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Ryan Garrick | Head of Coffee

In November last year, I became a Licensed Q-Arabica Grader, but what does that even mean?

What is a Q-Grader?

A Q-Grader is an individual who is certified to determine the grade of a coffee on the Q-Scale developed by the Coffee Quality Institute. There are different classifications (Arabica/Robusta) and these individuals are responsible for working at origin or in their labs to provide objective feedback on the quality of coffee.

The Scale

The scale runs from 60-99 and is determined by assessing the coffee across the factors of Aroma, acidity, flavor, aftertaste, body, balance, overall, uniformity, sweetness and clean cup.

As a specialty coffee roaster, we only consider cups which score 80 points or higher on this scale (aka excellent coffees).

How we assess coffee (Q-Standards)

There’s a lot of work to be done just in selecting a coffee. For every coffee we consider, we will receive 100g of green coffee. We will then assess this sample physically, analyzing colour, moisture, smell and analysis of any defects such as sour/black or otherwise compromised beans. After this we then roast the sample in 2 batches on our IKAWA sample roaster (home version available…), assess the physically roasted beans for any defects known as “quakers” (very light beans that will taste like popcorn and negatively impact flavor intensity of the final cup as well as impart negative characteristics. For specialty we can have no more than 3 in a 100g sample).

We then allow the sample to rest overnight and will go through the taste assessment called ‘cupping’. For any coffee, 5 cups are required to be brewed on the table to test for uniformity/clean cup issues (defects such as mold).

All this data is logged into our lab software ‘Cropster’ and allows us to then decide whether to accept or reject a given sample. (all in all, any sample is an hour of work minimum and we may taste 50 just to find one for our current offering).

Should we accept a sample, we will do another full analysis when the first bags of the coffee arrive to compare against our data and continue to do so regularly to ensure the beans are holding up well in storage.

How do you become a Q-Grader?

The Q-Grader course is a rigorous set of 22 exams. A significant amount of these are sensory exams with a plethora of acids and items to smell/taste as well as some theoretical and most importantly Cupping exams.

The course has a first-time pass rate of around 10% and you may only attend the course a further 2 times to try and pass all the exams. The course must be designed as such as at the end of this you are in a position to determine whether a farmer's coffee gets access to the highly paid specialty market or the poorly paid commodity market. A decision not to be made lightly.

The course isn’t just about having the required sensory skill though, a Q-Grader must show an ability to calibrate and work with a team. No one person is responsible for the score of a coffee so in the course, graders will illustrate through the carryover from calibration to exam days how well they can set aside their own subjective feelings towards a coffee and allow themselves to agree with the group they are assessing with.

Why is the Q-Program so important to Specialty Coffee?

The Q-Program is crucial to us because it gives us a legitimate way to objectively identify coffee that is good from coffee that is not. It has created a universal system which can be communicated all the way across the supply chain. It allows farmers to get consistent information they need to produce better coffee every year.

We know that the final step in the coffee's journey is a subjective question of do you like or dislike this flavor? But it is crucial that the people whose livelihoods depend on this crop are not beholden to subjective assessment for that would remove any and all power from those most vulnerable in our chain.

What else did I get from the course?

Appreciation, as someone who has gone through the coffee career path from barista it has been easy to be quite critical of coffee. As you get the opportunity to work with the really top-level competition coffees it’s easy to have a jaded view of what “good” is.

The Q made me appreciate just how special all of these coffees are, even those that don’t quite make specialty grade, it taught me to look for the positive attributes of a coffee, to reward it and change my critical outlook. It taught me that it’s not always about finding the highest scoring coffee, it’s about the potential in all of these coffees and how we can work as a community to improve the coffees and the lives of those who depend on it.

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Faye Mitchell | Spitalfields House Manager\n

In cities across the world, different incarnations of café culture and speciality coffee are thriving. Locations as far reaching as Berlin, Tokyo and Dublin are constantly developing a unique sense of where cafés fit into their wider cultural identity; inviting locals and tourists to celebrate all that can come from getting together over a great cup of coffee.

