#5: To Be or Not To Be A Q-Grader

Welcome to Making Coffee, a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into making one of the world's favorite beverages. I'm your host, Lucia Solis, a former winemaker turned coffee processing specialist. Thanks for joining this week's episode. Welcome back friends. Here we are at episode five.

Have you been considering getting a QGrater license? Whether you have or not, I want to talk about it on this week's episode because I believe it's an important part of this ongoing conversation we've been having around how we evaluate coffee quality. So I started jotting down notes for what I wanted to share around this topic and I realized I would need to split it into two episodes because it was just a lot of ideas and when I started trying to organize my thoughts I realized that they were

really falling into two main topics. So we're gonna have two episodes. Um in part one, today I'll tell you about my personal experience with the program and what I've learned about Coffee Sensory. And then next week in part two, We're going to explore how this program fits into the larger landscape and the power dynamic that this creates between buyers and producers. So let's get started with a statement from the CQI website. They say.

This program was launched in two thousand three by CQI Coffee Quality Institute, and since then thousands of coffee professionals have signed up for this professional accreditation. For cuppers around the world who apply uniform procedures to the evaluation of physical and sensory attributes of coffee samples. So that's what they say on their own website.

And here's a couple of things to keep in mind. So coffee evaluation is very different from wine evaluation because coffee can be sold as both a solid product of green or roasted seeds and as a liquid beverage. Since much of coffee is sold in the solid form, it's important to be able to evaluate the green coffee seeds for equipment damage, defects, and we also evaluate the sensory characteristics of the brood beverage.

This is in contrast to wine where the sensory evaluation is done only on the finished beverage. The general public does not get to examine the grapes, which are the raw material, at any point in the sensory process. It's the winemaker who evaluates the grapes or the grape juice before they buy it, but never the wine buyer. So this is just a distinction that I wanted us to keep in mind.

And it's interesting because coffee buyers get a much closer look at the raw material than wine buyers ever get. So this gives coffee buyers a lot more access to information about the quality of the product that they are buying. And this is why I was interested in getting my QGrader license. So let's go back in time to twenty sixteen. I had just attended my very first uh large coffee conference and this was the SEA, the Specialty Coffee Association event in Atlanta.

And this is when I was starting to get deeper into the coffee industry. My first SCA was overwhelming. I met a lot of people and while we were talking a topic that came up more than a few times was this QGrater license. So it just kind of started to plant the seed at that moment, and I came away with a lot from that week in Atlanta, but one of the things that stuck out was I realized that if I wanted a future in coffee, getting a Q Creator license would be a good place to start.

I wanted to be able to speak the same language as a coffee professional's in terms of quality, and I really wanted to understand what coffee buyers are interested in and what profiles constitute a top quality coffee, sort of moving beyond just doing um hedonistic this is something that I like to being able to say based on this criteria this is something that is good.

So as soon as the event was over, I went back home, I went online to get information about the course. And fortunately I lived in California and there was a course starting in a few weeks, so it's pretty close to where I lived and then also pretty close in time. So I signed up and then basically forgot about it. And then a couple weeks later it was Monday morning and I had to show up for day one. So I had this idea that getting a Q license was like getting a driver's license.

'Cause the word license made me think it was like going to the DMB, like the DMB of coffee. You make an appointment online, pay a fee, stand in line for a while, sign some paperwork.

You go through some exercises with an instructor and then you go home with a license. That is honestly what I thought was going to happen. Uh, so I show up Monday, it's eight AM, like any other day at the what I think is a coffee D M B. And a few people are already gathered and we're introducing ourselves. So I get to meet everybody else that wanted to take this course at the same time.

And I realize that some some people have come from pretty far away, not just from, you know, the other side of the country, from states pretty far away, but there was even a woman who came from Australia. And that's when I started to get a little bit of a of an idea that people took this very seriously and that it was it was a big deal.

So we keep going around the circle, kind of introducing ourselves, and one person shares that they'd taken the course before and had failed it and then this was they were here to take it again. And then when she shared somebody else said, Oh, you know, they had also failed and they were here to retake the test. And someone else said that they'd been waiting the about four years to get enough experience and then get enough courage to attempt taking the test at at the end of the week.

And that's when it really dawned on me how seriously everyone else took this course and how completely I had misjudged the situation. This was not going to be like going to the DMB. As I sat there and I listened to everyone's stories, I started to get increasingly nervous because unlike apparently every single other person in the room, I had not prepared for a single moment.

