How to Read a Green Coffee Grading Report
A green coffee grading report packs two systems onto one page: India's size-and-process grade code, and the SCA's defect count and cup score. This guide decodes each line, works through a sample report, and explains why an AA lot can still cup below 80.
The top line of an Indian green coffee report usually reads something like "Arabica Plantation AA." Below it sit a moisture figure, a table of screen sizes, a tally of defects counted from a 350 g sample, and, on specialty lots, a cupping score. The report is issued for a single lot, by an exporter, a curing works, an importer or a cupping lab. Roasters buying estate lots see the full version. Home roasters buying green beans online usually see two or three of its lines.
It is easy to read the sheet as a single verdict on quality, but it holds two separate answers. The grade code describes how the beans were processed and how large and uniform they are. The defect tally and the cup score describe how the coffee is likely to taste. The two often agree. When they don't, it helps to know which line answers which question.
What's actually on a grading report
A green coffee grading report is a record of one lot's physical quality: moisture, bean size distribution and a count of defects in a 350 g sample, often followed by a cupping score. It shows a buyer how the coffee was processed and sorted, and whether it meets the threshold for specialty grade.
Header fields
The header identifies the lot: origin or estate, crop year, grade code, lot or ICO mark, and bag count. Indian export lots typically ship in 60 kg jute bags, often with a hermetic liner.
Moisture and water activity
Moisture is water as a percentage of green bean weight, read from a meter or by the oven-drying reference method (ISO 6673). The SCA's earlier specialty classification called for 9–13%, and buyers commonly specify 10–12%. Indian trade specifications for Plantation AA usually state 10–12.5%, and the Indian Standard for green coffee allows a tolerance of +0.5% on its moisture limits. Wet coffee risks mould and fades early; overdried coffee ages quickly and roasts unevenly.
Water activity (aw) is a separate measure of how freely that water can move, on a scale from 0 to 1. The SCA's reference for specialty grade is below 0.70 aw. It predicts shelf stability better than moisture alone, so many importers print both.
Density
Most reports give bulk density: the weight in grams of green coffee that fills a leveled 250 ml or one-litre measure. This is not true density, which needs a displacement method. Higher figures tend to point to slower maturation at altitude. Roasters use density to plan how much heat to apply. It is not a grade on its own.
Screen size
Screen size is the percentage of the sample, by weight, retained on each sieve. Screen numbers are in 64ths of an inch, so screen 18 is about 7.1 mm. The SCA's current physical form records screens 10 through 23.
Colour and odour
The CVA physical form offers eight colour boxes, from blue-green to brownish. Faded, yellowing or brownish green usually signals age or poor storage. Any musty, fermented or chemical odour gets noted here.
Defects and cup score
These two lines carry the quality verdict. Both are covered below.
Not every report has every line. A retail green-bean listing in India may show only the grade code and moisture. A specialty importer's sheet carries the full set. A missing line tells you something as well: the seller either did not measure it or chose not to show it.
India's own grading vocabulary: what the codes mean
An Indian grade code is built from three parts: species, a process word and a size suffix. "Robusta Cherry AB" reads as natural-process Robusta with mid-sized beans.
Plantation, Parchment, Cherry
These are process labels. Two of them mean something different on a grade sheet than they do elsewhere in coffee.
- Plantation is washed Arabica.
- Parchment is washed Robusta. The beans are hulled before sale like any other green coffee. The word does not mean the parchment layer is still on.
- Cherry is coffee dried inside the whole fruit (natural process), for either species. On a grade sheet it names the process, not the fruit.
Washed and natural processing produce different cups, and the article on how processing methods shape flavor in Indian coffee covers what each one does to the bean. On the report, the process word is the first clue to what the cup line will say.
AA, A, AB, B, C and PB
The suffix is a size grade. Typical trade specifications line up roughly as follows. The Monsooned Malabar figures come from the Indian Standard; the others are common exporter specifications.
Indian size grades and their approximate screens
| Grade suffix | Typical screen | Approx. size |
|---|---|---|
| AAA / MNEB | 19 and above | 7.5 mm |
| AA | 18 | 7.1–7.2 mm (Monsooned Malabar AA: 7.10 mm) |
| A | 17 | 6.65–6.7 mm (Monsooned Malabar A: 6.70 mm) |
| AB | 15–17 | 6.0–6.65 mm |
| B | 15 | 6.0 mm |
| PB | sorted by shape | — |
Most AA specifications read "90% retained on screen 18." That is a share of the lot, not a promise about every bean. Size grading grew out of the export trade, where uniform beans roast evenly in large batches. It rewards consistency, and flavour is left to the cupping table. PB is peaberry: a cherry that grew one rounded seed instead of two flat ones. It is a bean shape sorted into its own grade, not a variety. Below the main grades sit the out-grades, blacks, browns and bits (BBB) and ungraded bulk, which are usually sold into the commodity market. Garbling is the hand-sorting that removes defective beans before grading.
Named export grades
A few grades carry their own trade names. Mysore Nuggets Extra Bold (MNEB) is washed Arabica at screen 19 and above with no peaberries, bits or blacks; the "Mysore" in the name predates the formation of Karnataka. Kaapi Royale is washed Robusta at screen 17 and above, a tier the Coffee Board introduced in 1993. Monsooned Malabar AA is monsooned Arabica held to its own size specification.
