“For a long time we coffee professionals were calibrated. Now, with the rise of all kinds of different processing and variables, we've kind of lost a calibrated idea of quality. Now somebody can say, hey, that's an 86, and somebody else says, what do you mean, that's an 87? But between an 86 and an 87 is a world of difference.”
Coffee Roaster Warm Up Sessions · Food & Beverage · November 2026
Context
Kutrovski is explaining why flavor notes can't stand in for quality. He argues coffee professionals used to share a common sense of what scores like 86 or 87 meant, and that new processing methods have eroded that shared calibration.
Transcript
You know what I mean? It's not a correlation of like these flavor notes mean this. It's actually almost a combination of like clarity, complexity, sweetness, acidity, balance, all this stuff that goes that plays a role into the scoring.
Yep.
And so the reason why I'm bringing that up is because I think lately over maybe like the last, I don't know, four years, five years maybe, our standards of what quality, I think for a long time, we were pretty coffee professionals were calibrated. And then now I think with the rise of all kinds of different processing, all kinds of different variables and all this stuff, we've kind of lost almost a calibrated idea of quality. So now somebody can say, hey, that's an 86. And for somebody, that's like, what do you mean? That's an 87. But man, between an 86 and an 87 is a world of a difference.
Yep.
It's, it's, it's a huge difference. And, you know, this is just a part of the conversation, which I'll end my ramp, my rant here, is that I think that we, I think many people confuse cup score with flavor notes.
Yep.
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