From a wild Ethiopian fruit to the espresso in your cup — the complete coffee story in one foundational course.
The SCA Introduction to Coffee course is the perfect first step for anyone curious about specialty coffee — whether you're a future barista, a café owner, a passionate home brewer, or simply someone who wants to understand the world inside their morning cup. In just four hours, you'll walk through the full coffee supply chain from origin to cup, taste a guided professional cupping, and earn 10 credits toward the SCA Coffee Skills Diploma.
This is the single best entry point into the entire SCA Coffee Skills Program. It introduces the vocabulary, concepts, and sensory framework that every other course — Barista Skills, Brewing, Roasting, Sensory, Green Coffee — builds upon. If you've ever felt like specialty coffee has its own secret language, this course is where that language starts to make sense.
Format: Private 1:1 or 1:2 — fully personalised pace
Duration: 4 hours (theory + cupping + tasting)
Location: Tasse Coffee Roastery, Shinjuku, Tokyo
Languages: English / Japanese / Mandarin / Cantonese
Price: ¥50,000 (SCA enrolment fee additional: US$50)
Certification: SCA Introduction to Coffee Certificate + 10 SCA credits
What You'll Cover, Module by Module
The Introduction to Coffee course is structured as a guided journey through the full supply chain. Below is what each module covers and the hands-on experience attached to it.
A Historical Brew — Coffee's Journey from Ethiopia to the World
Every cup you drink today is the latest chapter in a story that begins in the highlands of Ethiopia, winds through the coffee houses of the Islamic world, and arrives at the third-wave specialty cafés of 2026. Understanding this lineage is more than trivia — it's the foundation for appreciating why coffee matters culturally, economically, and sensorially. You'll trace how a wild forest plant became the second-most traded commodity on earth.
- Coffee's origins in Ethiopia and Yemen, and the legend of Kaldi
- How Sufi monks, Ottoman cafés, and European trading routes spread coffee globally
- Why coffee became central to commerce, conversation, and culture
- The rise of specialty coffee and the third-wave movement
The Coffee Plant — Varieties, Species, and Origins
Coffee is not a single thing. It's a botanical genus with two commercially important species and hundreds of varieties, each with its own genetic personality. In this module you'll learn to distinguish Arabica from Robusta, recognise classic varieties like Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, and Geisha, and understand how cultivar choice influences everything from disease resistance to flavour profile in the cup.
- The difference between Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora (Robusta)
- Major Arabica varieties — Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, Catuai, SL28, Geisha
- How altitude, climate, and terroir shape coffee character
- Production realities — yield, disease resistance, and farmer economics
From Fruit to Cup — Harvesting and Processing
Coffee is a fruit before it's a bean. The decisions farmers and millers make in the days between harvest and export leave a permanent mark on flavour. You'll walk through hand vs. machine picking, the major processing methods — washed, natural, honey, anaerobic — and how each method changes sweetness, body, acidity, and clarity in the final cup.
- Selective hand-picking vs. strip picking vs. mechanical harvesting
- Washed processing — the cleanest, most transparent profile
- Natural / dry processing — fruit-forward sweetness and body
- Honey, anaerobic, and experimental processing trends in 2026
The Art of Roasting — How Heat Shapes Flavour
Green coffee is locked. Roasting is what releases it. In this module you'll see how a few minutes of carefully managed heat transforms a dense, vegetal-smelling seed into the aromatic brown bean we recognise as coffee. You'll learn how light, medium, and dark roasts differ — not just in colour, but in the balance of acidity, sweetness, and bitterness they bring to the cup.
- What happens inside a bean during roasting — Maillard, caramelisation, first and second crack
- Light, medium, and dark roast profiles and when each is appropriate
- How roast development time affects body, acidity, and finish
- Why freshness and degassing matter for both espresso and filter
Espresso Fundamentals — Technology and Extraction
Espresso is coffee distilled under pressure — and it's the foundation of every café drink on the menu. This module introduces the modern espresso machine, the role of the grinder, and the four variables that decide whether a shot is brilliant or broken: dose, yield, time, and temperature. You'll see why a 2-second change in extraction can swing a shot from sweet to sour to bitter.
- How a modern espresso machine works — pump, boiler, group head, PID
- The role of the grinder and grind consistency
- The classic espresso recipe — dose, yield, time, and temperature
- Reading a shot — crema, flow, taste, and adjustment
Brewing Beyond Espresso — Infusion and Percolation
Espresso is one way to extract coffee — but there are dozens of others. In this module you'll learn the two big families of brewing methods (immersion and percolation), and meet the modern specialty brewers behind today's filter coffee renaissance: V60, Chemex, AeroPress, French press, and batch brew. You'll learn how grind size, ratio, and contact time work together to dial in any brew.
- Immersion vs. percolation — what each does to flavour
- Brew ratio, grind size, and contact time as your three main levers
- Why water quality matters — TDS, hardness, and minerality
- Choosing the right method for the coffee in front of you
Tasting Like a Pro — Cupping and Sensory Basics
Specialty coffee is built on a shared language for talking about taste. The cupping protocol — used by buyers, roasters, and quality teams worldwide — is how that language is taught. In this module you'll experience your first cupping: smelling dry and wet grounds, breaking the crust, slurping, and learning to describe acidity, sweetness, body, balance, and finish with the kind of clarity professionals use every day.
- The SCA cupping protocol — setup, ratio, timing, and etiquette
- Identifying acidity, sweetness, bitterness, body, and aftertaste
- Building flavour vocabulary using the SCA Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel
- Introduction to the SCA Coffee Value Assessment framework
Who Is This Course For?
The Introduction to Coffee course is designed to be approachable for absolute beginners while still being genuinely useful for people already working in cafés. It's a great fit if you are:
- A complete beginner — you love coffee and want to finally understand what's actually in your cup
- A new café team member — you want a fast, structured overview before going deeper into Barista or Brewing
- A café or roastery owner — you want to formalise your team's foundational knowledge with a recognised certificate
- A serious home enthusiast — you've outgrown YouTube tutorials and want a structured, industry-recognised foundation
- A career-changer — you're exploring whether the coffee industry could be your next chapter
What Comes After?
Introduction to Coffee is the gateway. From here you can specialise into any of the six SCA Coffee Skills Program tracks, each offered at Foundation, Intermediate, and Professional levels:
Brewing — filter coffee, recipes, water
Sensory Skills — palate training and cupping
Roasting — green coffee through to roast profiling
Green Coffee — sourcing, grading, supply chain
Sustainability — environmental and social impact
Each completed course earns SCA credits toward the SCA Coffee Skills Diploma — an internationally recognised credential in the specialty coffee industry. Introduction to Coffee alone is worth 10 credits and counts toward that total.
Start Your Coffee Journey at Tasse
At Tasse Coffee Roastery in Shinjuku, every Introduction to Coffee course is run as a private session (1:1 or 1:2) by an SCA Authorised SCA Trainer, in your choice of English, Japanese, Mandarin, or Cantonese. You'll spend the day in a working specialty roastery and café — surrounded by green coffee, professional equipment, and freshly roasted beans from origins around the world.
Four hours from now, you'll understand coffee in a way most café customers never will. Ready to begin?
Tasse Coffee Roastery · Shinjuku, Tokyo · SCA Premier Training Campus · Private sessions in English, Japanese, Mandarin, and Cantonese · Contact us at hello@tasse-coffee.jp to schedule your session.
