Most coffee discovery happens by guessing — you scan a menu of tasting notes written by roasters, for roasters, and hope. The Cascara palate quiz turns that into an exercise that takes less than a minute. Eleven questions, your Cellar Identity at the end, and from then on every bean in the cellar is sorted by fit instead of hype.
Take the quiz now.
Free, no signup to start. Eleven questions, less than a minute.
Start the quizWhat the quiz does
Specialty coffee has roughly four directions a cup can lean. Bright and floral. Balanced and chocolatey. Juicy and fruit-forward. Funky and fermented. The Cascara palate quiz asks eleven questions about taste preferences you already have — in wine, chocolate, fruit, savory food, beer, tea — and translates your answers into four affinity scores against those four corners.
The output is your Cellar Identity. One of four kites: Clean, Classic, Fluid, or Experimental. It's a starting point, not a verdict — every brew you log after the quiz updates the model. By brew ten the recommendations are sharper than the quiz alone could produce.
The point isn't to label you. The point is to give you a shortcut. When you walk into a cafe and see a menu of beans, your kite cuts the search problem from “sixteen choices, no idea which” to “these three are most likely to be the cup I want.”
The four corners of the Process Spectrum
- CleanBright, floral, tea-like. Washed Kenya, washed Ethiopia, high-altitude Latin Americans.
- ClassicBalanced, chocolatey, familiar. Natural Brazil, washed Colombia, blend espressos.
- FluidJuicy, fruit-forward, sweet. Honey Costa Rica, semi-washed Indonesia, naturals from Yirgacheffe.
- ExperimentalFunky, fermented, unconventional. Co-fermented Colombia, anaerobic Rwanda, thermal-shock lots.
Why eleven questions?
Eleven is the smallest number that gives a stable signal across all four spectrum corners. Fewer than eight and the model over-weights any single answer. More than fifteen and the marginal sharpness drops below the marginal cost of attention — people abandon the quiz before finishing.
The questions are deliberately not about coffee. Asking “do you like fruity coffee?” is useless if you haven't been drinking specialty long enough to know what fruity even means in a cup. So we ask about wine. About chocolate. About the snacks you reach for. The taste signals are the same; the context is one you already have.
We do ask a few coffee-specific questions toward the end, but they're scaffolded by the earlier ones — by Q9 we already have a directional read on your palate, so a question about brewed-coffee strength or natural-vs-washed preference becomes a calibration check, not a cold-start.
Sample beans by identity
One bean per identity, drawn from the current cellar. Once you have your kite, every bean is filterable by fit.
What you do with the result
In a cafe. Pull up your kite, look at the menu, pick the bean closest to your dominant corner. You'll be right more often than not — and when you're wrong, the wrong cup teaches the model something.
Exploring roasters. Browse the Cascara directory to explore roasters across the Philippines and beyond. Their beans are tagged by the spectrum corners they lean toward. Directory listings are discovery records, not current Draft stock.
In your kitchen. Log every brew you make. Bean, method, what you tasted, whether you'd order it again. The model updates after each entry. Most people see a noticeable sharpening of their recommendations by brew 5–10.
Choosing coffee from the Draft. Use your kite as a starting point, then choose your own lots and portions from the current Draft board. Portions start from 20g where offered. You can buy one-off without taking the quiz or subscribing. If you prefer monthly points to spend on the board, see the Draft subscription guide.
Less than a minute. Eleven questions. Free.
No commitment, no signup to start. Your kite is yours from the moment you finish.
Start calibrating →Common questions
How long does the coffee palate quiz take?
Less than a minute, eleven questions. You get your Cellar Identity at the end — a snapshot of which corner of the Process Spectrum your palate leans toward (Clean, Classic, Fluid, or Experimental).
Is the palate quiz free?
Yes. The full eleven-question calibration is free, and your Cellar Identity is yours to keep. Buying coffee through the Draft is optional and separate from the quiz. You choose your own lots and portions; a subscription gives you monthly points to spend on the board, rather than a bag chosen for you.
Can I buy coffee without taking the quiz or subscribing?
Yes. You can browse the current Draft board and buy one-off without taking the quiz or subscribing. Portions start from 20g where offered; available lots and sizes are shown on the board. The roaster directory is for discovery and does not show current Draft stock.
Do I need to know coffee tasting notes to take the quiz?
No. Most questions are framed as preferences you already have — sweet vs. savory snacks, dry vs. fruity wine, dark chocolate vs. milk chocolate. The model translates everyday taste cues into coffee-specific palate axes. You don't need to know what a 'washed Kenya' tastes like to answer.
How accurate is the coffee palate quiz?
Eleven questions gives a directional read, not a verdict. Cascara's calibration is the starting point — every brew you log after that sharpens the model. By brew 5–10, the recommendations are noticeably more aligned than what the quiz produced on its own.
What if my taste in coffee changes?
Palates drift over time, especially as you drink more specialty. You can recalibrate any time from your settings — same eleven questions, fresh result. We also re-weight your model continuously based on what you've been rating recently, so it adapts even if you don't manually recalibrate.