Each year, the Specialty Coffee Association’s Best New Product Awards recognize new products that represent quality and add value to the specialty coffee and tea industry. Awards were presented at the World of Coffee in Budapest, Hungary in June. The Best New Product Awards for 2017 went to: COFFEE ACCESSORIES Espazzola, PROTONEA Senger CONSUMER EQUIPMENT …
By Rosemary Trent Producing a great cup of coffee amid global threats is growing challenge for the world’s coffee growers. In 2003, the SCA Sustainability Council created the Sustainability Award to promote, encourage and celebrate the efforts of those who serve as role models and innovators in the coffee industry. Yearly applications for the prestigious …
SCA’s Certified Home Brewer program has long been the recognized mark of excellence when it comes to home brewing machines. The program recognizes brewers that meet SCA’s longstanding rigorous technical requirements which are based on decades of industry knowledge and research by the Coffee Brewing Center. All SCA Certified Brewers have met these requirements, which …
By Olivia Auell Humans are complicated. When we drink a cup of coffee, cues from all five senses turn into signals in the brain, travel through complex circuitry and produce what we call flavor. As you’ve probably realized if you’ve worked in coffee for a while, not everyone perceives the same thing when tasting …
By Molly Spencer The coffee industry had been established long before it was introduced to the academic world. The industry had mostly operated on empirical observations based on what worked and what didn’t work. However, in this day and age, the industry faces complex issues such as sustainability and environmental production challenges, the need for …
By Emma Sage, SCAA Coffee Science Manager The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has announced that they are re-classifying coffee from a “group 2B” to a “group 3” substance (Loomis and others 2016). This means that coffee is in the clear and is no longer officially linked with being a …
By Emma Sage, SCAA Coffee Science Manger With contributions by Molly Spencer, PhD Candidate, UC Davis Introduction The scientific story behind the new SCAA Coffee Taster’s Flavor Wheel is quite fascinating. This tale includes a star cast of characters, including World Coffee Research (WCR), Kansas State University (KSU), Texas A&M University (TX A&M), the University of …
By Emma Sage, SCAA This work began about three years ago, leading up to the SCAA Symposium in Boston, where we had a scientific session focusing on coffee genetics. Little did I know at the time that this project would turn into a multi-year, multi-disciplinary treasure hunt. For a presentation on this topic at …
By Andy Freivogel, Science Retail A successful niche retailer and I sat down yesterday in preparation for what promised to be an ugly phone call with a point-of-sale (POS) company, whose software was inexplicably failing. The retailer asked me, “Who are these guys? Are other guys better? Take sign makers, for example. I had a …
By Emma Sage, SCAA Coffee Science Manager Now that we have released the new SCAA Coffee Taster’s Flavor Wheel, I want to tell you more of the story as to how we got there. Specifically, about the quantity and quality of scientific research that went into this project, which was a massive collaborative effort worth …