I find it interesting that price is even much of a topic in todays market. Onyx is selling some coffees in the triple digits for like 10 ounces. Proud Mary has 100g tins for $35. And don't get me started on Ninety Plus.

Prodigals standard coffees were priced in line with other roasters (Sey, TW, etc). The limited coffees were pricier but that's to be expected.

I'm going to try to refrain from making many comments on this until I have actually received the coffee, and unfortunately it looks like we might have had some shipping issues.

GC7 wrote:Is cost part of a discussion of Scott's coffee's? If not, please delete my response.

I got the email and I looked at the website.

A 1 kg (2.2 lb) bag of roasted coffee is $150 for 1 coffee. If you buy 0.33 pounds (150 gm), its $90/ lb. That would limit my consumption to birthday's and anniversaries.

I think that prices is a good thing to discuss.

First up, why is this even an issue? There's no rule that every business must cater to every market. Nobody tells a fancy fine dining restaurant that they have to have a cheap hamburger on the menu for someone to grab takeaway. I don't know anything about cars, but do Ferrari and Bugatti have some obligation to manufacture a cheap and economical hatchback? There are some roasters around that only have coffee from one country eg. Colombia or Yunnan. Do they have an obligation to offer other coffees? Does every roaster have to have dark and light roasts? Are we going to attack Ritual because ages ago they decided to stop ynd you can decide to accept their representations as to quality or not. I've tasted a bunch of coffees from Standout and I can see why people like them, and I agree that they are high scoring, but personally I don't like most of the coffees they choose.

The fact that there are expensive bottles of champagne on the market isn't an existential threat to the softdrink market just because both are beverages. Nobody is telling Domaine Romanee Conti that they ought to be manufacturing a canned kombucha so that they can appeal to people who don't drink alcohol, or who can't afford a $15,000 bottle of wine. And nobody expects that the mere fact that you can spend $15,000 on a single bottle of wine means that people will only ever drink that as the only beverage that they drink. Nobody thinks that the existence of unbelievably expensive wine is an attack on people who choose to drink water or soft drinks.

So one thing that I find kind of offensive is this sort of attack on scoring as elitist. Because to the extent that it is an argument that there is no difference, it is a massive slap in the face to producers, who take pride in delivering a high quality result and delivering a differentiated product, as well as a slap in the face to buyers who are willing to pay more for what they perceive as higher quality.

Next up, what should a cup of coffee cost? This is an incredibly complicated discussion, and I'm not going to do it justice. But let me be blunt. It's not a fair system. The amount of work that goes into getting even unremarkable coffee into our hands is truly staggering. Most of us in consuming countries wouldn't want to do anything like the amount of work that people in producing countries do for the money that they get. And we're seeing market failures. We can argue about this, but I and a bunch of people am concerned about the decline in coffee quality, and it is happening for good and heartbreaking reasons. Producing coffee does not have the allure of a path to riches, and the promise of a pittance isn't attracting many farmers and labourers to replace the ageing workforce that is retiring. Understandably. A bunch of these producers have laboured away in the hopes of securing a better life for their children. Their children's time is coming, and they don't want to work for a pittance. Then we've got climate change, disease pressure, pandemic, civil war, fertilizer costs, shipping ... it just goes on and on.

Coffee at the price that we want it isn't a right.

Arguing for coffee at a certain price, or that there is no difference in quality, is a commodity coffee mindset. If you want commodity coffee, that's fine. But if that is your view, don't also think that you are getting meaningful product differentiation. If you want what you perceive as quality, pay for it.

I hasten to add that I'm not meaning to put words in GC7's mouth - I'm not saying that any of this is GC7's view; I'm broadening out the discussion. But back to what GC7 wrote, if it's a birthday and anniversary only proposition ... so what? Why can't it be? What's wrong with that?

I just got back from a cafe that had a AUD$16 pourover Honduran geisha coffee. The fact that they offer that doesn't mean that they expect that their customers will only drink that. I don't see that Scott is saying that you should only drink his coffee.

Part of the big problem with coffee is the lack of product differentiation. There are all of these stupid online arguments about things like whether the light roast from roaster X or the dark roast from roaster Y is "better." What underlies all of them is the unstated assumption that they are all interchangeable products that compete in the same market. What I would like is for consumers to have a better understanding that there are different categories within a market that don't compete. People argue about whether tea or coffee is better, or about whether an SUV is better than a convertible, but people sort of understand that they are similar things but not really in competition. But yet when it comes to comparing two coffees, people always seem to assume that they are competing for the same consumer and consumption occasion.

