#6: The Sommelier of Coffee?

Hello friends and welcome to episode 6. So this episode is a continuation on the discussion of the Q Creator license. So last week I shared the story of getting my QGrader license in 2016. And this was an emotional roller coaster, but overall I'm glad that I went through the process. And I'm glad because it's helped me professionally to be able to speak the language of coffee buyers.

This this license, it's a tool that I think would be very powerful in a producer's hands, but the reality is that very few producers have access to this tool. I'm going to read an excerpt from the CQI, the Coffee Quality Institute, uh website. So they say, When the Coffee Quality Institute created the most renowned certification for coffee cuppers, Q-Graders, it created a demanding professional certification that filled a vacuum in the market when it launched in 2003.

Since its introduction, grading and cupping protocols around the world have become much more standardized. You'd think this wouldn't be necessary, but it was. I think the Q program is very important. I already said that I got tremendous value out of it. I do have an issue with it. Um, of course, otherwise there wouldn't be an episode about it. But I believe that one of the issues with this program is that the licenses are not evenly distributed across the value chain.

So today I want to talk to you about coffee producer representation in the QGrader program. But before we get to that, I want to get clear about the differences between the QGrader and the Sommelier certification for wine. The reason I bring this up is because I often hear this comparison being made between the two industries, coffee and wine. Hate to admit it, but even I've been guilty of using it as a shorthand. So

It's easy to do. The Sommelier certification is a scary test that wine professionals take, and the Q Grader is a scary test that coffee professionals take. It's very tempting to use one or the other to describe one or the other one of these tests. And it's especially easy to do to somebody on the outside. Like I said, it's a it's a very easy shorthand. Like we have this idea of a sommelier program.

And then you think, okay, the key crater is like that, and then you can say that and and sort of move on. And it gives per a person a good enough, a rough estimate of what you're talking about. The problem is that if we keep comparing them and repeating this, even for me, even though I know that it's not true,

If we keep repeating it enough, we start to believe it. And the truth is these two programs have very different goals. Not only are they structured differently and have different pricing, but fundamentally they have very different objectives.

I'm gonna share some trivia with you. This is courtesy of Wikipedia. to illustrate the differences. So I want to give you some context for the Sommelier test so that we can finally put to bed the comparison of the Q Creator license to the wine sommelier exam. So this is from Wikipedia. The court of Master Sommelier is is an educational organization established in April of 1977 to encourage improved standards of beverage service by someliers, particularly in food and wine pairing.

From the court's inception through 2018, a worldwide total of 274 people have earned its Master Sommelier diploma, the highest level. Okay, the first misconception, and one that I held for a long time too, is that the PSM system is a binary system. So the PSM system isn't, but the QGrater system is binary. You're either a QGrater or you are not. In the Sommelier world, there's an entry level which is called a certified Somme or a certified sommelier.

The next level is an advanced sommelier. And then after you've passed those two levels and have also worked in the industry for 10 years, you must either be invited or recommended to take the master sommelier test. And here's another fun fact from Wikipedia. The typical pass rate of the Master Sommelier exam is around 3 to 8% of applicants, and in some instances as few as 1 in 70 have succeeded.

So for context, the Somme exam has been around for 42 years, and in that time only 274 people have a master sommelier diploma. If you average that out, it's about six people per year. So that's six people in the entire world per year over the last 18 years. This is crazy. This exam is very difficult and very expensive and a lot of people attempt it and very few people passed.

So in contrast, the Q grader exam started in 2003, and in the last 16 years, the CQI has awarded thousands of coffee professionals a license. And this is not to say that one is more prestigious or more important than the other. I just want to show that they have very different audiences, they have very different structures, they have different levels, and and just to try to untangle and not use one as an example of the other.

So another significant difference is that sommeliers generally work in restaurants, not wineries. So they work in service, not production. The PSM program was not developed to improve quality control at the production level. And I'm not saying that it's not possible, but in my nine years of working in Napa, I never met a winemaker who was also a sommelier. It's it's very rare that the two worlds overlap.

