How Do You Become a Professional Coffee Taster?
Beth Ann samples coffee during a production cupping in the Quality Lab at our headquarters in Massachusetts.
Well, if you were Beth Ann Caspersen, our Coffee Quality Manager in 1997, this was a good question. There were no courses or certificate programs for such a thing as specialty coffee. You had to do it the old-fashioned way: find a skilled and willing mentor and create your own version of an apprenticeship.
Today, there are more options. But for small-scale coffee farmers and their co-op staff, access to those formal training options can be very limited, making it just as challenging, in a different way, as when Beth Ann was starting out. She has worked for decades to make this knowledge more accessible for remote farmers. Her latest adventure in that work was this past fall in Peru.
Why should coffee farmers learn coffee tasting skills?
Asprocafe Ingruma coffee farmers evaluating green coffee beans at a quality training in Colombia.
As we know, information is often power. With these skills, farmers can more confidently identify the quality of their crop and demand higher prices for higher-quality coffees, which is good for them and for the industry. This is why Equal Exchange, under Beth Ann’s leadership, has prioritized the accessibility of these trainings within farming communities. And it has paid off.
Equal Exchange and our farmer partners have developed a shared quality vocabulary, which ultimately helps lead to successfully trading coffee together, often for years or decades. We share what flavor attributes we’re seeking, and farmers select coffee with those qualities from their often vast harvest.
When Beth Ann started this work, most farmer co-ops that we worked with did not have quality laboratories or coffee cuppers (those trained in the sensory analysis of coffee) on staff. Through her support and mentorship, and through the co-ops themselves increasingly seeing value in this role, most of the co-ops that we work with now have a trained cupper. This person oversees quality programs to help farmers, the co-op, and potential buyers confidently know their current harvests' qualities and attributes. This role of on-site coffee cupper has opened the door for more women and young farmers to find a new professional path.
When farmers understand not just the coffee quality in the cup but also what farming and processing practices ultimately influence cup quality for good and for bad, they can problem-solve and make practical improvements. Farmers can figure out where in the coffee cultivation or processing steps they can adjust something that could lead to better quality in future harvests.
Beth Ann demonstrates a coffee cupping to members of Asprocafe Ingruma co-op in Colombia.
What is “The Q”?
Beth Ann went to Peru on her most recent quest to share quality training. On this trip, she trained and tested participants in a rigorous professional program known around the world as The Q.
The Coffee Quality Institute created The Q Arabica Grader Program in 2003 as a way to professionalize and certify coffee cuppers. Known as Q Graders, certified cuppers complete a series of sensory and physical coffee trainings and tests to fairly and consistently grade specialty coffee. As the program gained traction, Beth Ann got certified in 2009 and saw the program as a way to build a common vocabulary with producers around the world. She embarked on a journey to become a Q Grader Instructor; that step in itself included observing, teaching, and training as an apprentice with multiple instructors and ultimately becoming an instructor herself. Her goal: to make this training and education available to farmer co-ops. The Q Grader program has been a vehicle to train the next generation of cuppers.
This program is no joke. The training course is a week long. At the end, there are 22 different tests. To get certified as a Q Grader, you have to pass all 22 tests.
Participants are exposed to different coffees that are in the global market, tasting four different categories:
washed mild coffees, the types that most of our farmer partner groups produce
coffees from Africa, with characteristic bright acidity
“natural” or “honey-processed” coffees, where the coffee is fermented inside the fruit of the coffee cherry
coffees from Asia, which are often lesser known, more surprising flavor profiles
The course covers the fundamentals of good and bad coffee. Although many of us have our own opinions, a coffee we don’t personally enjoy can actually be a good coffee, and vice versa. The Q outlines a system of grading coffee not based on preference, but rather on a universal understanding of what makes specialty coffee… special. It should be clean, sweet, and uniform, with other outstanding characteristics. Participants learn how to use a formal “cupping form,” which has many intricacies and takes practice to understand and implement.
The course dives into the concept of “odor memories” and deliberately works on building a library of smells in participants’ own brains, to be able to call upon them now and in the future. This brain-library building takes thought and time.
Another activity is called “triangulation,” where participants are presented with three coffees, and they need to determine, through tasting exercises, which one of the 3 is different from the others and how.
While the ultimate goal is to gain certification by passing all 22 tests, many participants don’t achieve that on their first attempt, and some never do. Participants may re-take the test two more times over 18 months.
While Beth Ann is training with the end goal of participants becoming Q Graders, she also has the broader goal of deep education and understanding, regardless of the final success or failure of the participants on the 22 tests given to each of them on that test day. She aims to share skills and information, unlock understanding, fuel curiosity, and inspire participants to be continuous learners in their craft.
Beth Ann includes yoga stretching and moments where participants shake off their nerves and re-center themselves. She creates a space where it’s okay to make mistakes, have failures, and try again. She gives high-fives when people succeed but also doles out high-fives when people fail! When the goal includes certification but also values the knowledge-building process, both the successes and failures help build the participants’ confidence.
On this particular trip in Peru, Beth Ann’s course included 6 participants, and 2 successfully passed all 22 tests, gaining their official Q Grader status at the end of the course. The cost can be up to $2,000 per participant and was funded by Equal Exchange through a grant we secured from the USAID Co-op Development Program. Since visas to the U.S. can be hard for farmers to secure, Beth Ann goes to them. Our Peruvian farmer partner co-op, Norandino, hosted this training for their own farmer members and also welcomed participants from other surrounding communities. Beth Ann was thrilled to see that this group was young, ranging from 22-33 years old, an encouraging sign that members of the next generation are staying in their farming communities.
Beth Ann’s philosophy is that it’s not enough to do this work with one group and not even with one generation. The work is ongoing and iterative. She trains and learns. She adapts. And does that all again.
During her career, the landscape of professional coffee tasting has changed dramatically. Today there are more than 9,000 Q Arabica Graders in the world. Beth Ann and Equal Exchange have been part of this evolution through The Q program and other types of coffee quality training. The world of sensory analysis will continue to evolve. We will continue to participate, with our particular focus on opening doors for coffee co-ops to, in turn, influence the specialty coffee movement.