Anyway, I'm certainly not meaning to attack anyone in observing this, but I'm a little sad about a few things. I used to buy a lot of washed ethiopian coffee, which was really unfairly priced, in that it wasn't that hard to find coffees that were reminiscent of what you would get for a panama geisha costing hundreds of dollars a kilo today, but for what you might think of as fairly average specialty coffee prices. Now, I can't buy any such coffees on the Australian retail coffee market. As a consumer, I would be delighted to have the opportunity to pay a hefty premium over standard coffee prices for such coffees, as long as a reasonable slice of the uplift went back to the producers to make the production of such coffees economically sustainable and good for everyone in the supply chain. But that is not a choice that I have.

GC7 wrote:On the other hand, I have 9 pounds of assorted Aida Batlle's world class El Salvador Finca Kilimanjaro green beans arriving later today for that same $150. I would question Scott if he considered these coffees "rejects" as he did the greens he is selling. Now anyone can certainly question my ability to roast Aida's coffees . I do buy professional roasts occasionally and they range from meh to superb but I can't live solely on $68 -$90 per pound coffee.

Great comment, and let me offer some responses.

First, how on earth can you compare buying green to buying roasted? Of course it's cheaper. What would be more useful is to find some comparable roasted coffees and compare those roasted prices with Scott's.

Second, it's not like Scott is saying that anything over 87.5 is delicious and then if it drops to 87.25 it is utterly undrinkable. If it was, then why would he need any of the points ratings below 87.25? He's simply saying that for his business, he wants to have >87.25. So what? What if he said it also has to be washed coffee? Would everyone be up in arms about him choosing not to sell naturals? Last year sucked, and I reckon that in my list of top 5 non-premium coffees that I drank, I had plenty of coffees < 87.5, which I enjoyed drinking ( In fact, looking at that list, my coffee of the year was scored by the roaster at only 86.75! Scott bought some of the green from Shared Source, Andrew Kelly's green coffee import company. I bought some blended regional colombian caturra from Andrew at the beginning of last year, or maybe the year before. I reckon it was probably around 85 points. It was delicious and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Third, as for Aida in particular, Scott and Ryan bought a bunch of Kilimanjaro from Aida for their previous endeavour, Facsimile. Lance Hedrick and I cupped it and got Ryan and Aida to join - video here https://www.instagram.com/lancehedrick/ ... 759ab26427 Aida was here for the MICE conference last year with her Australian importers, so I booked in to visit her and Scott crashed my session. Aida had a fantastic natural from El Paraiso on offer, which Scott seemed to enjoy. Appreciate that that reference to Aida was probably a "for instance".

Finally, there seems to be this unstated assumption that Scott is saying that no one else is getting coffee >87.5. But perhaps we could pause to consider that part of the reason why it is difficult to find coffee >87.5 is no doubt because competition for these coffees amongst roasters is fierce, and competitors snap them up! I get to have a bit of fun doing green buying with a guy that splits up coffee for home roasters in Australia and several times this happens: We request a list of 10 or so samples, then there's a week or two until we both get them and can cup and compare notes. We go through them and conclude that maybe 1-2 interest us and we want them. (Often delicious 87.25 or lower coffees, I might add.) My friend responds to the importer that he would like to buy a box of the two that we really liked. The importer says "yeah, you and everyone else; we've already sold out; better luck next time."

I certainly enjoy reading the long response with a lot of good info and stories. It feels a bit intimidating at the same time.

It seems you reply to separate points GC7 brought up, high price of Prodigal roasted coffees and his choice of good green (i.e. Aida). But I understand these points in a different angle: the high price point (~$80/lb) comes from ~$30/lb green (assuming Aida green is as good as Prodigal's green) and ~$50/lb in Prodigal's selecting and roasting and GC7 doesn't value Prodigal's selecting & roasting that high.

I think it's a valid way to look at Prodigal's roasting model. And without much more info, I share GC7 valuation of the values Prodigal adding to the coffee (i.e. lower than $50/lb).

Gary - 100% agree but to what point.

Hi, I am Dr. Gary. I will be your doctor today. I went to school for 8 years, I have seen 1,000's of patients, and I.......

Hi, I am Michael, I will be representing you at this tax settlement conference today. I am this and that .

