A great cup of coffee isn’t a happy accident — it’s a recipe of seven simple variables, repeated with care. The SCA Brewing Foundation is where you learn that recipe by hand.
Filter coffee looks effortless when a barista pours it in front of you, but every great cup is the result of disciplined choices: the beans, the water, the grind, the ratio, the temperature, the time. The SCA Brewing Foundation course — part of the Specialty Coffee Association Coffee Skills Program — takes a beginner from “I like coffee” to “I can brew this exact cup again tomorrow.”
At Tasse Coffee Roastery in Shinjuku, we teach this course as a private 1:1 or 1:2 session in English, Japanese, Mandarin, or Cantonese. There are no prerequisites, and by the end of a single day you’ll have brewed across multiple devices, tasted what each variable actually changes, and sat the SCA-certified theory and practical exams. This guide walks through every module so you know exactly what you’re booking.
Course at a glance
| Level | Foundation – SCA Coffee Skills Program (CSP) |
| Format | Private 1:1 or 1:2, hands-on at the brew bar |
| Duration | 1 day (weekdays or weekends) |
| Location | Tasse Coffee Roastery, Shinjuku, Tokyo |
| Languages | English / Japanese / Mandarin / Cantonese |
| Prerequisites | None – designed for absolute beginners |
| Price | ¥75,000 (SCA enrollment fee ≈ USD 50 charged separately) |
| Certification | SCA Brewing Foundation certificate on passing written + practical exam |
Module 1 · Origins, Roast & Freshness
From bean to cup: what’s already in your coffee before you brew
Brewing doesn’t start with the kettle — it starts months earlier on the farm. In this module you’ll see why a washed Ethiopian and a natural Brazilian behave so differently in your cup, how Arabica and Robusta differ chemically, and why the date a bag was roasted matters as much as the country of origin. Once you understand what’s locked inside the bean, every brewing decision after this starts to make sense.
What you’ll learn:
- Arabica vs. Robusta: caffeine, body, sweetness, acidity
- How washed, natural, and honey processing change the cup
- Why coffee is best between roughly 7 and 30 days off-roast
- How to read a bag of specialty coffee: roast date, varietal, process
- Storing beans at home so they’re still alive when you brew them
Hands-on highlight
Side-by-side cupping of beans from different origins and processing methods so you can taste — not just read about — the difference.
Module 2 · Brewing Methods & Equipment
Pour-over, immersion, batch — picking the right brewer for the cup
There’s no single “best” brewer — each device extracts coffee a little differently and rewards a different technique. We tour the manual and automatic gravity brewers used in specialty cafes around the world, explain the physics of percolation vs. immersion, and show you how the same coffee tastes across each method.
What you’ll learn:
- Percolation brewers: V60, Kalita Wave, Chemex
- Immersion brewers: French press, AeroPress, clever dripper
- How automatic batch brewers achieve consistency at scale
- Why filter material (paper, metal, cloth) changes body and clarity
- Choosing a brewer for the bean and the moment you’re drinking it
Hands-on highlight
You’ll brew the same coffee on at least three devices and compare cups so the differences stop being theoretical.
Module 3 · Grinders & Grind Size
Why the grinder is the most important piece of brewing equipment you own
A great grinder makes mediocre coffee taste alive; a bad grinder makes great coffee taste flat. In this module we look inside burr and blade grinders, explain why particle size distribution matters, and walk through how to dial in grind size for each brewer until the cup is balanced.
What you’ll learn:
- Burr vs. blade: why specialty coffee insists on burrs
- Flat vs. conical burrs and what each does to flavor
- How grind size controls extraction speed and surface area
- A practical method for dialing in: taste, adjust, taste again
- Reading a bad cup: is it the grind, the dose, or the pour?
Hands-on highlight
Grind the same dose at coarse, medium, and fine settings, brew all three, and taste exactly where bitter, balanced, and sour live on the spectrum.
