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 …
By Lily Kubota, Content & Communications Manager, SCAA Delivering a spectacular coffee service was just the beginning for the Roasters Guild’s inaugural “second event” (the “first event” being Roasters Guild Retreat), which took place last week on the University of California, Davis campus. Over 100 seasoned coffee professionals and academics gathered at the inaugural Sensory Summit: A Roasters Guild Event for an educational …
By Ric Rhinehart, SCAA Executive Director Just over twenty years ago, Ted Lingle, then the Executive Director of the SCAA, undertook a tremendous project to formally catalog and describe many of the practices and beliefs of the specialty coffee community around the intersection of coffee quality and taste. One of the results of this exercise …