SCAE Sensory Skills Foundation

The SCAE Sensory Skills Foundation course covers the essentials of sensory evaluation in a practical and interactive manner, including the way we perceive what we taste and how to apply it when evaluating the intrinsic characteristics of coffee. It also offers an insight into identifying specialty coffee qualities, as well as an overview of how to implement this in business. Students will learn about sensory analysis and evaluation, the importance of sensory analysis in coffee, the tastes and aromas in coffee, cupping protocols, and core sensory equipment. Designed for aspiring baristas, roasters, and coffee professionals looking to understand the sensory basics of specialty coffee, this course does not require any prior knowledge. This one-day course consists of four short practical tests and a written test with 15 questions and a passing score of 60%, successful students will be awarded 5 points towards the SCAE Coffee Diploma.

SCAE Sensory Skills Intermediate

The SCAE Sensory Skills Intermediate course is ideal for baristas, roasters, and coffee professionals looking to develop their knowledge of sensory skills for specialty coffee. Students in this course will learn about sensory analysis of coffee, sensory physiology, tasting, perceiving, interpreting, cupping practices, and sensory panels. The two-day course consists of four short practical tests and a written test with 25 questions and a passing score of 70%, successful students will be awarded 10 points towards the SCAE Coffee Diploma. The course is broken down into three sections:

 

  • How we taste, perceive and interpret

         This section explores perception of taste, smell, flavor, and how to be aware of changes to sensory systems. It includes practical exercises such as ranking exercises and blind sample assessment. It will also show how these theories can be applied to work by defining triangulation protocol, how to design effective experiments, and how to use statistics to interpret results.

  • Running a cupping session and tasting the diversity of coffee

        This section shows how sensory theory can be applied to an understanding of specialty coffee. It will review individual attributes found on commonly used cupping forms, as well as the best protocol effective assessment of these attributes. It will also cover how perception of these attributes changes and what sensory errors one should be aware of in daily cupping.

  • How to set up sensory in your business and sensory application

        This section will show methods of applying sensory analysis theory to your workplace. It gives an overview of key equipment in sensorial coffee quality assurance, and ways to integrate these tools into a lab set up. It also looks at how to build and screen a sensory panel for your business, how to schedule a quality control program, and how to identify what types of tests are right for different purposes.

SCAE Sensory Skills Professional

The SCAE Sensory Skills Professional course is aimed at people with extensive experience in the industry who wish to build their tasting skills to the professional level and develop their knowledge to become sensory skills leaders in the coffee business. Students will learn about the science background, master the preparation protocol, understand the methodology, be able to set up sensory panel and sensory facilities, and learn where to apply sensory: shelf life and NPD. Students will be tested on personal tasting skills on Taints, SCAA Cupping, Profiling, and Quality identification. The Sensory Skills Intermediate Course certification is a mandatory prerequisite for this three-day course, which consists of four practical tests and a written tests with 35 questions and a passing score of 80%, successful students will be awarded 25 points towards the SCAE Coffee Diploma.