SCA Roasting Foundation: What You'll Learn in Every Module

Every cup of specialty coffee starts with a decision made in the roaster. The Roasting Foundation course is where that decision becomes a skill — and where the curtain finally lifts on what happens between green bean and finished roast.

The SCA Roasting Foundation course is your structured entry point into the craft of coffee roasting. It builds a clear, working understanding of the roasting process — how heat moves through coffee, what changes inside each bean, and how to steer those changes toward a roast you can taste and trust. By the end, you will know how to think like a roaster, not just operate a machine.

At Tasse Coffee Roastery in Shinjuku, the course is taught privately, 1:1 or 1:2, with hands-on time on a working production roaster. Whether you are a home roaster making the leap to commercial drums, a café owner wanting to roast your own beans, or simply curious about what happens inside that polished black machine, this course gives you the vocabulary and the muscle memory to roast with intention.

Module 1 — Heat Transfer

Understanding the Coffee Roasting Process

Roasting is, at its core, a heat transfer problem. Before you can manage a roast curve, you need to understand the three physical mechanisms moving energy into your beans — conduction from the hot drum, convection from the airflow, and radiation from glowing surfaces. This module reframes the roaster as a heat exchanger and gives you the mental model you will use for every decision behind the dial.

What you'll learn

• The three modes of heat transfer at play in every roast — conduction, convection, radiation
• How drum speed and airflow change the balance between them
• Why bean temperature and air temperature tell very different stories
• Reading roaster behavior through the lens of thermodynamics, not just gut feel

Hands-on highlight You'll watch a live charge and identify, in real time, which form of heat transfer is doing the heavy lifting in each phase of the roast.

Module 2 — Equipment

Anatomy of a Coffee Roaster

Every part of a drum roaster has a job, and every job affects the cup. This module walks you around a working production roaster — hopper, charging chute, drum, burner, airflow path, sample trier, cooling tray, chaff collector, cyclone — until each component stops being a mystery. Once you understand the machine, the controls finally start to make sense.

What you'll learn

• The major components of a commercial drum roaster and what each one does
• The airflow path from intake to chaff collector and why it matters
• How burner output, drum speed, and damper position interact
• Where critical readings come from: bean probe versus environment probe

Hands-on highlight A guided walk-through of Tasse's roaster, with the safety covers off, so you can see exactly how air, fuel, and beans move through the system.

Module 3 — The Roast Cycle

From Charge to Drop: The Stages of a Roast

A roast is not a single event — it is a sequence of distinct phases, each with its own chemistry, color, and sound. This module gives names and boundaries to those phases so you can navigate them deliberately. You'll learn to spot the turning point, the yellowing phase, the Maillard window, first crack, and the development time that follows.

What you'll learn

• The full roast cycle from charge through drop, phase by phase
• Visual cues — color shifts from green to yellow to tan to brown
• Sound cues — what first crack sounds like and how to time it
• The role of development time after first crack in shaping flavor

Hands-on highlight Pulling the trier at set intervals during a live roast and learning to call out each phase by sight, sound, and smell.

Module 4 — Drying Phase

The Drying Phase and Moisture Management

The first stretch of any roast is dominated by one thing — evaporating water. Green coffee carries roughly 8–12% moisture, and how you remove it sets the foundation for everything that follows. This module focuses on managing the drying phase so the rest of the roast develops cleanly, not chaotically.

What you'll learn

• Typical moisture content in green coffee and why it varies by origin and process
• What a well-managed drying phase looks and smells like
• The link between drying-phase energy and baked, underdeveloped, or scorched defects
• Adjusting charge temperature and gas to keep the drying phase in range

Hands-on highlight Comparing back-to-back roasts where only the drying-phase energy is changed — and tasting the difference in the cup.

Module 5 — Roast Levels

Reading the Roast: Light, Medium, and Dark

Roast level is the most visible decision a roaster makes, and the most often misunderstood. Light, medium, and dark are not just colors — they are points along a continuum of physical and chemical change, each unlocking and burying different parts of the coffee's potential. This module teaches you to read roast level deliberately and choose it on purpose.

What you'll learn

• How to evaluate roast level by sight, by Agtron-style color scoring, and by cupping
• The trade-offs between acidity, sweetness, body, and bitterness at each level
• Why second crack is a checkpoint, not a destination
• Matching roast level to bean origin, processing method, and brew method

Hands-on highlight A side-by-side cupping of the same green coffee taken to light, medium, and dark — and a structured conversation about what was gained and lost at each level.

Module 6 — Defects

Identifying Roasting Defects

A great roaster is not just someone who makes great roasts — it is someone who can quickly diagnose what went wrong with a not-so-great one. This module trains your eyes and palate on the most common roasting defects so you can catch them visually before they reach the cup, and confirm them sensorially when they do.

What you'll learn

• Visual defects — scorching, tipping, facing, quakers, uneven roasting
• Sensory defects — baked, underdeveloped, smoky, ashy, and grassy notes
• Tracing each defect back to its likely cause in the roast curve
• Quick fixes versus structural changes to your roasting approach

Hands-on highlight Examining a curated set of intentionally-flawed roasts and learning the visual and sensory fingerprint of each defect type.

Module 7 — Safety & Maintenance

Roastery Workspace, Maintenance, and Fire Prevention

Coffee roasters move serious heat and produce flammable chaff. A safe, well-maintained workspace is not optional — it is the difference between a long career and an insurance claim. This module covers the daily, weekly, and monthly hygiene that keeps your roaster running cleanly and the protocols that keep your space safe.

What you'll learn

• Routine cleaning of the chaff collector, drum, cooling tray, and ducting
• Common fire risks in a roastery and how to eliminate them
• Emergency response — what to do if you smell smoke or see flames
• Workspace organization for production-cycle efficiency and safety

Hands-on highlight A guided maintenance checklist you can take home and apply to any roaster, plus a walk-through of fire safety setup including extinguisher placement and shutdown protocols.

Who Is This Course For?

Roasting Foundation is designed for the curious and the committed — anyone who wants to understand what they are doing when they roast coffee. It is the right starting point if you are:

• A home roaster looking to graduate from sample roasters and air poppers to commercial drum machines.
• A café owner or barista considering bringing roasting in-house or simply wanting to talk shop with suppliers more fluently.
• A coffee professional who has been operating a roaster intuitively and wants the formal vocabulary, theory, and certification to back up the practice.
• A complete beginner with a serious interest in roasting — there is no prerequisite, and curiosity is the only requirement.

What Comes After Foundation?

Roasting Foundation is one of three levels in the SCA Roasting module. Each level builds on the one before it, taking you from understanding the process to controlling profiles to leading a roasting operation.

Private 1:1 or 1:2 instruction at Tasse Coffee Roastery in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Available in English, Japanese, Mandarin, and Cantonese. Successful completion awards an official SCA Coffee Skills Program Foundation certificate. Please contact us to confirm a schedule that fits you.