Becoming a certified Q Grader officially validates your ability to evaluate coffee with rigor, consistency, and a common language within the industry. It allows you to make more confident decisions when purchasing green coffee, controlling quality, and roasting, reducing errors and technically justifying your criteria to teams, customers, and producers.
We follow the SCA (Specialty Coffee Association) Q Grader program, but with a personalized training approach. The training is provided by Javier Ghersi, a professional with nearly ten years of experience in the coffee industry. Runner-up in the Spanish coffee tasting championship, he works in the green coffee and sensory analysis sector, leading quality control, training, and producer relations projects in South and Central America. He also participates as a judge in international competitions, which allows him to stay constantly calibrated and up to date with the latest criteria.
Together with him, and with Ivette Vera, training director at Nomad , who has more than ten years of experience in the industry and a deep understanding of our coffee philosophy and quality control, we have designed a comprehensive, demanding, and practical course. A program full of activities that not only prepares you to successfully become certified, but also allows you to learn in a dynamic, applied, and conscious way.
We are very proud to be able to offer this course together: a unique learning experience, designed for you to enjoy the process and grow professionally with each activity.
What you will learn during the week:
- CVA (SCA) applied to industry: you will understand the current coffee evaluation standard and how to use its physical, descriptive, affective, and extrinsic approaches in real contexts.
- Professional tasting and evaluation mechanics: preparation, protocol, consistency, and best practices for rigorous and reproducible evaluation.
- Physical evaluation of green coffee: identification of quality and defects, recording and conversion of defects according to system criteria.
- Descriptive evaluation (CVA): you will develop a common language to describe coffees and document attributes accurately.
- Tasting from multiple perspectives: you will learn to interpret the same coffee according to use and needs (e.g., customer/market profiles).
- Advanced olfactory training: practical use of olfactory categories (flavor wheel), blind exercises, and training with references to expand registers.
- Taste training: recognition of intensities and interactions of predominant tastes using taste solutions.
- Triangulation: developing sensitivity to detect differences between samples in triangular tests.
- Roasting and roasting defects: detecting roasting problems and their impact on the cup.
- Affective and extrinsic valuation (CVA): how to integrate preference/experience and extrinsic information to build a comprehensive view of value.
- Practical exams (with 2 attempts): specific preparation and guided practice to tackle each practical block during the course.
Materials included and support
- Complete dossier with explanations and practical exercises that can be replicated.
- Course presentation.
- Post-training support for questions and follow-up.
This course includes meals, as well as three specially organized dinners, each with a specific purpose:
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First dinner: Aimed at getting to know and integrating the team with whom we will share the six days of training.
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Second dinner (prior to the exam): designed to promote relaxation and enjoyment before tackling the certification process.
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Celebration dinner: will take place on the last night of the course, Saturday, May 9, and will be dedicated to commemorating the completion of the program and the achievements made.
Each of these instances has been planned to enrich the learning experience, strengthen group cohesion, and adequately accompany each stage of the course.
The Q. Grader course takes place at our Roaster at Carrer Marroc 160, 08019 Barcelona.
During the week of the course, we will send you an email reminding you of our appointment. See you soon!
Important: We are not responsible for third-party purchases, such as flight or hotel reservations.
Terms and conditions
At The Coffee Academy, we strive to offer a high-quality learning experience to all our students. However, we reserve the right to reschedule the course date or refund the full course fee if the minimum attendance does not exceed 4 participants. We are committed to your satisfaction and will do our best to accommodate your needs and ensure that you get the most out of your experience with us.
Cancellation and punctuality policy
When you purchase a course, your place is automatically reserved. This means that if you do not attend, you could be leaving out other interested people. Therefore, we apply the following policy:
- A 50% penalty will be applied if you cancel less than 15 days in advance or within 48 hours prior to the course. In this case, only 50% of the total amount will be refunded.
- No refunds will be made if the student does not attend the course or if the cancellation is communicated less than 48 hours in advance.
- Once the course date has been set, no changes can be made, except in cases of force majeure such as illness or accident.
- In situations justified by force majeure (illness, accident, etc.), the student will be offered a place in the next edition of the course. This change can only be made once. If the student does not attend on the new date, no refund will be given.
Clarification: The cancellation policy does not apply in cases of illness or accident. In such cases, the student may reschedule their participation as indicated above.
Punctuality
We ask that you arrive on time for the course. We will allow a 5-minute grace period before starting. After 15 minutes from the start time, entry will not be permitted, out of respect for the other participants and the proper conduct of the class. We appreciate your understanding.
For any information, you can write to us at info@thecoffeeacademy.es
If you would like to take this workshop on a personalized basis, go to the "personalized workshop" drop-down option for more information.
