MILAN – During the last Coffee Science Course at Nuova Simonelli in November 2018, we had the opportunity to meet Norman Mazel, a Quality Analyst for Dutch green coffee trader Douqué Group at that time. We heard again from him a few days ago and he had an interesting story to tell.
“Last month I returned from an intense week in Sumatra, where I attended the Q Processing Professional Course,” Mazel said to Comunicaffè International. “It was beautiful, powerful and … successful!”
“I am now the only registered European citizen with the three – at this moment – highest attainable coffee certificates issued by The Coffee Quality Institute: “Q Grader Arabica”, “Q Grader Robusta” and “Q Processing Professional”.
“There are only 29 people worldwide who hold these 3 certificates at the moment. The highest level” (“Expert”) still has no graduates, perhaps after the summer or later this year, for some invited Q instructors).
The certificate for Arabica and for Robusta is the standard in the global coffee industry for coffee tasters, for the accurate and standardized assessment of quality.
The Processing certificate is mainly about the preliminary process of the final quality; how can coffee be grown and processed at its optimum or best, to achieve a certain quality profile.
Here you can find some short information about the certificates mentioned:
“It may all sound a bit boastful” concludes Mazel “but I am specifically very proud that I completed all three initial weekly courses as well as the mandatory triennial re-exams / calibrations in “one go”, so without any retakes outside of these weeks.”
Some statistical background information from the CQI website, the current global counters of active certificate holders:
- Arabica Graders – 6963 (about 450 of them in the EU)
- Robusta Graders – 320 (only 40 of these in the EU)
- Q Processing Professionals – 571 (only 26 of these in the EU)
- Q Processing Experts – 0
