All entries (14)
- Agtron scale — How roasters replace the words “light, medium and dark” with a measured number — what an Agtron reading actually is, why ground and whole-bean readings differ, and the sample-preparation habits that decide whether the number means anything.
- Coffee flavor wheel — The color-coded wheel of coffee flavors and the scientific word-list behind it — how the industry agrees on what a coffee “tastes like.
- Coffee scoring — What a coffee score like “85+” or “specialty” actually means, and where the thresholds come from.
- Coffee Value Assessment — The SCA’s current system for evaluating coffee — four separate assessments replacing the single 100-point cupping score.
- Cupping — The standardized tasting method the industry uses to score and compare coffees.
- Fine Robusta — The grading standard that lets Robusta be sold as specialty — a separate cupping form, an 80-point line, and green-coffee rules strict enough that most Robusta fails on looks before anyone tastes it.
- Green coffee grading — How raw, unroasted coffee is judged before anyone tastes it — the catalogue of physical defects, how they are counted into a single number, the moisture and screen-size limits that travel with them, and why the grading rules change from one country to the next.
- Kenya AA — The most famous two letters in African coffee, and what they actually measure — a bean size, not a farm, a variety or a flavour. How Kenya’s grade ladder works, why AA fetches a premium anyway, and how much of the published detail turns out to be trade convention rather than law.
- Peaberry — The round coffee bean that grew alone in the cherry — an accident of pollination, not a variety or a process, sorted out into its own grade and sold at a premium on a reputation the evidence does not quite support.
- Q Grader — The licence that certifies a person to score coffee to a common standard — what the exam involves, how long it lasts, and why the licence changed hands.
- Quaker — The pale bean that refuses to brown in the roaster — an underripe seed that is invisible in green coffee and only confesses under heat, making it the one defect a green grader cannot catch.
- SCA cupping protocol — The step-by-step recipe and 100-point scoresheet the specialty trade used for two decades to turn a taste into a number.
- Specialty coffee — The industry’s own name for the top tier of coffee — what the definition actually says today, where the famous “80 points” line came from, and why the two no longer match.
- Water activity — The measure of how much of the water inside a coffee bean is actually free to cause trouble — the number importers use to predict mould, staling and shelf life, and why it tells you something moisture content cannot.