Advisory

Is there a cupping score, and does it come with enough detail to mean anything?

ALS-COFFEE-1.0-CUP-001

This question is worth asking but is not reducible to a check a page can settle. It is published as guidance, not as a test.

Assertion

cupping_score_with_protocol is_stated true

Applicability

applies when
the page states a cupping score or a specialty grade
signal
a numeric score or grade claim in product text

Accepted evidence

  • product_description — a score with its protocol, its evaluator and its date, or a green-grading result stated in the protocol's own terms with the sample mass named

Explicitly insufficient evidence

What does not count, and why. Published because the omission is where a check quietly becomes a claim.

  • a score with no protocol, cupper or date
    A score is a measurement and a measurement without its method is not evidence, because run-to-run and cupper-to-cupper variation is real.
  • "specialty coffee" as a category word
    It names a market segment rather than a grade, and no defect result accompanies it.
  • "Q graded" with no grader named and no report
    The credential belongs to a person, so citing it without the person is unverifiable.
  • an origin grade offered as evidence of a cupping score
    Origin grades encode bean size or altitude bands assigned at export, which is a different system with a different criterion.
  • "premium", "gourmet", "top one per cent"
    No body defines these, so they resolve against nothing.
  • a defect count with no sample mass, or one mass compared against another without conversion
    Counts are only comparable on a stated basis, and the protocols differ in the mass they use.
  • last season's score carried over to this lot
    A score belongs to the lot that was cupped, and a new harvest is a new lot.

Conflict rules

  • When an in-house score is presented in a form resembling a formal protocol result — then record the score and the absence of a named protocol and evaluator; the standard reports what is stated rather than ranking the source

Discrimination

Predicted fail rate: 80-97% (predicted, not yet measured)

Scores appear on a minority of pages and almost never with protocol, evaluator and date, so the assertion as specified would fail for nearly all of them. Published as advisory because the bare-number form is worth naming as insufficient rather than because the row should be run.

For a shopper

A cupping score is a measurement by a person under a protocol on a particular day, and a bare number carries none of that. Two cuppers and two sessions can differ, so a score without its method is closer to a slogan than a specification.

For a merchant

Publish the score with the protocol, the evaluator and the date, and keep it attached to the lot it was measured on rather than to the product across seasons.

Grounding

  • Specialty Coffee Association, coffee standards index (trade_body)
    that the published trade standards cover sensory assessment protocols and evaluator competencies, which is what makes protocol, evaluator and sample mass the elements a stated score needs in order to be interpretable