Everyone in my class was either a roaster or a barista or worked for an importer. They spent all day, every day, drinking, thinking, and evaluating coffee. And meanwhile, at the time, I still had to set an alarm to remind myself to drink coffee that day. So I was not prepared before signing up, and I did not prepare after. And now I was here and it's day one. So I had walked in to this broom, into this course, um oblivious, if not confident

And now we're thirty minutes into the morning and I'm shrinking back into my seat thinking that if maybe I sit really still, no one will look at me and no one will find out that I really shouldn't have been there. And in my head I'm just like we were supposed to prepare and not everyone passes and there were books to get and people had tasting groups. I'm like, what? What is this entire world that I just was not aware of?

So why did I think I could just walk in and be okay? Like where did I get all of this hubris? part of it I was thinking, well I did have a sensory evaluation class during my time at UC Davis. But that was over ten years ago at that point. No, there was really only one reason I thought it would be okay. I knew how to taste wine, and so many people said specialty coffee was like wine, so that should be enough, right?

When I worked for Opus I in Napa Valley, we had sensory training as a winemaking team. It was important for us to speak the same the same sensory language and to have the same vocabulary and to calibrate ourselves with each other, with everybody else on the winemaking team. So if we were describing a wine and one person called it bright and someone else said it was sparkling, we knew that we were talking about a quality of acid.

And could better communicate. But the point was not to each have our own words for what acid meant, but to adapt everybody else's word or to decide on a single word and say when we talk about this type of acid quality, we are all going to use the word bright. You'll find this is common for many wineries, especially in Napa. But at Opus we had an extra resource, a former perfumer named Alexandre Schmidt to come and guide us through this process.

So a few times a year Alexandra would be a show up with his suitcases full of aromas, and he would drill us for hours on different categories like fruits, floral aromas, herbs, spices, woods, barrel characteristics, and also defects. And during these sessions it wasn't enough for us to correctly identify an aroma as vanilla.

He made us know the four different types of vanilla. He would make us identify if a vanilla was from Madagascar, from Tahiti, or from Mexico, or if we were smelling the vanilla chemical. And it mattered not just to know what aroma we were smelling, but the origin of that aroma. Because in these different countries because of the growing conditions the vanilla would have a different aroma and so you know it was part of the exercise to be very, very specific.

And as part of that, he wouldn't let us get away with a vague descriptor like floral. We could never say floral in in his presence. He would make us describe the aroma and you know, soft or powdery or dry, um, the quality of the aroma. And then we would have to narrow it down to rose or jasmine or orange blossom or hyacinth or violets or whatever that flower actually was.

And sometimes he would create blends and he would make us describe the aroma. He didn't want us to identify it because he would just mix a bunch of different um a bunch of different aromas, but he wanted us to describe the qualities, the nature of that aroma. So we would have to consider was it sharp or soft? Was it drying? Was it cooling or warm? And even though some parts of sensory are subjective,

Alexandre would be quick to tell you if your opinion was wrong. He would dip a strip of paper into his oil vials, and then he would pass around these strips to the group, and usually we were around five or six people in a group. And then he would just randomly call on somebody to describe it.

So you'd get the piece of paper, you'd sniff it, and then you'd have this moment of I know exactly what this is and then your words would completely fail, and you're like I know exactly what this is and I don't have the words for it. And then he'd call on you and he'd point, say, Lucia. Uh and then I would begin kind of struggling, say. Um it's sharp, he says okay. And then I'd say it's drying, and he says okay. And then I would say it's cooling, and he would say no.

You are wrong. And he'd correct me and he would either say, you know, it's actually warm or Sometimes he would just move on to the next person and not even tell us, you know, what was wrong about what we said until somebody else figured it out. So he was kind of like a drill sergeant in this way. And I can still sometimes hear him just saying no, you are wrong. He was a tough

drill sergeant, but it was a brilliant education. I'm really thankful that I got that opportunity with him and with that group. And he's still teaching classes today. You can sign up for he teaches in California and of course also in France and other parts of the world. So I'll include his website in the show notes so you can see. where he's uh where he's teaching and uh I highly recommend taking one of his classes because it's just fantastic.

