What is a Q-Grader?
So you may have heard the terminology thrown around, but what does “Q Grader” mean and what does one do? First, we need to understand the governing body that oversees the certification.
Since 1996, the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) has worked to improve the quality of coffee and the lives of the people who produce it. As a non-profit organization, CQI works with individuals along the coffee supply chain to ensure quality-focused coffee standards and practices are rewarded by the market, and that coffee communities thrive.
What does a Q-Grader do?
One of the biggest and most helpful things CQI does is to promote a common language of quality between buyers and sellers of coffee. You can imagine how helpful this is to standardize what quality is so both sellers and buyers know what to expect. Through their training and certification programs, CQI’s Q Program has become a tool of the trade by offering specialized skills to coffee professionals around the world.
A Q-Grader is a highly trained and calibrated coffee taster who evaluates coffee using Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) cupping standards and protocols.
A breakdown of the coffee grading system
Any coffee below 80 points is not considered a specialty coffee
80-84.99 - Very good
85-89.99 - Excellent
90-100 - Outstanding
How Does One Become A Q-Grader?
Q represents quality. In order to become Q certified for Arabica coffee, one must take a 6-day training and exam course. The course is very difficult and some students find it difficult to pass all 19 exams the first time. However, students have the ability to retake exams, and certified Q Graders must calibrate every three years to validate their certification.
If you would like more information on the Coffee Quality Institute and all of its courses, please visit https://www.coffeeinstitute.org.
How to Prepare for the test
If you're interested in the certification, the course has such a high failure rate, you really want to make sure that you are prepared. The certification course itself is about $2000 so preparing for the exam can help one feel more comfortable prior to the course. With that being said, there are a number of resources online that provide a guideline or even a number of companies that offer practice courses that can help get live preparation. Some of these resources online are free while others cost hundreds of dollars. You can even buy some of the acids online to practice tasting.
Plan Ahead
It really depends on your experience. You may already be working in coffee and doing some of the preparation without knowing it. Or, you may simply be a coffee aficionado and want to work in coffee but don’t get to evaluate coffee objectively on a daily basis. In that case, you may need a little more time to prepare or a more intensive course of action. Either way, deciding what course of action is best for you is key and then making the time to actually prepare can be difficult because of commitments.
Cup a lot of coffee
Ultimately, the biggest thing you could do to prepare, in our opinion, is to cup lots of coffee! The more coffees you cup, the better prepared you will be. Cupping coffees from different origins is important so that you train your palate to recognize certain characteristics based on region. If you can cup regularly with a Q-Grader or highly experienced coffee professional, you can gain a wealth of knowledge and pick their brain to understand what to look for.
The Q Arabica Course: A Breakdown by the Coffee Quality Institute
Elements of the Q-Grader Test
Cupping Tests - Examine, cup, and score four flights of six coffee samples alongside other coffee professionals.
Organic Acids Matching Pairs - You will need to identify four different types of acids that are commonly found in coffee.
Sample Roast I.D. Skills - Spot the different types of errors found in roasted coffee samples utilizing the rules explained in the SCAA cupping protocol roasting directions.
Green coffee grading - Grade three un-roasted coffee samples.
Olfactory tests - You will recognize 36 common aromatic scents that are commonly in coffee. a handful of these are blind samples, and others are labeled amongst a series of groups.
Sensory skills - Determine the strength of three different solutions: sweet, salt, and sour on their own, then mixed together.
Coffee knowledge - Lastly, the Q Grader test will ask 100 multiple-choice questions about roasting, harvesting, cupping grading, growing, and processing. It’s important to make sure you’ve brushed up on your coffee knowledge before going into the test.
Meet the Q-grader behind Weathered Hand Coffee
Weathered Hands Coffee is run by Mike Trevino, a certified Q-grader. All the Weathered Hands coffees are sourced with great care and attention to detail in order to tell the story of the coffee through its natural flavor profile.