A correction: earlier versions of this page presented a five-axis “Coffee Profilers Method” as a framework that outlived a Berlin café of that name. The framework was ours, not the café’s; the home exercise below replaces it and is labeled as ours. If you followed a link to coffeeprofilers.com, that domain now points to this page, and jayarr.coffee has no connection with the café. Its story is at the end.
The parts of a coffee profile
The SCA’s Coffee Value Assessment (CVA) splits evaluating a coffee into four assessments. As the SCA describes them (checked October 18, 2026):
| Assessment | What it records |
|---|---|
| Physical | The green coffee’s color, defects, moisture and size, based on the SCA’s 2004 green grading system |
| Descriptive (SCA-103) | Aroma, flavor, texture and aftertaste, in standardized language |
| Affective (SCA-104) | The taster’s impression of quality, for their own preference or their market’s |
| Extrinsic (SCA-105) | What’s known beyond the cup, such as certifications, traceability to origin and processing |
On the descriptive form, the taster rates how intense each part is on a 15-point scale, marked low, medium and high, and ticks the flavor families they find. The score comes from the affective form only. The SCA keeps the steps apart because a taster who already knows the extrinsic information, such as where a coffee comes from, is easily biased by it. Our guide to coffee scores explains how the affective form becomes a number.
The words a profile uses
A profile’s flavor words come from a shared vocabulary. The Coffee Taster’s Flavor Wheel was first published by the SCA (then the SCAA) in 1995 and redrawn in 2016 with World Coffee Research. Behind it sits the WCR Sensory Lexicon, created at Kansas State University’s Sensory Analysis Center: version 2.0, published in October 2017, names 110 flavor, aroma and texture attributes and gives references for measuring their intensity. Our palate training guide shows how to learn the words from the wheel’s center outward, with references you can smell at home.
How a cupping produces one
Cupping is how professionals taste coffees side by side for a profile. The SCA’s 2024 sample preparation standard, SCA-102, uses 8.25 g of coffee for every 150 ml the cup holds, water at 194–205°F (93 ± 3°C) poured to the rim, and a crust left for 3 to 5 minutes before it’s broken. Our guide to cupping at home walks through it, with doses for ordinary mugs.
Profile your own taste at home
This exercise is ours, not an SCA procedure. It borrows the CVA’s order: describe first, judge second, read the label last.
- Pick two coffees that differ in one thing. Two countries, two roasts of the same coffee, or a washed and a natural from the same place.
- Brew both the same way, with the same dose, water and timing, so the coffee is the only difference.
- Describe each one before you decide anything. Is the body light or heavy? Are the sweetness and acidity low, medium or high? Then add a few flavor words.
- Then decide which you’d buy again, and by how much.
- Only now read the bags: country, variety, processing and roast.
- Repeat with new pairs. After a few rounds, look at which of your descriptions line up with the coffees you preferred.
When you look back over your notes, these questions help sort them. They’re our suggestions, not categories from any standard:
- Acidity: do the coffees you prefer taste bright and tart, or mellow?
- Body: do you lean toward light, clear cups or heavier ones?
- Processing: do your favorites keep saying the same thing on the bag, such as “washed” or “natural”? Our processing guide explains what each word means.
- Single origin or blend: do you like a coffee that’s distinctive, or one that tastes the same bag after bag? See what single origin means and how blends are built.
- Filter or espresso: do you drink it black or with milk?
When you’re ready to buy, James Hoffmann’s rules for reading a bag are summarized on our Hoffmann buying-guide page.
Where the name comes from
Coffee Profilers was a café at Karl-Marx-Allee 136 in Berlin, which opened in the summer of 2015 serving coffee roasted by Taf in Athens. Sprudge’s report that September quoted Stefanos Domatiotis, a World Brewers Cup champion who brewed there, on what the café did: “On every bag, we profile the beans inside.” Each bag listed the coffee’s origin, the mill, the processing method, the variety and the farm’s altitude. In the CVA’s terms, that’s an extrinsic profile.
The café’s own website, as archived in 2015, carried little beyond its name, and we found no method published under it. When checked on October 18, 2026, the address was home to OM Coffee, a specialty coffee and brunch café.
Sources
- Specialty Coffee Association, “Coffee Value Assessment” (the four assessments, Standards 102–105), checked October 18, 2026: sca.coffee
- Specialty Coffee Association, SCA Standard 103-2024, Coffee Value Assessment: Descriptive Assessment, §§6.2–6.3 (intensity scale and descriptors): sca.coffee (PDF)
- Specialty Coffee Association, A System to Assess Coffee Value: Understanding the Specialty Coffee Association’s Coffee Value Assessment, June 2024, §2 (each assessment done separately to avoid bias) and §9.1 (extrinsic information and perception)
- Specialty Coffee Association, SCA Standard 102-2024, Coffee Value Assessment: Sample Preparation and Tasting Mechanics, §5.2.2 (dose), §6 (crust, 3–5 minutes) and §7 (water at 93 ± 3°C): sca.coffee (PDF)
- Specialty Coffee Association, “The Coffee Taster’s Flavor Wheel” (store page: first published 1995, updated 2016 with WCR): sca.coffee
- World Coffee Research, “Sensory Lexicon” (version 2.0, October 2017; 110 attributes; Kansas State University), checked October 18, 2026: worldcoffeeresearch.org
- Conor O’Rourke, “Berlin: Coffee Profilers Brings Taf Coffee From Athens, With Love,” Sprudge, September 23, 2015: sprudge.com
- Coffee Profilers, home page, as archived June 18 and August 14, 2015: web.archive.org
- OM Coffee, home page (address), checked October 18, 2026: om-coffee.com