Module 4 · The Seven Essentials of Brewing
The recipe behind every great cup of filter coffee
Every brewing recipe — yours, your favorite cafe’s, the World Brewers Cup champion’s — controls the same seven variables. Lock in this mental model and you can adapt to any coffee, any device, anywhere in the world.
What you’ll learn:
- Coffee-to-water ratio (and why specialty defaults to roughly 1:16–1:18)
- Brewing device and its design intent
- Grind setting matched to the device
- Total brewing time and contact time
- Water temperature (and the 90–96°C window)
- Brew turbulence: how stirring and pouring shape extraction
- Water quality: hardness, alkalinity, and what makes water “taste right”
Hands-on highlight
Build your first repeatable recipe on paper, then prove it works on the brew bar by reproducing the same cup twice in a row.
Module 5 · Water for Brewing
Coffee is 98% water — so the water has to be right
If your water is off, no recipe will save your coffee. We unpack the SCA water standard, explain TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) in plain language, and show you what too-soft and too-hard water actually do to extraction. You’ll leave knowing how to choose, treat, or build water that lets your coffee shine.
What you’ll learn:
- Why pure distilled water makes flat coffee, and tap water can make harsh coffee
- TDS, hardness, and alkalinity — what each one does in the cup
- Reading a water report and deciding whether to filter or remineralize
- How brew temperature interacts with water chemistry
- Practical water choices for cafes and home setups in Tokyo
Hands-on highlight
Brew the same recipe with two different waters side by side and taste how much the mineral profile alone is changing your cup.
Module 6 · Brewing & Extraction
Strength, extraction, and the language of a balanced cup
Brewed coffee lives on two axes: how strong it is, and how much you actually extracted from the grounds. In this module we introduce the SCA Brewing Control Chart, the relationship between under-, ideal, and over-extraction, and the vocabulary you’ll use for the rest of your brewing life.
What you’ll learn:
- Strength vs. extraction — why they’re not the same thing
- Under-extraction (sour, thin, salty) vs. over-extraction (bitter, hollow, dry)
- Reading the SCA Brewing Control Chart at a glance
- Tasting for balance, sweetness, and clarity
- Diagnosing a cup and adjusting one variable at a time
Hands-on highlight
Brew three deliberate cups — under-extracted, over-extracted, and balanced — and learn the flavor signature of each so you can never confuse them again.
Module 7 · Cupping & Equipment Care
Tasting like a professional and looking after your gear
Cupping is the universal language of specialty coffee — the way roasters, buyers, and baristas evaluate beans on the same playing field. You’ll learn the SCA cupping protocol from setup to slurp, then close out with the cleaning habits that keep your brewers tasting honest day after day.
What you’ll learn:
- Setting up a cupping table to SCA protocol
- Breaking the crust, skimming, and slurping technique
- Identifying basic flavor descriptors with confidence
- Daily and weekly cleaning routines for grinders and brewers
- How residue and stale oils silently kill cup quality
Hands-on highlight
Run a guided cupping with the trainer and walk away with a cleaning checklist you can use at home or in your cafe.
Who is this course for?
Brewing Foundation is built for absolute beginners, home enthusiasts ready to stop guessing, baristas who want a recognized SCA credential, cafe owners structuring staff training, and travelers who want to spend a focused day deep inside Tokyo’s specialty coffee scene. If you can taste the difference between coffee you love and coffee you don’t — you’re ready.
What comes after Foundation?
Brewing Foundation is the first of three progressive levels in the SCA Brewing module. Once it’s in your toolkit, you can keep climbing the same pathway:
The Brewing pathway
1. Foundation — the seven essentials, first cups, first certificate.
2. Intermediate — the chemistry of extraction, the Brewing Control Chart in depth, equipment management.
3. Professional — advanced techniques, by-pass brewing, water TDS for competition-level work.
Book the SCA Brewing Foundation Course
Private 1:1 or 1:2 sessions in Shinjuku, Tokyo · English / Japanese / Mandarin / Cantonese.
Tasse Coffee Roastery is an SCA-authorized training campus in Shinjuku, Tokyo. All courses are run privately, scheduled around your availability, and certified by the Specialty Coffee Association.