Far less concerned with trends, the London coffee scene is busy focusing on exploring and experimenting with process, delivery and product. With an established reputation for pushing the boundaries of culture, a diverse range of perspectives is one of the factors that makes London such an exciting place to explore the industry. Always on the lookout to experience the best of what London’s café culture has to offer, we’ve rounded up a few of the city’s gems we think are making waves amidst the ever-evolving speciality scene.

Ozone | 11 Leonard St. EC2A 4AQ | Emma St. E2 9AP

A relatively under-utilised concept in the UK for so long, antipodeans have been perfecting the café experience for years and thank goodness many businesses have blessed us with all they’ve learnt. Hailing from New Zealand, Ozone has been pioneers in London since the launch of their first site and roastery in 2012. Ozone’s offering focuses on quality hospitality and community, as their ethos understands these elements to be the most important in the success of their operation. From breakfast through to dinner a large percentage of all menus are now plant-based, so there really is something for everyone and a sustainable and ethical attitude from produce to plate. Both sites are designed with a strong industrial sense but undeniably approachable; high ceilings and broad booth seating really encourages a communal feel. The coffee offering changes with their roast schedule, giving you the opportunity to taste something new and exciting with each visit

Instagram - @ozonecoffeeuk

Browns of Brockley | 5-6 Coulgate St. SE4 2RW

Right next to Brockley Station, Browns of Brockley is everything a neighbourhood café should be. This friendly space serves up coffee from Square Mile, one of London’s most reputable large-scale speciality roasteries, and offers some of the best homemade cakes around. Their banana bread alone has a strong following; check out their Instagram for weekly updates on slices sold and other hilarious insights into the reality of running a café. Simple and truly effective, Brown’s isn’t a complicated concept but something so many others struggle to get right time and again. They provide a hard to find sense of comfort in an expansive city, and a visit will always leave you feeling like a local.

Instagram - @brownsofbrockley

Over Under Coffee | Earl’s Court | West Brompton | Wandsworth | Manchester

Over Under Coffee is a fresh addition to the scene in West London, although has made a rapid expansion up to Manchester alongside a mobile service improving the coffee offering of all kinds of private events. Under Over notably provides consistency, a key component in standing out in a now hugely saturated market. Working with roasts from Assembly, you’ll notice the same great coffee and friendly service is apparent throughout everything they do. Their aesthetic is undeniably cool – chic contemporary interiors well worth relaxing in day and night as some of their locations transform into cocktails bars come sundown.

Instagram - @overunderco

MILK | 18-20 Bedford Hill, SW12 9RG

There are two things you need to know when visiting Milk. At the weekends you’ll probably have to queue for a table, but it is 100% worth it. And you will want to spend some time getting Insta worthy shots of the food once it arrives, but no one will blame you. Another venue heavily inspired by the antipodean approach to cafés, Milk has developed a cult following since it opened its doors and for good reason. The food is creative and delicious, flying out of the open kitchen at a speed almost unbelievable for its size. Crowds return for longstanding menu favourites like ‘The Convict’ (the breakfast muffin to end all breakfast muffins), and the fresh rotation of specials spicing things up every week. What is truly impressive is Milk’s attention to detail, from homemade kombucha, cakes and kasundi, to dishes garnished with foraged edible flowers. Coffee from The Barn also means that your speciality caffeine hit is well a truly catered for when you drop into this light filled spot in South London.