A grade code describes size, uniformity and process. It says nothing about cup score. An AA lot can cup below 80. A B-grade lot can taste clean.
The SCA defect system, in plain terms
The Indian code sorts the beans. The SCA system counts what is wrong with them, and the cupping panel scores the result.
Primary and secondary defects in a 350 g sample
A grader spreads 350 g of green coffee on a black mat and picks out every defective bean. Each defect type has an equivalence ratio that converts a count of beans into "full defects." Results are rounded down, and a bean with more than one defect is counted only once, as its worst defect.
Category 1 (primary) defects: full black, full sour, dried cherry or pod, fungus damage and foreign matter count 1:1. Severe insect damage counts 5:1.
Category 2 (secondary) defects: partial black and partial sour count 3:1. Parchment, floater, immature, withered, shell, broken/chipped/cut and hull/husk count 5:1. Slight insect damage counts 10:1.
So seven broken beans make one full defect (7 ÷ 5, rounded down), and one full black bean is one full defect on its own. The ratios are a judgment about the cup. One black or sour bean can taint a brew; a handful of broken beans mostly affects how evenly the lot roasts.
What "zero primary defects" buys you
Specialty grade requires zero Category 1 defects and no more than five full Category 2 defects in the 350 g sample, plus no quakers (unripe beans that stay pale after roasting) in a 100 g roasted sample. Premium grade allows up to eight full defects, and Category 1 defects are permitted. The current SCA CVA physical form records the counts but does not print a grade. The reader applies the threshold.
How the score and the defect count relate
Green grading is the first gate and cupping is the second. The Coffee Board's Flavour of India Fine Cup competition runs the same sequence: samples are coded, checked for physical and visual quality, and only those that pass go to the cupping panel.
On the 2004 SCA form, 80–84.99 is Very Good, 85–89.99 is Excellent and 90 and above is Outstanding. The SCA's Coffee Value Assessment, adopted in November 2024, separates descriptive and affective assessment, but 80 remains the working line in trade. Robusta lots are scored under the CQI's R-Grading protocol, where Fine Robusta sits at 80–90. What specialty means in India covers both scales in more depth.
A worked example: reading a sample report line by line
This is a composite report built by ICB from the SCA protocol and typical Indian trade specifications. It does not represent any estate or exporter.
Grade: Arabica Plantation AA
washed Arabica, large beans. This line covers process and size only.
Moisture 11.2%, water activity 0.58
inside the usual 10–12% buyer range and under 0.70 aw. The lot should store well.
Bulk density 690 g/L
a dense lot, consistent with slow maturation at altitude. A roaster would plan for a lot that takes heat steadily.
Screen: 91% on 18 and above, 7% on 17, 2% below
meets the "90% on screen 18" convention for AA.
Colour: bluish-green; odour: clean
no sign of age or storage damage.
Defects per 350 g: Category 1 = 0. Category 2: 6 broken (= 1), 3 partial sour (= 1), 11 immature (= 2), total 4 full defects
each count divided by its ratio and rounded down.
Green verdict: passes the specialty gate
zero primary defects and four secondary, under the limit of five.
Cup: 83.5; chocolate, orange, cane sugar
Very Good band on the 2004 scale.
Now take a second lot with the same grade code. It shows one full black bean and seven full Category 2 defects. The header still reads "Arabica Plantation AA," but the lot fails the specialty gate before it reaches the cupping table. Nothing in the top half of the two sheets separates them. The grade code is a sorting decision made at the curing works. The defect count is a quality decision made at the grading table.
Different readers look at different lines. Moisture and water activity matter for storage. Density and screen distribution matter for roast planning. The defect tally and the cup line matter for quality. The descriptors at the bottom follow the same conventions as a retail bag, which how to read coffee flavor notes explains.
Why this matters for an Indian specialty buyer
The export trade largely sorts and prices by grade code. Domestic specialty roasters tend to buy by cup. Subko, for example, sources against a self-declared SCA 85-plus threshold, which is a stricter test than the MNEB specification requires. The difference between export and domestic specialty buying follows from this split.
Very little of the report reaches the retail bag. Of 1,603 coffees in ICB's catalog across 116 roasters (October 2026), 69 coffees from 28 roasters name a trade grade in the product name: AA appears on 31, AAA on 20, peaberry on 16, MNEB on 11 and Kaapi Royale on 5. An earlier ICB search of listing descriptions found about 26 listings that mention a cup score. Both counts are approximate. The grade term on a bag is a trace of the green report, not the report itself. With grade terms on roughly 4% of listings and cup scores on fewer, the green report in India mostly stays between exporter and roaster. The buyer sees its conclusions (process, origin, flavour notes), not its measurements.
When a roaster names a grade (AA, PB, MNEB), read it as size and process. When a roaster names a score, the useful follow-up questions are which form it was scored on (SCA 2004, CVA or R-Grading) and who cupped it.
References
- Specialty Coffee Association — Protocols & Best Practices
- Specialty Coffee Association — CVA Forms, English (May 2025)
- Specialty Coffee Association — Coffee Standards
- Indian Standard for green coffee (IS 4074), FSSAI-hosted text
- Coffee Board of India — Flavour of India Fine Cup Award: Rules and Regulations