Education

Over the event days, attendees will have the opportunity to take part in workshops, lectures and a team roasting challenge.

Thursday Pre-Retreat: Future USRC competitors, we will have a small group prep class on the competition machines (additional fee/limited participation). Retreat attendees can come early and talk to roaster manufacturer representatives and experience the vast array of roasting equipment.

Friday Lectures: Attendees will be given an assigned rotation schedule so they can experience all of the lectures on Friday and also have focused time for the team challenge.

Saturday Workshops: Attendees must select one morning workshop and one afternoon workshop during the registration process. Workshops are on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Sunday Optional Sessions: For attendees who would like to book their flight later and continue to learn, we have a few sessions for an additional fee after retreat concludes.

Thursday, September 28

Retreat doesn’t officially begin until 5:30 p.m., but if you would like to arrive early and take part in Thursday pre-retreat educational offerings, please do!

  • This primer workshop will include, green grading, flavor descriptors, and roasting on Stronghold competition roasters. Workshop is limited to 20 attendees.

  • Retreat is the only place that attendees can come and see a variety of roasting equipment in one place. This time is dedicated to meeting roaster manufacturer representatives, exploring the roasters that will be used all weekend, and really showcasing our amazing community of roaster manufacturers.

Friday, September 29

Attendees will have a pre-determined rotation schedule. Rotations to include three focused lectures and one team challenge rotation where teams will have dedicated time to roast, cup, and brew to hone in their final roast to submit for the retreat team roasting challenge.

  • A lecture that will explain green coffee forecasting and planning for an in-season coffee program. We will be exploring the challenges of forecasting and as it interacts with coffee seasonality and shipment expectations of coffee growing regions. A panel of wide-ranging experience will cover general harvest, shipping logistics, warehousing, and landing. We will focus on how forecasting can impact a company’s lead times and how all of these moving parts can affect your yearly planning. Through available data, current production, historical numbers, and anticipated growth, you’ll gain strategies to better navigate planning and forecasting.

  • It's easy to agree that in recent years, two of the most important sensory characteristics of specialty coffee have been the attributes we call "sweetness" and "acidity." But we are still learning how coffee tasters perceive sweetness and which acids are actually in coffee (as well as how to recognize them). This lecture draws on emerging knowledge from research by the Coffee Science Foundation to understand coffee's chemistry and sensory attributes, as well as coffee sweetness.

  • Coffee consumers care more about roast color than any other attribute when choosing a coffee to purchase, but there is tremendous confusion – including among roasters in the coffee industry – about what precisely a “dark roast,” “medium roast,” or “light roast” actually means. A “light roast” for one roaster might be darker than a “dark roast” for a different roaster. To address this challenge, the SCA would like to establish an index of roast colors with plain English names and relate this to a CIELAB (L*a*b*) uniform color scales to help bring consistency to the marketplace. This lecture will draw on preliminary results from a massive study at the UC Davis Coffee Center investigating the impact of roast profile inside a commercial drum roaster and connect this ongoing research to the Specialty Coffee Association's project to develop a roast color standard in 2024.

    Attendees will additionally participate in the research themselves by participating in an exercise to identify and describe coffee colors in a controlled environment. Learn how roasting research is done, and participate in the cutting edge of coffee science!

  • This is your teams dedicated time to focus on your final roast and make sure it’s ready to turn in Saturday morning.

Saturday, September 30

Attendees have their choice of one morning workshop and one afternoon workshop.

Morning Workshops - Attendees Will Select One (10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.)

  • The Comprehensive Sample Roasting course is designed for coffee professionals throughout the supply chain to learn and practice the skills of sample roasting for evaluation, product development, sales efforts and business development. With a focus on evaluation, this class helps students with the process of creating a consistent sample roasting program, including checking green grade, recording green and roast data, storing samples, making buying decisions, having a roasting log and maintaining equipment. All students will receive hands-on time and instruction at sample roasters.

  • The Green Coffee Lifespan is a “seed-to-seed” presentation with something to learn for every skill level. The reality is that all roasters at one point or another will come across aged coffee and this course aims to give students understanding on what aged coffee is and resources on how to approach it differently. We will be diving deep into how green coffee chemically and biologically evolves over time-- from packing for export through port arrival and from warehouse storage to its final destination-- the roaster. Students will leave with an understanding what physical changes occur to green coffee over time and how age impacts flavor and taste.

