Roastwarden

Roasting

Cupping

The SCA cupping form and its score, kept with the roast.

Cupping a roast and keeping the score with it lets you see which roasts tasted best, and compare them with how they were roasted. Roastwarden records the classic SCA cupping form (the 2004 protocol, as the CQI Q form lays it out) against each roast, works out the final score and its band, and prints blank forms to score on.

Cupping is one of the optional modules: switch it on under Settings → Modules (the Enthusiast and Roastery presets include it).

Scoring a roast

History → the roast → Cupping Notes:

  • The seven quality attributes are sliders. Uniformity, Clean Cup and Sweetness are five cups each: untick a cup that fails.
  • Taint and Fault count the cups with a defect.
  • The line under them reads "Total − defects", then the Final score and its band.
  • Tasting Notes keeps your words. Save Scores stores it; a roast has one cupping, and saving again replaces it.

The form

AttributeScaleA fresh form starts at
Fragrance/Aroma, Flavor, Aftertaste, Acidity, Body, Balance, Overall0–10 in quarter points; the form's scale runs 6.00–9.75 (6 good, 7 very good, 8 excellent, 9 outstanding)6.00
Uniformity, Clean Cup, Sweetness2 points a cup over five cups: 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 1010 (every cup passes)
  • Defects: a cup with a taint (noticeable, mostly in the aroma) takes 2 points off, a cup with a fault (it spoils the taste) 4. At most five cups in all.
  • Total is the ten attributes' sum. Final is the total less the defects, once all ten are scored.
  • Band: 90 and over outstanding, 85 excellent, 80 very good, below 80 below specialty.

The SCA's 2024 Coffee Value Assessment (CVA) scores differently, and the SCA says the two do not map onto each other. Roastwarden records only the classic form and never converts between them.

Cupping sheets

Reports → Cupping sheet: a blank form to score on, with a blind three-digit code per sample and the key on a page of its own (two samples a page with scales, or six with boxes), or a day's scores as a table (reports). The official CVA forms may only be shared unchanged, so Roastwarden links them rather than redrawing them: https://sca.coffee/s/CVA-Cupping-Forms-EN.pdf.

From the command line

roast cup '#12' aroma=7.5 flavour=7.25 acidity=7.75 sweetness=8 --taint 1 --notes "stone fruit"
roast report cupping latest --blank

Names may be the form's own or aroma, flavour, clean; scores you do not name keep theirs. A score the form does not allow (sweetness 7, acidity 7.3) is refused with the reason (the roast command).