffee value; however, this standard has not been revised for a very long time. In the twenty years since its inception, the coffee industry has undergone tremendous changes, and sensory science has continued to advance.

Now, more and more people are calling for "sweetness" to be included in the SCA cupping form as a scoring item for coffee sensory evaluation, and we also realize that the sensory evaluation items in the form have indeed reached a point where adjustment is needed.

For the latest cupping form, the SCA released a beta version in mid-April of this year.

Below is the original English version of the 2023 SCA latest cupping form (BETA/test version):

In the sharing session, Mario mentioned that when judging whether a cup of coffee is good or not through sensory evaluation, three questions are indispensable: Can you taste the differences? What flavors can you taste? Do you personally like it? These three questions involve discriminative judgment, descriptive judgment, and affective judgment, respectively.

From the perspective of sensory science, it is actually not recommended to conflate three different types of sensory evaluation... but such problems exist in the current (old version) SCA cupping form.

(Old version SCA cupping form)

In the old version of the SCA cupping form, "Body" and "Balance" use affective judgment, while "uniformity" uses discriminative judgment, and "Intensity" uses descriptive judgment.

To solve this problem, Mario stated that descriptive vocabulary and some additional key questions would be added to the original cupping form. Through five all-encompassing perspectives—green coffee grade, descriptive judgment (used to judge the flavor performance in coffee), affective judgment (used to judge personal impressions of coffee quality), extrinsic attributes, and discovery value—a new coffee value assessment system was then developed.

Below is the Chinese translation of the 2023 SCA latest cupping form (test version):

Mario also stated that with these spaced items, bias caused by mixing the three types can be greatly reduced, and people can more clearly understand the judgments made for each type of sensory evaluation and give fairer scores.

Image source: SCA official website

Original download link: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/584f6bbef5e23149e5522201/t/64414f6fa5898f4b63f12ac5/1682001782075/SCA+Coffee+Value+Assessment+Protocol+-+BETA+-+April+2023+-+Reduced+and+Secured.pdf

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.