Plate VIII · section 18 of 18

Today

The 2004 scoresheet is no longer the standard. The SCA first surveyed 1,600 cuppers around the world. It presented a beta version of the Coffee Value Assessment in Portland, at the Re:co Symposium and the Specialty Coffee Expo, from April 19 to 23, 2023. The system was then tested in Latin America and Europe, and adopted as the official standard on November 5, 2024.

It rests on three documents: SCA 102-2024 for sample preparation and the mechanics of tasting, 103-2024 for descriptive evaluation, 104-2024 for affective evaluation.

What the CVA changes comes down to one gesture: it separates what the 2004 scoresheet mixed together. Four distinct evaluations, instead of one score that did everything at once.

Physicalthe state of the green coffee: color, moisture, defects, screen size.
Descriptivewithout value judgment. The intensity of fragrance, aroma, flavor, aftertaste, acidity, sweetness and mouthfeel is scored on a scale of 1 to 15. Descriptors are then ticked in “check all that apply” lists.
Affectivewhat the cupper likes, and nothing else.
Extrinsicwhat cannot be tasted: origin, farm, altitude, variety, processing, certifications.

The affective evaluation scores eight sections: fragrance, aroma, flavor, aftertaste, acidity, sweetness, mouthfeel, overall impression. The scale is hedonic, from 1 to 9, where 5 is neutral. It replaces the 6 to 10 scale, which started at “good” as if every coffee necessarily were.

The score out of 100 is obtained with the formula 0.65625 × (sum of the eight sections) + 52.75. Deductions for non-uniform bowls and defective bowls are subtracted from it, and the result is rounded to the quarter point. Eight 9s give 100, eight 5s give 79, and the floor is 58.

The threshold of 80 therefore remains, but it has changed in nature. It is no longer a definition: it corresponds to a cupper who likes the coffee a little more than neutral.

SCA, press release of November 5, 2024; Daily Coffee News, November 5, 2024; SCA Standard 104-2024, formula taken up by the official calculator sca.coffee/cuppingscore; Perfect Daily Grind, April 2023; MTPak Coffee, September 2023

What has moved in recent years comes down to a few dates. The Q Grader passed under the SCA on October 1, 2025, with a conversion deadline of December 31, 2025. The Cup of Excellence celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2024. The chemistry of the mouth finally has its first results (Ohio State, 2021-2023). The extraction diagram was redone (2023). The potato defect has an experimental mechanical cause (2025).

And the review by Yang and coauthors (2026) covers 12.48 million hectares harvested in 2024, for 11.28 million tonnes. It gives the figure that governs everything else: 54.6% in price per point.

It also gives the list of what is still unknown.

Precursorsthe biosynthetic pathways are little explored.
Heatthermal thresholds by cultivar are not established.
Shadeits mechanisms remain correlative, that is, a link is observed without knowing what it passes through.
Fermentationa black box.
Non-volatilesneglected by research.

None of this work says how to manufacture a point of score with certainty. What remains, as the only reliable instrument of decision, is ground coffee, hot water and a spoon.

Daily Coffee News, April 25, 2025; Global Coffee Report 2024; Yang et al. 2026, p. 1-2 and 14; LC ch. 17

Gray areas

What the sources do not allow us to assert. We say so rather than filling the gap.

The number of volatile compounds in coffee: “about 800” in the training documents, “more than 1,000” in the reviews (Sunarharum 2014, Grosch 2001). The figure depends on the method and the date; no inventory is closed.
The figure of “60% of the profile” attributed to post-harvest and the metabolomic result that places origin ahead of processing coexist in Yang et al. 2026 (p. 12-13) without being reconciled; the reading proposed here (two different variances) is a hypothesis, not a result.
The relationship between the measured content of acids and perceived acidity remains poorly established (Yeager et al. 2021); the acid-by-acid/origin-by-origin correspondence of the training documents (phosphoric and Kenya, malic and Burundi) is a pedagogical grid for cuppers, not a measurement.
The origin of the East African phenol has not been the subject of a study comparable to that of the Brazilian rio (Spadone 1990); the causes cited (chlorinated water, pesticides, pallets) come from commercial pages.
The cause of the potato defect is disputed: enteric bacteria isolated (2018) with no identified source, Antestia bug (dominant hypothesis), mechanical injury (2025). No per-bowl frequency figure is published for Rwanda and Burundi.
The share of caffeine in the total bitterness of a coffee is not quantified here: Hofmann and Frank (2007) name roasting as the main source without giving a usable percentage.
The role of Clarence E. Bickford in the invention of the cup test (San Francisco, 1890s) rests on commercial sources with no contemporary document cited; Ukers (1922) does not name him.
The number of Q Graders certified in twenty years varies by source: “more than 8,000” (SCA/CQI press release, April 2025), “about 10,000” (trade press, May 2025). The number of Evolved Q Graders on December 31, 2025 was not found.
The exact CVA deductions for non-uniform bowls and defective bowls, and the detail of the CATA lists of the descriptive evaluation, are in the SCA 104-2024 standard, which is sold for a fee; they could not be verified against the document itself.
The number of consumers and cups in the study by Guinard et al. 2023 could not be verified (article under restricted access); only the size of the descriptive panels (12) and the two consumer segments are attested by the trade press.
The exact date of the first VST refractometer tuned for coffee (“end of the 2000s”) and the manufacturers' specifications for colorimeters were not verified against the manufacturers' documents; the Agtron, Colortest and Colorette scales are given as the protocols cite them.
The gap between the extraction yields of African and American origins (Gagné 2021, p. 173-174) is an observation by a single author on his own cups, with two hypotheses not separated: more solubles in the bean, or a refractometer calibration skewed by the composition.

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