The Coffee Quality Institute, a nonprofit created by the SCAA, launched the Q Grader program in 2004. The aim is not to hand out one more title. It is to give producing countries evaluators that buyers recognize, because a score is worth nothing as long as the other party distrusts it.

The license certifies a cupper calibrated on the 2004 scoresheet. The course lasts six days, three of review and three of exams, about twenty tests spread over nine modules. The essential part concerns less what the candidate knows than what their senses do.

• Scored cuppingsin calibration with the instructor, that is, by checking that one scores as the instructor does.
• Triangulationsfinding the odd bowl out of three.
• Olfactory recognitionthe 36 vials of Jean Lenoir's Nez du café.
• Thresholdsspotting sweet, salty and sour in solution.
• Organic acidsmatching acetic, citric, malic and phosphoric.
• Roastingidentifying the roast degree.
• Defectsclassifying those of the green coffee in 350 g, then those of the roasted.
• General knowledgethe only test that relies on the head rather than the nose.

The license is recalibrated every three years. It attests to the state of the senses on a given date, not to a diploma acquired once and for all.

In twenty years, the CQI has certified about 10,000 arabica and canephora Q Graders according to the trade press, “more than 8,000” according to its own press release. Two figures for the same tally, and no one explains the gap.

Coffee Quality Institute, Q Grader Exams and Calibrations; Perfect Daily Grind, May 2025; Daily Coffee News, April 25, 2025; level of evidence: institute and trade press

On April 22, 2025, the SCA and the CQI announced that the SCA would take over the program on October 1, 2025. The Q Grader is rebuilt on the Coffee Value Assessment, that is, on the evaluation system that replaced the old scoresheet. Holders therefore do not keep their license as it stands. They must take the “CVA for Cuppers” course before December 31, 2025 to become “Evolved Q Graders.”

The discontent predates the takeover. As early as October 2022, the SCA acknowledged that some Q Graders felt “poorly served and poorly represented” by the administration of the program.

The published reactions range from support to criticism, and each targets a different point. Spencer Turer (Coffee Enterprises) judges that the abrupt move from the 2004 scoresheet to the CVA compromises the launch. Krzysztof Blinkiewicz (Red Ink Coffee) deplores decisions made “in closed offices, without the community.” Spencer Ross (UMass Lowell) notes that licensees have seen “the value of their certification evaporate overnight”: the title they maintained every three years stops being the reference.

The financial terms of the takeover have not been published.

SCA, press release of April 22, 2025; Daily Coffee News, April 25, 2025; Perfect Daily Grind, May 2025; Coffee Intelligence, May 2025