Another thing that he did besides giving us blends was giving us aromas at different concentrations, because sometimes at a lower concentration some aromas could impersonate other aromas. So for example, a blackberry at a much lower concentration than we're used to could resemble a violet. And he wanted us to know that difference of what was, you know, one aroma pretending to be another one or what was the true the true aroma.

So he kept us very sharp and we did this for years. And I'll include his website in the show notes so that you can see if, you know, he's'cause he's still teaching today. So he he teaches in California as well as France. and I think other parts of the world as well. So if you ever have a chance to visit one of his seminars and go through this exercise with him, it's highly valuable and I really recommend it.

So it's because of this education with Alexandre and this sensory training that I had for many years that I thought this coffee license would be a piece of cake. But boy was I wrong. Yes, I knew sensory, but these qualities were different in a coffee. I didn't know this medium. So picking out a clove character in wine is very different than picking out that same character in a coffee. So I had a miserable week.

Monday was tough. Tuesday was really tough. By Wednesday I was spiralling. Uh Thursday I was sure I would fail. And finally it was Friday. It was test day. There were twenty different tests to pass. So how many do you think I've had? I'll tell you, I passed fourteen, which means I only failed six. It doesn't sound good. But at that point I thought that I was going to fail all of them. And so only failing six felt like a huge victory.

And because so many people come from far away, they leave Saturday as an extra test day for anyone who needs to make it up. So I could come back and try again on Saturday. So there was still a chance, like all hope was not lost. It was not looking good because six tests is a lot. But all hope was not lost, and if I didn't pass them on Saturday, I would have to wait another five months for the next opportunity.

because the test isn't given in the same place all the time. Sometimes you have to go to a different city and the timing can be a little bit difficult. So for me, my next opportunity was five months later. So Friday I was feeling pretty good because I had another opportunity to retake the test the next day. But by the time I get back to the testing center Saturday morning and I realize I've had an entire exhausting week of taking these tests and now I have to redo six that I failed yesterday.

I'm not feeling that great. I'm not going in feeling that confident. Um, but I'm there. So it's early morning, I had a good night's sleep, I'm fresh, and I passed the first And then I pass the second test. And then I pass the third test. And I have really good momentum. And then I pass the fourth test. And then it's a lunch break.

And during my lunch break, it looks like I might actually make it. I get so excited because I have six, I've done four, I have enough time to do the last two, and I I could actually do this. So I spend my lunchtime like sitting under a tree, getting calm, getting quiet, trying to like focus. And I go back into the room. And I passed test number five.

And I am so excited. I am like the comeback kid. I'm doing like air punches in the parking lot while like so the instructor is setting up my last test. There's just one last barrier before I am done. And I was feeling so embarrassed on Friday that I missed six tests and now a mere twenty four hours later I feel like a champion. So I go into the last test. It's a triangulation test. There are eighteen coffees.

So it's six sets of three coffees, and those three coffees are in a triangle and two are the same and one is different, and you have to identify the odd one out. It's a really simple test, but it can be difficult if the differences are subtle. But I got really lucky. What felt really difficult the day before was was suddenly not difficult. The differences were significant. I felt really good that I had come back and I nailed it. And all this confidence came back and I was I was so excited.

I wasn't the only one who had to retake the test. Um, a handful of other people came back too, but everyone else had like two or three tests to retake and I had the most, so I was the only one left at the end of the day. So there was nobody else with me to like witness this incredible triumph. Um So that was a bummer. But I come out of the room super excited, I hand over my test to the instructor with like all the flourish of a mic drop. I'm so pumped.

I'd had this like roller coaster of emotions from thinking it would be easy and then thinking I would fail and then it wasn't so terrible and then I had a second chance and then I punched my way back up from the bottom from six failed tests. And I'm just like in my head congratulating myself when I see my instructor and he's grading the paper on the spot and he just like hands it back to me and he's like, sorry, you missed this. And I'm like No, na uh, not possible. And he goes, Yeah, you did.

And I should have been devastated, but I I couldn't believe him. I was so sure of my answer. It was like if he told me that I had had blue eyes. It was just not possible. I knew what I tasted and I was really So it's six PM on the sixth day. We've all had a really long week, we've all had a long day.

and I'm just not ready to let this go. So I ask him if he'll go back into the room and and taste the coffee. Because I don't know how you can taste the coffee and, you know, think it's anything else. And he's sweet and he humours me and he says, Okay So he goes back into the room with me and he tastes the three coffees and he's like, Yeah, I'm sorry, the answer is B and that's you're wrong.

