The Foundation level taught you to roast. Intermediate taught you to execute profiles. Professional teaches you to design them — molecule by molecule, decision by decision.
The SCA Roasting Professional course is the highest tier of the Specialty Coffee Association's Roasting Skills program — and it's the one that turns a confident roaster into a master roaster. It builds on Roasting Intermediate to deliver the deep chemistry, physics, and sensory science behind every roast decision, plus the business and quality-control skills to run a production roastery profitably and consistently.
At Tasse Coffee Roastery in Shinjuku, Tokyo, this is a private 1:1 or 1:2 course delivered over two intensive days. You'll work directly with our master roaster on commercial drum equipment and roast-logging software, cup through the full taxonomy of roast defects, build a house blend from scratch, and pitch a complete production plan to close. Available in English, Japanese, Mandarin, and Cantonese — the global passport for serious coffee professionals.
Course at a Glance
MODULE 01
Green Coffee Chemistry & Physical Attributes
Before you can master the roast, you have to master the bean. The Professional course opens by going far deeper into green coffee than you ever did at Intermediate level — measuring density, moisture, and water activity, dissecting how Washed, Natural, Honey, and anaerobic processing each leave a different chemical fingerprint, and understanding how genetics, altitude, and varietal shape what's possible in the cup. This is the foundation every advanced roast decision rests on.
What you'll learn
- Read green coffee like a forensic analyst — density, moisture, water activity, screen size and bean defects
- Map how processing method (Washed, Natural, Honey, anaerobic) alters sugar, acid, and lipid chemistry
- Identify common varietals (Bourbon, Typica, SL28, Gesha, Castillo) and what each demands from the roaster
- Recognise origin-driven physical traits — soft Brazil, dense East African, hard high-grown Central American
- Apply green coffee health & food-safety considerations (mycotoxins, moisture-related defects)
Hands-on highlight
Triangulate three lots of the same varietal processed three different ways — measure, taste their greens as cuppings later, and predict in writing how each will respond to heat before you ever load the drum.
MODULE 02
The Physics of Coffee Roasting
At Professional level, roasting stops being a recipe and becomes a system. You'll quantify how convection, conduction, and radiation interact inside the drum; how bean mass, airflow, and drum speed change the rate of heat transfer; and how physical changes — moisture loss, expansion, weight loss, cellular fracture — unfold across the curve. Once you can see the physics, you can shape it.
What you'll learn
- Decompose heat transfer into convection, conduction, and radiation and adjust each independently
- Model rate of rise (RoR) and bean temperature against environmental temperature in real time
- Quantify physical changes — moisture loss, density drop, expansion, and total weight loss
- Understand the role of airflow management at each phase (drying, browning, development)
- Recognise the limits and behavior of different drum, hot-air, and hybrid roaster designs
Hands-on highlight
Run paired roasts with identical green but different airflow strategies — chart the RoR curves side by side, and prove with numbers how the physics translated directly into the cup.
MODULE 03
The Chemistry of Coffee Roasting
Maillard reactions. Strecker degradation. Caramelization. Pyrolysis. The Professional course pulls back the lid on the molecular drama happening inside every bean — which compounds form acids, which form sugars, which produce aroma volatiles, and which create the carbon dioxide that defines freshness. Understanding the chemistry is what separates a craftsperson from a technician.
What you'll learn
- Trace browning reactions — Maillard and caramelization — and link them to flavor outcomes
- Identify the molecules behind acidity, sweetness, bitterness, body, and aromatic intensity
- Understand gas (CO₂) formation, degassing, and its impact on freshness and brewing
- Map the chemistry of color development and how it correlates (and doesn't) with flavor
- Recognise the chemistry of common defects — baked, scorched, tipped, underdeveloped
Hands-on highlight
Compare three roasts that look identical on the colorimeter but cup completely differently — and explain, molecule by molecule, why.
MODULE 04
Color, Solubility & Profile Development
At Professional level you go beyond the curve — you learn to design it. This module covers advanced profile development on roast-logging software (Cropster, Artisan), color matching to specified targets using Agtron and ColorTrack within tight time windows, and the solubility behavior of dark roasts that determines how a coffee will perform across espresso, drip, and immersion brewing.
What you'll learn
- Design profiles around development time ratio (DTR), turning point, and crash/flick control
- Color-match to specific Agtron / ColorTrack targets within narrow time and color tolerances
- Understand the solubility behavior of light, medium, and dark roasts and why it matters for brewing
- Use roast-logging software (Cropster, Artisan, RoastLog) for profile design, tagging, and reproducibility
- Plan profiles intentionally for espresso, filter, omni-roast, and cold-brew end uses
Hands-on highlight
Receive a target development time and color tolerance — execute three back-to-back roasts that all land inside the window. This is the exam standard, and the production standard.
