SCAA cup meter explains every item in SCAA cup table

Coffee Cupping, Chinese translated as coffee cup test, cup taste or cup evaluation, is a very magical and simple coffee sensory evaluation method. The quality of coffee is judged by taste, which is called "coffee cup test". The person who evaluates it is called a "coffee quality appraiser." Similar to wine tasting, when cupping, make coffee flow back and forth in your mouth, and make full use of your taste and smell to feel the flavor characteristics of coffee. It transforms subjective, person-specific sensory experiences into quantitative data with practical value to guide people's practical decisions about buying, selling, and sharing experiences.

Now I'm going to give you a brief description of each item in SCAA's cup test table.

1: Fragrance/Aroma

Aroma: Aroma consists of two parts, dry fragrance and wet fragrance. The first image and the first item to be scored after grinding beans are dry aromas. Coffee flowers, roasted hazelnuts and roasted almonds are all pleasant aromas. Water injection, broken shell wet fragrance gives people more fantasy, honey, lemon, apricot fruit makes people salivate if thirsty.

Second rating item: Sip flavor, Flavor

Sip flavor: flavor is the first item perceived and scored when the coffee drops to 71℃ and begins to sip, including various flavors and olfactory sensations; the cup tester can include the perceived flavor in the scoring item, including various flavors measured or drunk. It can be said that sipping flavor is a very important scoring item, and it is also a basis for telling the characteristics of cup coffee samples. The more the better the flavor scores will be higher.

The third scoring item: aftertaste, Aftertaste

Aftertaste: all kinds of taste or aroma or touch that still stay in the mouth after sipping. If the good flavor stays for a long time, such as sweet feeling, still stays clearly in the mouth or even diffuses after sipping coffee, the score of this item will be high. On the contrary, if there is no aftertaste or very short, the score will be low.

The fourth scoring item: acidity, Acidity

Acidity: Good acidity is not like vinegar. It is bright and lively. It can also detect various acids such as citrus, berry or sweet lemon. It also has sweet acid like honeydew melon or crisp fruit acid of fresh apple. These acids are good; bad acids are like unripe fruit or acetic acid, and some bad acids are like overripe fruit or F·B, when fermented acids or rotten acids can be detected. The better the acid, the higher the score.

Fifth rating item: Body, Body

Body: The scoring item is not to measure taste, which belongs to the substance and touch felt by the mouth, grease sense, viscosity, quality sense, etc. all constitute the body; for example, milk and water, the former has a much higher touch, thick soup and clear soup, the former has a much higher consistency and touch than the latter.

6: Consistency, Uniformity

Consistency: This score is relatively simple, do the 5 cups have different tastes, which cup has defects? If they agree, write a big ten!

The seventh rating item: Balance

Balance: refers to whether the various scoring items of coffee are balanced, for example, although the acid is bright, it will still turn sweet. Sticky but not harsh? Are the coffee flavors harmonious? If so, the score will be high.

8th rating item: cleanliness, Clean cup

Cleanliness: Fine is very important and necessary conditions, the so-called clean is no defects and stains of the defect taste ( complete freedom from stains or faults), coffee has F·B, earthy taste, medicine iodine taste, fermentation acid, rubber, onion, astringency and so on bad taste and touch, all said not clean enough.

The ninth rating item: sweetness,Sweetness

Sweetness: not only represents the coffee fruit harvest in the best maturity period, no adulteration of immature beans, but also represents the excellent quality of coffee, only the selection of just ripe coffee fruit to process into raw beans, in order to get better sweetness, sweet varieties are also many, such as sugar cane sweet, caramel sweet and so on, these are the evaluation can be indicated. Coffee usually has sweetness in it, so this item will be given a high score as long as the sweetness is perceived.

The tenth rating item: Overall,Overall

Overall rating: Coffee overall is excellent, appeals to you, or is it average, or do you not like her at all?

This rating item is an overall assessment of the testee and can also reflect his personal preferences. Without the cup tester's hard work to test each cup of coffee, there will be no harvest of coffee farmers, there will be no good drink in the cup, in order to find a better coffee to drink is the true meaning of cup testing.