Coffee Science Foundation and ZHAW Launch Defects Research ProjectDaily Coffee News by Roast Magazine

Daily Coffee News photo by Nick Brown.

With funding from the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA), the Coffee Science Foundation (CSF) and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) just launched a new research project on green coffee defects.

An SCA announcement of the project yesterday described it as “the first research project seeking to provide robust scientific evidence to inform a green coffee standard.”

The SCA, which is the largest coffee trade association in the world based in the United States and Europe, has for decades maintained a green coffee classification system — often presented in the form of a poster — which was developed alongside the organization’s legacy cupping form. The former Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) first published its Arabica Green Coffee Defect Handbook in 2004.

The new research into defects is expected to inform new standards that may be used by coffee professionals. The standards are also expected to be worked into the SCA’s new coffee evaluation system, called the CVA.

“Current standards are based on tradition, not science,” Peter Giuliano, executive director of the Coffee Science Foundation, said in an announcement from the group. “We’re excited to have the opportunity to change that.”

According to the groups, the research initiative will focus primarily on sensory properties but will also feature chemical analysis. The latter work will be designed to determine the causes of defects and/or the possibility of health risks, if any, associated with defective beans.

“We want to understand how many green coffee beans of a physical defect have an actual perceptible effect on the cup,” says Sebastian Opitz, head of green coffee and project manager at the ZHAW’s Coffee Excellence Center. “Based on sensory data that we will obtain from a larger group of cuppers and laypeople, we hope that we will eventually be able to estimate the sensory thresholds for the different defects.”

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