Coffee Lab
Cuppers can see exactly where they are in the cupping process at any time. By coffee. By attribute. In comparison to each coffee tasted. And what's left to do.
port-o-lab Coffee Cupping Software
√ For Professional Tasters
The Need?
An easy-to-use app for rating speciality coffee.
For speciality coffee growers, it’s all about the rating. If a coffee is rated 80 or above it’s classified as speciality grade — and the grower is able to command the premium price it deserves.
And that’s important for specialty coffee growers in earning top dollar for their crops based on the quality of their beans.
The alternative? Sell it in bulk through the New York Coffee Exchange — for much less than what’s it worth.
“I thought it would be so cool if the whole thing could be automated.”
The cupper can look at each coffee's overall score by attribute.
“I guess you could say necessity was the mother of invention in this case,” said Mané Alves, founder of Coffee Lab International. “I cup coffee for a living and travel to producing countries around the world, working with farmers, co-ops, and organizations to ensure quality. I saw how we were all struggling with paper forms and the dreadful task of entering data and generating reports. I thought it would be so cool if the whole thing could be automated.”
The Goal?
Make a complex task simple.
But first the coffee beans and the brewed coffee must be rated by professionally accredited cuppers. And the forms used by the cuppers were tedious to say the least. That’s when Coffee Lab came to Green Mountain Software for its expertise in making the complex simple.
This "spider web" view makes it easy to have a grasp on the overall balance of the coffee being cupped.
The Solution?
Apply a little bit of magic … for the Palm app …
The first bit of magic came about in translating a complex form into a compelling Palm app that:
- Allows cuppers to taste and rate up to 10 coffees at a time
- Lets the user know where they are in the cupping process at all times
- Provides meaningful feedback to the user
- Automates the scoring … and, of course, the accuracy of the results
… for handling multiple languages …
Then we provided a table-driven mechanism for accommodating multiple languages in the app — a mechanism that Coffee Lab could maintain on its own.
… and setting up a basic desktop app.
Finally, we developed a simple Windows-based app for setting up cupping sessions, uploading results and generating reports.
The result?
An award-winning app.
port-o-lab was named the “Best New Education and Training Product” at the SCAA Annual Worldwide Conference in 2005.
For more information about Coffee Lab International, click here to visit the Coffee Lab website.