100% Gary but is anyone doubting his skill in the first place.

Not my main point though. It's not a business to sell only the top few coffees he can source and have arrive to such lofty standards. It's another tasting exercise. And as I pointed out without the prep being spot on, which they offer no advise on, and without someone that can distinguish the taste to that level, it only becomes a game of who can get the most attention and the most clicks.

Look at me we have 87.5 and above coffees.

I was at first excited because I thought he would apply his roasting expertise and produce some really great coffees at really reasonable prices so that people can learn more about quality roasting. Instead he is catering to the look at me crowd. He could easily be producing much more coffee that scored slightly less.

Also his commentary on transparency was a complete joke. He's not transparent. He shills for Decent without letting people know he's involved. Sure it was/is on the Decent website, but that not being transparent when he's doing the shilling in direct marketing email pieces that include Decent. So here we have someone that isn't doing what he says, claiming to do what he says, and throwing up big cupping scores to sell product at high price that most can't appreciate.

I know there are many Scott fans out there and I hope they enjoy his coffee. Just calling it how I see it from a person formerly in a profession that demanding a high degree of integrity, something which is much harder to find these days . There's lots of great coffee out there for people already.

cuongdinh wrote:I certainly enjoy reading the long response with a lot of good info and stories. It feels a bit intimidating at the same time.

Thank you for your gracious reply. I do hope to inform and entertain, and intimidating anyone is the last thing that I want to do.

cuongdinh wrote:It seems you reply to separate points GC7 brought up, high price of Prodigal roasted coffees and his choice of good green (i.e. Aida). But I understand these points in a different angle: the high price point (~$80/lb) comes from ~$30/lb green (assuming Aida green is as good as Prodigal's green) and ~$50/lb in Prodigal's selecting and roasting and GC7 doesn't value Prodigal's selecting & roasting that high.

I think it's a valid way to look at Prodigal's roasting model. And without much more info, I share GC7 valuation of the values Prodigal adding to the coffee (i.e. lower than $50/lb).

It is absolutely for each of you to make your own assessment of what things are worth and what you are willing to pay for, and I just hope to provide some information and context so that you all can make your own decision. It is for Scott to make his value proposition how he sees fit.

What I would say is that there are two things really lacking in most of the discussion of Prodigal so far. First, actual experience from people tasting it. Second, some apples-and-apples comparisons. To help with the comparisons, Scott blogged and wrote that he paid Betel $19/lb or $41.8/kg for their coffee, before shipping. AFAIK, shipping was probably pretty pricey, since that sort of relationship usually requires things to be sent by air eg Fedex. IDK what Scott is charging for those coffees in USD, since the webpage is converting them to AUD. So there's some info for you to work out value add and such right there. So the thing to do would be to find some comparable coffees from roasters you think are good and work out what they paid for them. How much is skillful roasting worth? I haven't really thought about it that way. Do you value it as a fixed fee on top of the green price? Or a percentage multiple? Other roasters have their farm gate prices published, so the numbers are all there if someone wants to find some and do some comparisons.

I might chime in with my own opinion on the coffees later, if shipping hasn't eaten my coffee, but that doesn't really matter in some senses. I expect that I'll enjoy the coffees, since I and my friends subscribed to Facsimile for all of it and we enjoyed both the green coffee selections and, more to the point, the roasting. They were regular highlights for us, and we felt they were much more what we wanted than other coffees that we could get locally. Many of those coffees were <87 points and we found them pretty delicious and enjoyable, so I guess I'm a little mystified as to why Scott has set his threshhold so high, but if he wants to make his life more difficult and my coffee taste better, I'm not going to stop him. But I totally appreciate that others may not have enjoyed facsimile's coffees at all. For example, if you wanted darker roasts, if you hate acidity or if you really really love heavily fermented coffees, facsimile was probably a pretty disappointing experience for you.

I suppose as a closing thought for this post, I'd just say that coffee is in many respects a terrible business and a delightful one. Coffees, roasters, producers, economic models, etc, vary greatly throughout the world and from business to business. Buying coffee is an exercise in trust, wilful ignorance, self-flagellation, research, scepticism and, in the end, settling with the bunch of compromises that seems best to you. I guess that the age of social media has conditioned us to assume an airbrushed, cherry-picked, marketing soundbite model of perfection that doesn't really exist, so that we have subconsciously developed an unease in admitting the complexity and shortcomings that are inherent in just about anything in life, and especially coffee.

