Coffee culture

Interpreting the Latest 2023 SCA Cupping Form with Bilingual Version Diagrams | How to Conduct Coffee Quality Assessment: Coffee Cupping?

Published: 2026-01-27 Author: FrontStreet Coffee
Last Updated: 2026/01/27, For more professional coffee knowledge exchange and coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account: cafe_style). Coffee tasters, also known as cuppers, refer to cupping abroad, which means presenting the original flavor of coffee beans without any brewing techniques. Coffee farmers abroad generally conduct cupping

Professional coffee knowledge exchange. For more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account: cafe_style).

For more premium coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee on WeChat: qjcoffeex

After the BOP Best of Panama competition concluded last year, Mario Fernandez, Technical Officer of the SCA Specialty Coffee Association (hereinafter referred to as Mario), shared at a estate reception:

"The SCA cupping form, as a standard widely used in the global coffee industry to measure coffee value, has not been updated for a long time. In the twenty years since this form was invented, the coffee industry has undergone tremendous changes, and sensory science has continuously developed and progressed.

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Nowadays, more and more people are requesting that 'sweetness' be added to the SCA cupping form as one of the coffee sensory evaluation items (scoring items). We also realize that it's time for the sensory evaluation items in the form to change."

The latest cupping form was also released as a beta version by SCA in mid-April this year. Below is the original English version of the 2023 SCA latest cupping form (BETA/Test Version):

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The Three Questions of Sensory Evaluation

In his sharing, Mario mentioned that when judging whether a cup of coffee is good or bad through sensory means, it离不开 three questions: Can you taste the difference? What flavors can you taste? Do you personally like it? These three questions involve discriminative judgment, descriptive judgment, and affective judgment.

From the perspective of sensory science, it is actually not recommended to mix three different types of sensory evaluation together... However, the existing (old version) SCA cupping form has this problem.

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(SCA old version 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.

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The New Coffee Value Assessment System

To solve this problem, Mario stated that descriptive vocabulary and some additional key questions would be added to the original cupping form. Through five comprehensive perspectives - green bean grade, descriptive judgment (used to evaluate flavor performance in coffee), affective judgment (used to evaluate personal impression of coffee quality), external attributes, and discovered value - a new coffee value assessment system was then developed.

2023 SCA Latest Cupping Form (Chinese Translation)

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

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Mario also stated that with these interspersed items, bias caused by the mixing of three types can be greatly reduced, and people can also more clearly understand their sensory judgments for each type 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

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