TheBeanGeek
TheBeanGeek is a web platform for specialty coffee that does two things: it keeps a searchable catalogue of coffees offered by roasters around the world, and it hosts a free online version of the Coffee Value Assessment forms — the Specialty Coffee Association’s current system for evaluating coffee. It was founded by Peter Kulcsar.1
It sells nothing. There is no coffee to buy on it, no lots to bid on, and no auction to follow. That distinction matters for reading anything about it: TheBeanGeek is a layer of information sitting on top of the trade, not a participant in it.
The CVA tool — the part the SCA vouches for
In its own announcement that “the Coffee Value Assessment (CVA) and its tools are now available to use in the digital space,” the SCA named exactly two platforms: TheBeanGeek and Quantify CVA.1 That is the single most load-bearing fact about the site, because it is the SCA — the body that wrote the standards — saying where to go and fill them in.
What the SCA states about TheBeanGeek’s version:1
| Where | thebeangeek.com/sca/coffee-value-assessment |
| Which forms | ”all three CVA assessment forms, Affective, Descriptive, and Combined” |
| Cost | ”completely free to use, with no account required to begin an assessment” |
| Optional account | free, and its purpose is saving your evaluation history |
The three forms it covers are the in-cup ones — what the coffee tastes like (descriptive), how much the taster rates it (affective), and a sheet combining both. The other two halves of CVA — the physical assessment of the green bean and the extrinsic assessment of certifications and traceability — are not what this tool grew up around. That is a pattern shared with Quantify CVA, and a fair signal of which parts of CVA the trade actually fills in day to day. See Coffee Value Assessment for the full framework and Coffee scoring for the single-number system it replaces.
Hosting the forms is not the same as owning the scale. The 100-point scale, the 80-point specialty threshold and the quality bands all belong to the SCA and its standards; TheBeanGeek supplies the input boxes.
The directory
The other half of the site is a catalogue of individual coffees, each tied to the roaster selling it, alongside pages for individual coffee varieties and origins. Elsewhere on this wiki, TheBeanGeek’s per-variety and per-coffee pages are cited as listings sources for Ethiopian selections such as JARC 74158 and JARC 74112 — a coffee’s page carries the producer, the origin and the roaster in a single record.2
The site blocks automated readers, so its catalogue could not be inspected directly here; everything below about its size and contents is reported rather than confirmed.
To verify — "the largest specialty coffee directory in the world", and 5,600+ coffees from 520+ roasters
A company profile on the startup directory F6S describes TheBeanGeek as “the largest specialty coffee directory in the world, featuring 5,600+ coffees from 520+ roasters—and growing.”3 F6S profiles are typically written by the company itself, which makes this self-description, not independent measurement — and no ranking of coffee directories by size exists to check it against. The page returned an error when fetched here, so even the wording could not be confirmed at source. Treat both the superlative and the two counts as the company’s own marketing figures at an unknown date.
To verify — how the platform describes its own role
A write-up on the trend-spotting site TrendHunter characterises TheBeanGeek as aggregating thousands of coffees into a structured format where users “browse, compare, and track beans by origin, roaster and profile”, and as functioning “as an information layer within the specialty coffee ecosystem, helping enthusiasts and professionals navigate an increasingly fragmented market.”4 This is a single secondary source — a trend-content site, not a coffee publication — and it returned an error when fetched here. The general shape (a directory, not a shop) is consistent with the SCA’s description of the platform, but the specific feature list is unconfirmed.
To verify — what the listings actually contain
Whether TheBeanGeek records numeric cupping scores, farm altitudes, processing methods, prices, or auction references for each coffee is not documented in any source consulted here. Roasters publish those attributes inconsistently, so a directory built on roaster listings would inherit that inconsistency. Nothing on this wiki should be sourced to TheBeanGeek as if it were an official record of a score or a price — for those, go to the auction organisation or the roaster directly.
To verify — company details
Beyond the founder’s name, no verified information was found on incorporation date, legal form, registered country, ownership or team size. Any figure or date circulating for those is speculation until a primary document turns up.
Why a directory matters
Specialty coffee has an information problem that its own success created. Hundreds of roasters each publish a rotating handful of lots, described in their own words, on their own sites, for a few weeks at a time. There is no shared catalogue, no stable identifier for a coffee, and no easy way to ask “who else roasted this lot?” — see Coffee supply chain and Direct trade for how thinly traceability actually travels. A directory that indexes those listings is attempting the boring, valuable job of making that mess searchable.
The CVA side attempts something similar for evaluation. CVA is more paperwork than the old single cupping form, and paperwork that is annoying to fill in does not get filled in. A free browser tool that needs no account removes the most common excuse — which is presumably why the SCA is happy to point at it.
Both halves have the same structural weakness: the platform holds almost no first-hand data. What it knows, it knows because a roaster wrote it, or an evaluator typed it in.
Related
- Coffee Value Assessment — the SCA framework whose forms this platform hosts
- Quantify CVA — the other digital CVA platform the SCA named in the same announcement
- Specialty Coffee Association — the body that owns the standards and made the announcement
- Cupping · Coffee scoring · Q Grader — the evaluation practice the CVA forms sit inside
- Specialty coffee · Third wave coffee — the market whose fragmentation a directory is answering
- Coffee media · Coffee YouTube — the rest of the layer that explains coffee rather than selling it
- JARC 74158 · JARC 74112 — variety notes on this wiki that cite TheBeanGeek listings
Official links
Footnotes
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SCA — The Coffee Value Assessment is Now Available on Two New Digital Platforms: TheBeanGeek and Quantify CVA ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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The Bean Geek — JARC 74158 coffee variety — the site returns HTTP 403 to automated readers and was not read at source for this note ↩
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F6S — TheBeanGeek company profile — self-maintained profile; returned an error on fetch and was not read at source ↩
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TrendHunter — Coffee Discovery Platforms: TheBeanGeek — secondary; returned HTTP 403 on fetch and was not read at source ↩