CarefreeBuzzBuzz wrote: Maybe his fans just believe it cause he said it..

This was my point in this conversation-
Me: So there was no good, consistent home roasted or, for that matter, commercial coffee before all this tech stuff like data logging? A good roaster can roast good coffee with or without all the bells and whistles.

Another poster: There wasn't. That is correct. Not compared to speciality today. Rao actually talks about this quite a bit.

Curly

there are two things really lacking in most of the discussion of Prodigal so far. First, actual experience from people tasting it.

Agreed .

Second, some apples-and-apples comparisons.

From home roaster point of view, I tend to compare roasted coffees more to my roasts and less between roasters.

I suppose as a closing thought for this post, I'd just say that coffee is in many respects a terrible business and a delightful one. Coffees, roasters, producers, economic models, etc, vary greatly throughout the world and from business to business. Buying coffee is an exercise in trust, wilful ignorance, self-flagellation, research, scepticism and, in the end, settling with the bunch of compromises that seems best to you. I guess that the age of social media has conditioned us to assume an airbrushed, cherry-picked, marketing soundbite model of perfection that doesn't really exist, so that we have subconsciously developed an unease in admitting the complexity and shortcomings that are inherent in just about anything in life, and especially coffee.

I think specialty coffee is more or less established industry. True it's still relatively young at the same time I see many more roasters compared to 10 years ago and finding a specialty shop when traveling is much less challenging.

People in any established industry have to accept what it is first, then, if you want to break the molds, prepare to spend a significant amount of effort to persuade yourself and then others in that industry, including the consumers. To that extent, marketing is crucial, not just sound bite, and it seems to me Prodigal doesn't completely get it right, at least to a subset of us here. But like you said, they cater to a specific market, so as long as they're sold out, they don't have to care about the bystanders.

Anyway, hope you get your coffees (l lost 2 packages with UPS in the 2 weeks, 1 is a Huky ). Look forward to your sharing on Prodigal's coffees.

PS: This reminds me of Simon Hsieh & Aroma Roast Coffees. I haven't tried it yet but find the 'zero defect' value proposition pretty compelling.

Luca

I believe your response was overly harsh and judgmental. You could teach more effectively using different language and debating skills. I asked if price was a proper topic and to delete my response if it was not. I exist in a live and let live environment and my response to how I take Scott's new business was made in that vein.

I'm glad you made reference to wine in your reply. It's a topic I've made similar choices over the last couple of decades as I have for coffees. Thankfully, I can roast my own coffee from top quality (by anyone's standards) beans where I have no hope of buying good grapes to make wine.

I ask this question seriously and would appreciate an answer.

How many bottles of Romanee Conti do you open a year?

Weekly?
Monthly?
Birthday's?
Anniverasries?
Ever?

How many Grand Cru Burgundies yet alone Romanee Conti do you consume in a year?

These wines are IMO the absolute best. By your analogy, if you are serious about wine, then you should be consuming them regularly.

I have a tiny stash left of 1990 Grand Cru burgundy, some 1997 Brunello's, 1997 Port (willed to my grandson to toast me with his dad long after I'm gone) and assorted other fine aged wines that I will consume on birthday's, anniversaries and special occasions. I no longer buy wines like that and have not for a long time. I don't find value and the science of winemaking has progressed where $10-$20 bottles are good at worst and sometimes superb. In the 1970's, I used to live a couple of hours drive to the Santa Cruz mountains where a winery called Ridge produced some of the finest Zinfandel and Cabernet on earth. We would go on a Saturday and they put out about 7 wines to taste and we would select a favorite for $6 or $7 and have aa picnic. The back seat of my car was filled with their wine when I moved back east for my permanent job. I have not bought a bottle of Ridge wine in 15 years. No value to me when a superb cheaper wine pairs with my beef stew really well.

I sometimes look at my kitties and ask to have their sense of smell for just one day to see what they are experiencing. I don't think I'd enjoy it longer. I now feel the same way for Q graders. I'd like to know what you experience for a day to see if I am missing something. Distinguishing 87.5 from 87.25 and making decisions seems exhausting and a burden. I am happier than ever being a home roaster and comparing my product with the pros every so often. Scott's book has been invaluable to my improvement as a hobby roaster. I wish him all the luck in his business endeavors. He has helped me a lot. This venture is one area where I might try some green coffee, if available, on occasion but that's it.

