We’re evolving the tool the global coffee industry uses to discover value in coffee.
After three years of research and development, the SCA is evolving the tool the global industry uses to discover value in coffee. The Coffee Value Assessment offers a complete, “high-resolution” picture of a specific coffee across four assessment types, completed separately to avoid bias
Driven by the SCA’s sustainability agenda, which emphasizes equitable value distribution throughout the supply chain, the system aspires to be a powerful tool to help measure and facilitate value assessment and distribution. It simultaneously integrates advances in sensory and coffee science, making it compatible with scientific research for the first time, as well as learnings from a large user-perception research project conducted with the specialty coffee community.
Despite its broad reach within the coffee sector, the 2004 SCA cupping system had not been thoroughly investigated or substantially updated since its creation—and the SCA is committed to improving its tools to improve market access and equity throughout the specialty coffee supply chain. The new Coffee Value Assessment, an evolution of the 2004 SCA Cupping and Grading Protocol guided by the results of a user perception survey of 1600 cuppers worldwide, has been in testing with groups of cuppers in Latin America, Europe, and the US in 2022.
We invite you to join us at World of Coffee to get involved in the next steps of the SCA Coffee Value Assessment. Below are a list of lectures, workshops, and other events at Expo that attendees can attend to learn more about this new initiative at such an early stage. Attendees are also welcome to register as Early Adopters to contribute to the continued process of learning and discovery.
Coffee Value Assessment events & activations at World of Coffee
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27 Jun 2024, 12:00 — 13:00 at the World Coffee Roasting Championship Stage
The SCA Coffee Value Assessment (CVA) was designed to help make coffee better: it offers a complete, “high-resolution” picture of a specific coffee, recognizing all the things about it that we might love (and value). At this year’s World of Coffee Copenhagen, the SCA is launching the next phase of the CVA: three new cupping standards submitted to the SCA’s Standards Development Panel for approval, a beta version of the extrinsic assessment, and updates to supporting documents to help you learn how to integrate the CVA into your day-to-day work. CVA Ambassadors Andrew Tolley, Filip Bartelak, Luiz Saldahna, and Asli Yaman will share their impression of the CVA as well as insights into how they’re currently integrating elements of aspects of the CVA into their day-to-day work.
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27 Jun 2024, 13:00 — 14:00 at the World Coffee Roasting Championship Stage
For the past four years, the Specialty Coffee Association has undertaken a project to develop a more rigorous way to define and measure specialty coffee quality, based on sensory science, economics, and feedback from the coffee community. Last year, some of the learnings from this project were integrated into the scoring scales, scoresheet layouts, and evaluation categories of three competitions. Meanwhile, the World Coffee Championships Competition Strategic Committee (CSC) and staff have been working to make WCC systems more transparent by publishing more documentation around things like Judge competencies, selection processes, and more—including how the SCA's Coffee Value Assessment was being integrated into the WCC portfolio. This presentation brings both of these initiatives together, by answering some of the very basic questions often asked by the community around the WCCs—How do you become a world judge? What goes on in the judges room? Who writes the rules? What's the CSC?—along with a review of the 2023 and 2024 rules and regulations changes for the World Barista Championship, the World Brewers Cup, and the World Coffee Roasting Championship.
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27, 28 and 29 Jun 2024, 10:00 — 14:00 in the SCA Community Lounge
There is so much to love about coffee. In this activity in the SCA Community Lounge at World of Coffee, you'll use the new beta version of the CVA Extrinsic Assessment. This tool classifies a coffee's extrinsic attributes—informational or symbolic qualities beyond its physical and sensory information. Participants will receive information about two coffees to complete the CVA Extrinsic Assessment forms, categorizing attributes important to them. Then, you'll taste the two coffees and match them to the given extrinsic details, exploring how information and expectations influence our tasting decisions and perception of value.
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28 Jun 2024, 10:30 — 12:45 at Green Coffee Connect
During Green Coffee Connect, attendees will have the opportunity to join in the "Transcontinental Tasting and Conversation: South-South Coffee Discoveries" session, where they will use and apply the SCA Coffee Value Assessment (CVA). This session will feature diverse coffees from the world, each originating from different producing regions (Africa, Asia, and Latin America) possessing unique characteristics. Participants of all experience levels will use a condensed version of the CVA adapted to Menti ® for easy access. The insights derived from the CVA will be a crucial foundation for discussions and conversations about coffee's unique intrinsic and extrinsic attributes.