Instagram - @milkcoffeeldn

Prufrock Coffee | 23-25 Leather Lane, EC1N 7TE

Director and former UK and World Barista Champion, Gwilym Davies have a reputation as a driving figure of Third Wave coffee in London, so Prufrock is a go-to café for a more serious fix of speciality coffee. This spacious venue attracts a wide-ranging industry crowd, houses the Barista Resource and Training centre and holds regular public events. Their commitment to education and precision certainly reflects in the customer experience and anything you want to learn you’ll find the team on hand to answer your questions. Whether you’re new to speciality coffee or familiar and hungry for more, you can’t help but come away inspired. If you stop in for a refuel, you’ll find an array of amazing sweet and savoury baked goods made in house, and a classic café menu sourced from the best quality suppliers.

Instagram - @prufrockcoffee

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\nIn this article we take you deeper into our quality control processes, discussing with our Head of Coffee Ryan the important details surrounding how we cup our current and potential new coffees to ensure we are constantly evolving our offering.

How do you create the perfect environment for tasting coffee?

For me, it’s like setting the stage and putting all focus on the cups in front of us. Closing the doors, setting the lights on the table and keeping the space free of any odours and invasive sounds.

Cupping is our opportunity to select the right coffee or correct roast profile, and a lapse in focus means we could miss a key point. This is why we are quite insistent on not allowing anyone to disturb during cupping, a bit like a meeting right? It’s easy to lose our train of thought and assessing coffee really isn’t that easy.

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How do you prepare the coffee before tasting?

When assessing coffee in the lab, it is about looking at either terroir or roasting differences and not extraction. This means we are meticulous in the weighing of coffee and water, the temperature and the timing of pouring and brewing. We eliminate to the highest degree any extraction differences allowing us to be accurate and well informed in our decisions. We don’t want to disregard a coffee or make a bad roast profiling decision because we were misdirected by a difference in extraction.

Talk us through the cupping process.

We weigh and prepare 3 bowls with 11g of ground coffee for every sample we are assessing, with a maximum of 6 coffees (18 bowls) for any given cupping and then assess the aromatic qualities or dry fragrance as it is known

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We then, using large 3.5L kettles, add 200g of water to every bowl. The large kettle is important as the mass allows it to maintain a more consistent thermal energy from cup 1 to 18, allowing for a more consistent result. We also time 15 seconds between the pour of each bowl, as this allows us to be consistent when it comes to extraction.

At 4:00 we begin the process of breaking, which is taking our spoon and moving 3 times north to south causing the crust of coffee formed on top to sink. In line with our pouring, we take a 15 second gap in between each break, as when we sink that crust, the rate of extraction and drop of temperature will start to change.

Then, taking 2 spoons we skim the tops of the bowls just to clean them totally before assessment.

Then we let the bowls cool down until 12:00 because they are comfortably palatable and also at this temperature the extraction has slowed down meaning the cup isn’t continuing to change due to extraction and we can focus on quality.

What measures a e used to assess the quality of a coffee?

Consistency is crucial to us so that we can deliver to our baristas a reliable coffee that behaves as they predict and similarly so our customers can have a repeatable experience at home which is why we assess 3 cups of every coffee we sample.
After consistency, we are looking at the overall quality of the coffee, its flavours, balance and tactile qualities to understand how it may fit into our offering.

Finally, we discuss more holistically how this coffee would be experienced by our team and consumers. Will the roastery enjoy working with this coffee? Will it translate to the bar as an espresso or a filter? Will our baristas be able to dial-in this coffee efficiently and make repeatable coffees? Will home brewers find the flavours of this coffee positive and be able to create and identify them at home as we do in the lab?

View our coffee range here.

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Ryan Garrick | Head of Coffee

In November last year, I became a Licensed Q-Arabica Grader, but what does that even mean?

What is a Q-Grader?

The Scale

How we assess coffee (Q-Standards)

How do you become a Q-Grader?

Why is the Q-Program so important to Specialty Coffee?

What else did I get from the course?

Faye Mitchell | Spitalfields House Manager\n

\nIn this article we take you deeper into our quality control processes, discussing with our Head of Coffee Ryan the important details surrounding how we cup our current and potential new coffees to ensure we are constantly evolving our offering.

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