The PSM program is consumer-facing for the benefit of the service industry and to recommend food and beverage pairing.

whereas the QGrater can be used to evaluate coffee and improve quality control at the processing level. The QGrader teaches how to identify and describe quality issues, but it doesn't teach processing methods. The CQI does teach a separate course for that, which I have also taken, and maybe that story will be told in a different episode. But let's put that aside for now. So in general, I see the Q Creator program used to evaluate coffee after the fact.

meaning after all the coffee has been harvested, after it's been processed, and likely milled. And milling is that part of the process where the outer parchment layer, so it's this like protective layer, so it's you've got the skin. And then you've got this pulped mucilage layer, which we've talked about before, so that's what is consumed in fermentation. And then you've got another layer of parchment.

under that and then beneath that is the green seed. So you've got all of these barriers and milling is when you're removing that outer parchment layer. and you only have the green seed the green seed left and that's how we talk about coffee. We talk about cherry, we talk about pulped coffee, we talk about parchment and then green coffee. as well as as roasted coffee is another is another category. So green coffee is exportable coffee. All of the milling facilities are in growing countries.

So consuming countries like the United States or countries in Europe do not have milling facilities. And I feel like I can hear you guys. So one notable exception is Hawaii, which is a state in the United States. Um and it is a producing origin. So Hawaii produces a lot of coffee, so they must have mills to export that coffee to other parts of the United States, but you would not find a coffee mill in Ohio or Florida.

The QGrader license is mostly used by exporters, importers, green buyers, roasters, and baristas to evaluate coffee after the fact. This helps coffee buyers pick among the myriad of samples that they have available to buy. So it's quality control. for other parts of the value chain. But what I found out is that it's rarely used by producers and it's producers who have the biggest opportunity to impact change that would be noticeable in the quality.

Right, so it's producers who can change picking practices. It's producers who can change how ripe the copy arrives at the mill. It's producers who can alter the fermentation style and the flavors that are found in the seed. It's producers who can change the drying methods and how we preserve those fermentation flavors. So it's producers who are closer to the source and would be able to affect coffee quality if they had the information to be able to evaluate the sensory properties of the coffee.

If producers had this information, If they were cupping experts, they would be able to improve processing practices and improve coffee quality at a mill level, and they could make changes as the season progressed instead of waiting for the end of the season and trying to implement the changes the following year. This is a quality control style that is standard in a lot of other industries like the wine industry or in brewing.

The brewmaster or the winemaker is constantly tasting the fermenting wine or the fermenting beer. in real time and then making changes or adapting to the conditions. But what I've found that is more common in coffee is that producers follow their traditional method until the end of the season. and then they send off their samples to a exporter to be evaluated.

And then maybe they get some feedback, but it's usually at the end of the season, and then potentially they can implement some changes the following year. That's the best case scenario. So most producers throughout the world don't even get that feedback. They don't even get the opportunity to adjust their practices at the end of the season. They just produce the coffee the way they've done for generations.

send it off to an exporter, and that's usually the end of the story. They're done with it. They don't get that feedback to be able to change practices and potentially get improved quality which leads to an improved opportunity to get paid more for that coffee.

So what I see as more common practice in other parts of the value chain is that they use their cue knowledge to sift through coffee samples, so they're called offerings. And these offerings are already processed, they're already done. Their fate has been sealed. So once the coffee gets from the mill to the exporter, the quality cannot improve. It's the I think one way to think about it is that the deterioration can be slowed. It can be

um you know, we're trying to preserve something. But it's not improving. It's not like, you know, wine aging in the barrel or aging in a bottle, improving with age and wanting to age it for ten, fifteen, twenty, fifty years and then having a much more valuable product at the end of that time period. Coffee is really valued upon its freshness.

Which makes me think of this quick tangent and I promised Tim Hines from Unan Coffee that I would have an episode about fading and coffee stability. So I promise that's coming. Um and if you have any feedback or any questions about that. please send it on the website but for now we're going to go back to Q grading. Back to Q grading. I want to be clear that I am privileged to have my Q license.

I think it's an important service that was made available by the CQI. I know that they are integral in establishing a baseline of quality and setting the standards for the industry. I admire them a lot. I think it's a very important service. And also, I have noticed that there is not enough producer representation.