MODULE 05
Sensory Evaluation & Roast Defect Identification
The cup is the final arbiter. The Professional cupping protocol asks you to distinguish small from large differences in roast profile through taste alone — and to identify defects with the precision of a Q-grader. You'll cup baked, scorched, tipped, and underdeveloped roasts side by side until you can name each one blind and explain exactly what went wrong on the curve.
What you'll learn
- Apply the full SCA cupping protocol to evaluating roast outcomes (not green quality)
- Identify roast defects by taste — baked, scorched, tipped, scorched, underdeveloped, over-developed
- Distinguish small vs. large differences between roast profiles in triangle and ranking tests
- Match cupping results back to the curve — diagnose what to change, when, and why
- Build production QC cupping routines that catch drift before it reaches the customer
Hands-on highlight
Triangle tests against your own roasts — find the odd one out, then walk through the curve and identify the precise moment the profile diverged.
MODULE 06
Green Coffee Blending & Genetics
Great blends are designed, not stumbled into. This module covers the principles and practice of blending — pre-roast vs. post-roast, balancing varietals and origins, building house espressos that remain stable as crops change. You'll also work with the genetics of coffee, learning how varietal DNA shapes flavor potential and how that information feeds your sourcing and blending strategy.
What you'll learn
- Compare pre-roast and post-roast blending — when each is the right choice
- Build espresso and filter blends with intent — balancing acidity, body, sweetness, and aromatics
- Design blends that hold their identity across crop years and substitutions
- Apply genetics — Arabica varietal families, hybrids, disease-resistant cultivars and what each offers
- Cost, price, and document blends for production scale-up and customer-facing transparency
Hands-on highlight
Build a three-component house espresso blend from scratch — source, sample-roast, cup, refine, and deliver a documented recipe ready for production.
MODULE 07
Production, Business Model & Quality Control
The Professional course closes by lifting you out of the roastery and into the business. How do you design a roasting operation that meets a specific customer profile — wholesale, retail, subscription, specialty café? How do you choose equipment, plan capex, and price your coffee profitably? How do you build a QC system that protects the cup at scale? This is where master-roaster meets owner-operator.
What you'll learn
- Formulate a business model — choosing wholesale, retail, e-commerce, café, or hybrid strategies
- Plan production options, capacity, capex, and equipment selection for different scales
- Build a QC system: cupping routines, batch logging, sensory consistency, and defect rejection criteria
- Manage inventory, green stock rotation, and roast-to-order vs. roast-to-stock decisions
- Document profiles, recipes, and SOPs that survive staff changes and protect brand integrity
Hands-on highlight
Pitch a complete production plan for a fictional 50kg/week wholesale roastery — equipment, blends, QC protocol, pricing — and defend your decisions to the instructor.
Who Is This Course For?
The Professional course is the final, decision-making tier — and it's built for people who roast for a living, or are about to.
- Head roasters & production roasters who want the chemistry and physics behind what they're already doing intuitively
- Café owners and roastery founders planning the launch of their own production roastery
- Quality-control leads building SOPs, cupping routines, and defect rejection criteria for a growing operation
- Sourcing and green buyers who want to read green coffee as deeply as they read the cup
- Q-graders and sensory experts closing the loop between green analysis, roast profile, and final sensory outcome
- SCA Diploma candidates targeting the 25 points awarded by the Professional level
If your daily decisions affect production volume, customer satisfaction, or the P&L of a roasting business, this is the course that puts science behind your instincts.
The SCA Roasting Pathway
Where Does Professional Sit?
The SCA Roasting Skills program is structured across three levels — and Professional is the summit.
Foundation
Heat transfer basics, the roast cycle, drying phase, light/medium/dark.
Intermediate
Profile execution, defect identification via cupping, equipment maintenance.
Professional ← You are here
Green coffee chemistry, blending, business model, production-grade QC.
Pair Roasting Professional with Sensory Professional and Green Professional and you've completed the highest tier of the SCA Coffee Skills Program — earning you 75 of the 100 points required for the SCA Coffee Skills Diploma.
This article is part of Tasse Coffee Roastery's SCA Coffee Skills Program series. We are a licensed SCA Premier Training Campus based in Shinjuku, Tokyo, offering private 1:1 and 1:2 instruction in English, Japanese, Mandarin, and Cantonese. The SCA exam enrollment fee (≈ USD $50) is separate from the course tuition. For schedule confirmation or prerequisite questions, contact us at hello@tasse-coffee.jp.
