What an 86.4 average cup score actually means for a roaster

By The Coffee Company CR Trade Desk

Our average cup score across the 2025/26 harvest sits at 86.4 — a number we quote often, but rarely explain. It comes from cupping every offered lot at least twice, on the SCA protocol, with a minimum of three calibrated cuppers per session.

Why we cup twice

A lot is scored once at origin, within a week of the parchment reaching our mill, and again immediately before shipment. The two scores rarely differ by more than half a point, but when they do, it tells us something about how the coffee is resting — information we pass on to the buyer along with the samples.

A single point of cupping score can be the difference between a lot clearing 85 for a competition program or landing at 84 for a standard specialty offering, so we take the calibration seriously enough to retrain our table twice a year against outside samples.