GC7 wrote:Luca

I believe your response was overly harsh and judgmental.

I'm sorry, that's not what I intended, as I will explain as you read on.

GC7 wrote:You could teach more effectively using different language and debating skills.

Also another point that I am happy to issue another separate apology for! There's a lovely quote of dubious provenance "sorry for the long letter; I didn't have time to write a short one." Sums up one of my many failings.

GC7 wrote:I asked if price was a proper topic and to delete my response if it was not. I exist in a live and let live environment and my response to how I take Scott's new business was made in that vein.

Crikey, I hope there isn't a sales tax on apologies - have another one. Because I think that maybe we are coming at this from the same place. I've been at pains, again and again, to say that I respect that everyone has there own personal preferences, and what I want to do is to just provide information for people to better choose to get what they expect and want. And price is certainly a legitimate part of the equation for discussion.

GC7 wrote:I'm glad you made reference to wine in your reply. It's a topic I've made similar choices over the last couple of decades as I have for coffees. Thankfully, I can roast my own coffee from top quality (by anyone's standards) beans where I have no hope of buying good grapes to make wine.

I ask this question seriously and would appreciate an answer.

How many bottles of Romanee Conti do you open a year?

Weekly?
Monthly?
Birthday's?
Anniverasries?
Ever?

How many Grand Cru Burgundies yet alone Romanee Conti do you consume in a year?

These wines are IMO the absolute best. By your analogy, if you are serious about wine, then you should be consuming them regularly.

And here is the crux of my miscommunication. My whole point is that nobody expects that you should be consuming Romanee Conti regularly! We all understand that every market has some product at the top end of price, and that:
1. The existence of a super expensive product isn't an affront to people who buy a cheaper version.
2. It's a free market and it's for vendors of any product to set their prices and put forward a value proposition.
3. Vendors don't have to offer every type of that product. Like, nobody is saying that it's outrageous that DRC costs so much and therefore DRC must also produce a cheaper wine.

My point is that if you guys don't want to buy Scott's coffee - for any reason - that's a perfectly legitimate choice. Because whether you enjoy or don't enjoy drinking it, or you do or don't feel that it is worth whatever Scott is charging ... you are right!

As for your question, I've never drunk DRC and I've probably tasted a handful of GC burgundy in my life. And that's the point. I don't feel like any sort of lesser human being for it, but, equally, I'm perfectly open to the idea that I may be missing out on something spectacular.

Now I should hasten to add, in case there is any confusion, that I'm not saying that Scott is equating his threshhold with the absolute best around or DRC. I picked the most extreme example because if you accept the proposition for that, then it follows for the rest.

Really, I think people should in their mind assume that instead of a points threshold, Scott had some other arbitrary criteria. Like if he said he was never going to buy coffee from a particular country, or he was never going offer a dark roast. People should be no more outraged at his stance on points than they would be for something like that.

So I have answered the question that you asked me. Could you now answer the question that I asked you. Let's assume that Scott's coffee is all premium priced so that it is only the sort of thing that one would buy for a special occasion. So what? Shouldn't we expect the coffee market to have a wide variety of prices, styles, and quality, and isn't Scott - or anyone else running a coffee roastery - free to choose what they want to offer? I mean if people think what he is writing is BS, then they won't buy it, same as any other roaster.

GC7 wrote:I have a tiny stash left of 1990 Grand Cru burgundy, some 1997 Brunello's, 1997 Port (willed to my grandson to toast me with his dad long after I'm gone) and assorted other fine aged wines that I will consume on birthday's, anniversaries and special occasions. I no longer buy wines like that and have not for a long time. I don't find value and the science of winemaking has progressed where $10-$20 bottles are good at worst and sometimes superb. In the 1970's, I used to live a couple of hours drive to the Santa Cruz mountains where a winery called Ridge produced some of the finest Zinfandel and Cabernet on earth. We would go on a Saturday and they put out about 7 wines to taste and we would select a favorite for $6 or $7 and have aa picnic. The back seat of my car was filled with their wine when I moved back east for my permanent job. I have not bought a bottle of Ridge wine in 15 years. No value to me when a superb cheaper wine pairs with my beef stew really well.

And I think that you and I are on the same page on this. The existence of higher priced or pointed coffee doesn't need to diminish our enjoyment of lower priced or pointed coffee. And in my defence, I might point out that I did write above that I enjoy plenty of sub 87 point coffees. In fact, I've scored plenty of coffees much higher, which I wouldn't myself buy at any price and that I would not drink over a nicely roasted 85 point washed caturra.