For my observations, I think that 80% of the classes are made up of exporters, importers, roasters, green buyers, baristas, and coffee enthusiasts. This leaves about 20% to be made up of coffee producers. And to be clear, this is my observation. I do not have all of the numbers of all of the people enrolled. If you have those numbers and you want to share that with me and maybe my numbers are completely wrong, I am open to that.

please send me an email, but this is just what I've noticed in the last few years of of this program. And what I've noticed is that copy producers are the smallest group represented in the QGrader license. And I think part of this is the price. So going through this program costs about$2,000. And the price conversation is also one for another episode. We're gonna talk about coffee pricing. We're gonna talk about the price of

buying green coffee versus the price of a cup of coffee, that's all coming. This is not what I'm talking about today. So I used to think that the problem was that the seats were taken up by non-producers, that like all of the spots would fill up too quickly. And I used to be frustrated that the classes were filled with businesses on the consuming side instead of the producing side.

And then it occurred to me that maybe producers don't want to participate or they don't see the value in participating. So it's not that the spots are taken, but that there's not enough interest. And so it's not necessarily that the CQI is purposely being unavailable for producers. It could be that producers are not making that. um investment in their businesses.

Either way, that's not what I'm talking about. Whether it's a lack of availability or a lack of interest is besides the point at the moment. My concern is that while the QCreator license is helping educate thousands and establish a baseline for evaluating coffee, It's also exacerbating an uneven power dynamic between the consuming countries and producing countries.

So something I notice is that the specialty coffee consumer is quite sophisticated. They're paying attention to nuanced flavors and aroma. They're investing in brewing equipment. They pay attention to the mineral composition of their water. But the average coffee producer has rarely tasted their own coffee. In many cases, the buyer or consumer has more sophisticated training in coffee than the producer does. And this creates a very skewed power dynamic.

Over the last 10 to 20 years, the consumer has been gaining access to courses, research, and lots of sensory information. They know what they are looking for, and most of the time producers have stayed with their traditional methods decades behind their buyers.

So one of the inadvertent side effects of a system like the QGrader program, the QGrader licensing, is that it's teaching more people further down the value chain to have stronger cupping skills than the people who are producing the coffee. They are inadvertently contributing to widening the gap of knowledge and shifting the power towards the consumer to be able to articulate what they want out of coffee, but coffee producers don't know how to get those flavors or attributes into the coffee.

One of the surprising things is that this is not something new or something of the time. This is the way that the system has always been. And because this is the way that it's been, you know, set up from the beginning, it's it's easy not to question it because it's just it's accepted, it's understood, it's part of the process. So this is why even though I've spent so much time trying to untangle coffee from

uh from the wine industry and saying how unuseful a lot of the comparisons are, sometimes the comparisons can really help illustrate the differences. And so in in the case of winemaking Can you imagine if a wine shop owner knew how to taste wine better than a winemaker? It's absolutely absurd. The most experienced wine taster is the winemaker, not the wine shop owner. So what's completely absurd in one industry is the standard, is the baseline in another.

To shift the colonial power dynamic, I believe producers should be the arbiters of quality. They should have the most information on the topic. But currently, most of that work is handed off to exporters, importers, or roasters. We currently have the structure where the consumer is more sophisticated than the producer, and every day I see this gap widening by buyers asking for sophisticated processing styles, for example, carbonic maceration.

and the producer responding to this trend, to this request, without previous experience or baseline information to make it successful. A significant portion of my work is being called into situations because a producer tried something, tried some process, tried some advice from a well meaning interested roaster and they either party did not quite have enough information to make it successful and the experiment did not go well.

I am called in to figure out what went wrong and try to ameliorate the situation. So in that situation, I'm talking about first-hand experience when a producer got some very well-meaning advice from a roaster. but again did not have sufficient backing to make that successful and either coffee got spoiled or got ruined and did not have the desired result. I have one more point, one more thorn in my side about the Q license.

So an important component is to be able to taste a coffee, evaluate it, and give it a score out of 100. If it's below 80, it's not specialty. If the score is above 80, it's considered specialty coffee. So a very common model is producers grow and process the coffee and then hand it off to another business like an importer or an exporter to tell them what that coffee scored. And based on those scores, they will get paid a different amount.