And I say no, I know, I wrote B. And he looks really confused and he goes to my paper and he sees that I wrote B. And then he goes to his answer key and he says that it says the answer is C. So now he's very confused because he also agrees with me. The instructor and I both picked B coffee, because if you're in the room, if you're tasting these two coffees, it's clearly this one coffee by a lot. Um but his answer key doesn't reflect that.

So then we both taste the coffees again, and then we both taste them again, and we're talking about it and we're comparing, well, it's the acidity that's w this is why it's similar, and then this characteristic, but it's kind of drying at the end, so that's why it's not this one, and we're just like talking in circles. And it's clearly unequivocally B that is the different one.

But he has his answer key, and even though he agrees with me, he says he can't pass me. He's sorry, I failed, and I have to wait five months before I can try again. And after all that after all of that emotion and roller coaster, it's over. I have to go home. So I get back in my car and cry. Just these big fat ugly tears of failure. I think it was like the stress of the week and just ending like that, like just so close, like the last question on the last test of the last day

And that I felt so good about it. Anyway, lots of crying. I uh get a friend to meet me at a bar and he keeps me company, he lets me tell him what happened, and he commiserates with me. And then I go to bed. Sunday morning, I wake up to an email. Dear Lucia, bla bla bla I understand your frustration, blah blah blah. Unfortunately can't pass you, blah blah offer to retake the test one more time Sunday morning, blah blah wait wa what?

And then I remembered that at some point in my drunken misery the night before I'd sent an email to the governing body and explained the situation, that the instructor had backed me up, but the key conflicted with both of our evaluations.

So they said that they w obviously wouldn't pass me because That wasn't enough information, but they were giving me one more chance to retake the test again, but it needed to be today and it needed to be in an hour because that's when the instructors were available, and I had just woken up. And I'm hungover, and I have thirty minutes to get there.

So this program is supposed to be five days. Five long intense days. And because of my retakes I had a full sixth day, and now I'm in the car driving against Bay Area traffic to begin my seventh day of test taking. So I didn't pass the test twice before while I was well rested and clear headed, and now I'm trying for a third time and happen to be hungover. Super cool.

So I get there, I make it, miracle of miracles, I make it on time, get into the testing room, eighteen more coffees, six sets of three, and I need to get them all right. Usually you just need five out of six, but I need to get them all right. No room for error.

So I finished in thirty minutes, but you get forty five and I stayed in that room and went over and over it again and made sure that what I tasted was what I tasted because the You guys at this point I had made such a big stink about the test and got people to come in on a Sunday and what if I still didn't pass? Oh god, that was I was like so anxious at that point that I still I could still not pass after making people go through all of that. So

I was like sick to my stomach with anxiety. So I walk out of the room again, much more humble than the day before, and hand my test over. My instructor grades it on the spot and hands me back a six out of six with a smiley face. And I hug her immediately and shed a few tears of relief. So if you're thinking about getting your QGreader license, I advise you to not be a jerk like me and know what you're getting into.

What I learned from the experience is that wine and coffee are more different than they are similar. A lot of people told me the specialty coffee was similar to wine, and I believed it. But I think only people who really don't understand wine would say that. Or we don't understand coffee either. This was a very early experience where I started to have this reaction whenever somebody would compare wine to coffee and I just

felt like it was a very inappropriate comparison. And I tried to start this hashtag on Instagram. It's like hashtag let coffee be coffee because I wanted coffee to be its own thing and to not use a wine comparison to elevate the beverage. But the hashtag didn't really go anywhere and I think it's it's so tempting and that comparison is still really strong.

That's why I want to have this opportunity on the podcast to kind of give you a little bit more background into how they are very different. And I still think that there's things to be borrowed, things to be learned. But I think the foundation needs to be respecting the you know each individual beverage, and when we make that comparison, I think that it ends up inadvertently taking away from both wine and coffee. So that's it for today. Um thanks for listening, thanks for hanging out with me.

If you would like to learn more about this episode or previous episodes, or have a question you'd like to share, please visit my website at lucia.coffee slash podcast. It's pronounced Lucia, but it's spelled L-U-X-I-A dot coffee slash podcast. I hope you'll join me next week for part two. And remember, life's too short to drink that.