GC7 wrote:I sometimes look at my kitties and ask to have their sense of smell for just one day to see what they are experiencing. I don't think I'd enjoy it longer. I now feel the same way for Q graders. I'd like to know what you experience for a day to see if I am missing something. Distinguishing 87.5 from 87.25 and making decisions seems exhausting and a burden.

The CQI and ACE, to their great credit, are very blunt and upfront about making it clear to anyone that does their courses or calibrations that this isn't an activity to be undertaken lightly, since the outcome may have a large effect on the livelihoods of coffee producers and others in the value chain. You can have a look at the specialty coffee transaction guide to see some good examples of how score can determine returns to farmers in the specialty market: https://www.transactionguide.coffee/ What the CQI and ACE don't have to emphasise as much, is that it is also important for buyers, by which I mean importers and roasters, since over-scoring can result in unhappy retail and wholesale customers and losses on stock that can't be moved. So, yes, it is exhausting and a burden, precisely because it isn't a trivial exercise; it is one that carries with it responsibility.

AFAIK, I don't actually think that there's anything special about being a Q-grader in terms of what they perceive; the real distinction is experience, which anyone can acquire through experience and, more specifically, experience tasting things comparatively. What Q-graders really have that the rest of us don't is a recent calibration experience so that they can confidently say that something is 7.25 in acidity, not 7 or 8, not "high or low", and they can use that 7.25 in the same sense that their colleagues will, probably to within +/- 0.25. This is an utterly useless skill unless you have reason to care about calibrated Q scores, and of course professionals who make buying decisions on them do have good cause to care. Consumers? Probably best to focus more on working out what you like or what you don't. If you find light roasts acidic and unpleasant, or you can't stand washed coffees, you're probably going to care a great deal more about the roast level or the processing type than distinctions of 1 point on the scale.

I guess I'd say that the biggest difference to me in doing the Q course was that I no longer regarded aroma descriptors as fanciful; I understood them. Last week Proud Mary put on a single blind cupping of 9 of their coffees to showcase their coffee lineup. I had had the benefit of having tasted many of the coffees in earlier years, and it wasn't all that difficult to identify all of them. And, yes, certainly the worse coffees feel like more of a disappointment, not just because they are less pleasing, but also because it's difficult not to feel that things could have gone better for the producer. But one of the nice things for me over the last few years has been doing lots of cuppings with my group of geek friends. It feels like it's the same experience for most people - they turn up to a cupping table of 5-10 coffees for the first time and they are full of self-doubt, but if I shut up and focus them by asking some leading questions about how one cup differs from the next, or how it compares with that thing they tried last time, pretty soon most of them have strong opinions about everything! And, unfortunately, everyone wants everyone to succeed, but sometimes things don't go well. We had a mega cupping session of 12 Australian commercial roasts of kenyan coffees and a bunch of imported coffees and home roasts so that we could work out early in the season last year which commercial coffees we really liked and wanted to buy lots of. We had about 10 people attend and did it single blind. And, unfortunately for us, we talked through the coffees and the room was pretty unanimous that the only ones that anyone wanted to actually buy were from overseas roasters. This wasn't the opinion of one Q-grader from an ivory tower; this was the consensus of a bunch of regular, but quite enthusiastic, home baristas.

GC7 wrote:I am happier than ever being a home roaster and comparing my product with the pros every so often. Scott's book has been invaluable to my improvement as a hobby roaster. I wish him all the luck in his business endeavors. He has helped me a lot. This venture is one area where I might try some green coffee, if available, on occasion but that's it.

Good on you. Home roasting to a level that makes you happy is a wonderful thing.

Luca

Thank you so much for your clarifying remarks. I do believe that we are pretty much in agreement.

I especially appreciate your discussion of Q grading and the ACE scoring. As a rank amateur enthusiast who wants to learn (a bit) more, I would like to see more discussion of this from the point of view of both experts like you and less skilled folks like me who participate in cuppings. I watched the 73 minute video of the cupping of Aida's coffees from last year just yesterday and I learned a lot. I hope it translates into my enjoyment of this years crop. It was somewhat encouraging to find that the abilities are not all inherently genetic and some can be learned. I don't believe the same applies to my being able to smell what my kitties do.

I also look forward to hearing what folks think of Scott's roasted coffees.