So it can take the same amount of work to produce a coffee that scored a 78 or one that scores 85 points, but the payment can be dramatically different. I often get hired by producers to help increase their score. And I honestly have a lot of trouble with this. Of course I want to help, and I often feel confident that I can help, but I really don't like the system.

So the system is that originally anything over 80 points was considered specialty because it was difficult to do this and few producers were doing it, but as Processes improved as there was a little bit more information and buyers got more sophisticated, they wanted more interesting flavors, and the standard moved. So today, if there's a specialty roaster, they're really not looking for 80-point coffee anymore. I think the baseline now is maybe 84 to 86.

And the problem is that consumers are setting the standard and the producers are chasing it. Maybe they can make their coffee that now scores 80 points to 84, but then that goalpost will be arbitrarily moved, and then specialty coffee will be 88 points. So the problem is as long as producers are participating in this structure, they will be reacting to the market and consumer wins. They will always be a few steps behind and trying to catch up.

which necessarily means that the power dynamic is shifted towards buyers. So my ideal world is one where producers are not relying on copy scores, because that is a moving goalpost. And I think it's hard, because this is a system that has been in place the whole time, it's hard to imagine anything else. It's hard to imagine an alternative.

I want to do away with copy scores, well then what's left? We have this giant vacuum and that feels very scary. How will we know what copy quality is if we don't have this number, if we don't have the score to attach to it?

And I know that it's radical and I know that it's it seems, you know, this monumental thing to do away with scores. It may not even be possible. As long as we have this system that is describing quality as a number score and that that number score is given out by the consumers and not the producers, I think that is going to continue this very unhealthy power dynamic. And

It's not serving producers, but I really don't think it's serving consumers either. I think that we need to re-evaluate where the power is located and redistribute it along the value chain.

So it's about 36 months later and I am at the end of my QGrader licensing. They only last 36 months. And after 36 months you have to recertify. It's not as extensive a process, but it's still a process and you have to pay for it. And I will not be renewing my license. Because it's not important for my work to stay current.

I understand that in some businesses it's an important license to have and it breeds trust, it breeds confidence and so people have to continue to be up to date. And I do think that it's important to, you know, recertify and to maintain that calibration. But I've learned the basics and I continue to practice regularly. And I don't think that it will affect my work if I don't get recalibrated. And honestly, I also don't want to pay the renewal fee.

So pretty soon I will be a lapsed Q grader like Christopher. And I've asked him to share why he's chosen to be a lapsed Q-Grader, and here's what he said.

signified that I did in fact know how to cup coffee. I knew what I was doing when I was tasting. When it was time to research three years later, I figured, sure, I'll pay a few hundred bucks, hang out with some friends, keep their certificate. No biggie, I already have the thing. But I had a bit of a problem. There were tons and tons of courses for the queue listed.

This was back in 2017 and CQI was trying to get every coffee drinker in America to have a Q license so we could talk about coffee the way we talked about it in 1995, but there were only like three calibration courses and all of them were on the West Coast. By the time they put up one for the East Coast, I was scheduled to be on a buying trip, you know, like tasting coffee, so

I emailed CQI and the instructors and asked for an extension or some other way to calibrate. They basically told me, no, if I couldn't make a sanctioned calibration course, I'd have to take the course all over again. Another week, another$1,500. Meanwhile, I've been grading coffee for CQI for years, getting paid 30 bucks a pop. and was never once marked out of calibration. I kept with other Q graders two or three times a week and was actively tasting as part of my job. So what was the big deal?

And then I thought about it, why do it again? What did it really offer? It seemed like roasters or importers or people from consumption side outnumbered producers and exporters 10 to 1 in these classes. So who were we really serving by getting certified? It just seemed like we were giving a bunch of money to CQI so we could get a little icon in our email signatures so we could happily reject contracts.

as if we needed more power in the supply chain. So I chose to let my Q license lapse, and to be honest, I haven't thought much about it since.

So I'll be taking a week off because I am traveling. It's November and the coffee harvest is starting in Central America so I have to take some some jobs that pay money so I can keep pouring hours into this free podcast. Um I do need to take a moment away from this recording process so that I can, you know, do my real job so then I can come back and and do my hobby. Anyway, thanks for joining me for this week's episode. Remember that life's too short to drink bad coffee.