  • This workshop will help beginner to intermediate roasters define and apply the practice of profile roasting. We'll cover common terminology, heat transfer, and how different variables can impact your roast. We'll also learn about recipe/profile development, and how to make changes that will impact cup characteristics and improve flavor. After a brief presentation, we'll take that knowledge into the roasting tent where students will conduct some roast experiments, cup, and analyze their results. This workshop will help roasters understand how to apply roasting theory and alter profile recipes to dial in their desired levels of acidity, sweetness, body, and balance.

  • This class will approach different roasting styles and their impact on brewing and extraction. We will cover topics like permeability, solubility, and roasting intentionally for a specific brew method. Attendees will walk away with an understanding on how to utilize the variables of roasting to their advantage. The aim of this course is to provide tools and skillsets that help roasters become more intentional with a roasting plan as it relates to things like extraction method, process method, and each coffees inherent origin profile. We will taste a single coffee which has been processed two different ways— parchment dried and fruit dried— and roasted three different ways by two different people.

  • Over the past four years, the SCA has undertaken a project to understand and evolve the SCA cupping protocol as a part of its Coffee Value Assessment project. This year, SCA released a draft of a new cupping protocol, which is anticipated to become the new official SCA cupping protocol in 2024. This workshop offers coffee professionals interested in first-hand practical experience with the new protocol a guided and thorough training session on the new protocol. Students will receive descriptive training, including how to use references, and an understanding of the affective section of the new cupping system. Tasting sessions will give cuppers experience evaluating multiple coffees using the new system.

Afternoon Workshops - Attendees Will Select One (2:30-5:30 p.m.)

  • The Comprehensive Sample Roasting course is designed for coffee professionals throughout the supply chain to learn and practice the skills of sample roasting for evaluation, product development, sales efforts and business development. With a focus on evaluation, this class helps students with the process of creating a consistent sample roasting program, including checking green grade, recording green and roast data, storing samples, making buying decisions, having a roasting log and maintaining equipment. All students will receive hands-on time and instruction at sample roasters.

  • The Green Coffee Lifespan is a “seed-to-seed” presentation with something to learn for every skill level. The reality is that all roasters at one point or another will come across aged coffee and this course aims to give students understanding on what aged coffee is and resources on how to approach it differently. We will be diving deep into how green coffee chemically and biologically evolves over time-- from packing for export through port arrival and from warehouse storage to its final destination-- the roaster. Students will leave with an understanding what physical changes occur to green coffee over time and how age impacts flavor and taste.

  • This workshop will help beginner to intermediate roasters define and apply the practice of profile roasting. We'll cover common terminology, heat transfer, and how different variables can impact your roast. We'll also learn about recipe/profile development, and how to make changes that will impact cup characteristics and improve flavor. After a brief presentation, we'll take that knowledge into the roasting tent where students will conduct some roast experiments, cup, and analyze their results. This workshop will help roasters understand how to apply roasting theory and alter profile recipes to dial in their desired levels of acidity, sweetness, body, and balance.

  • This workshop will approach different roasting styles and their impact on brewing and extraction. We will cover topics like permeability, solubility, and roasting intentionally for a specific brew method. Attendees will walk away with an understanding on how to utilize the variables of roasting to their advantage. The aim of this course is to provide tools and skillsets that help roasters become more intentional with a roasting plan as it relates to things like extraction method, process method, and each coffees inherent origin profile. We will taste a single coffee which has been processed two different ways— parchment dried and fruit dried— and roasted three different ways by two different people.

  • Over the past four years, the SCA has undertaken a project to understand and evolve the SCA cupping protocol as a part of its Coffee Value Assessment project. This year, SCA released a draft of a new cupping protocol, which is anticipated to become the new official SCA cupping protocol in 2024. This workshop offers coffee professionals interested in first-hand practical experience with the new protocol a guided and thorough training session on the new protocol. Students will receive descriptive training, including how to use references, and an understanding of the affective section of the new cupping system. Tasting sessions will give cuppers experience evaluating multiple coffees using the new system.

Sunday, October 1

We’ve added a few optional sessions for attendees that would like to keep learning after retreat ends. These sessions are an additional fee.

  • In this workshop attendees will learn about what makes Robusta different from Arabica, both in the cup and in the roaster. This class will educate participants about the Robusta bean, how to utilize Robusta within a specialty coffee program, and provide tips for roasting Robusta.

  • This is a lecture to introduce attendees to the C Market including the purpose of the market, hedging, reading market reports, and how the market can impact roasters of all sizes. The presentation will also cover a brief explanation of market tools, including "Good-till-Cancel" (GTC) orders and "to be fixed" contracts.

SCA reserves the right to substitute classes in the event of an unforeseeable circumstance that renders it impossible to produce the class to the quality education standards required by SCA Coffee Skills Program courses and SCA Workshops.