Coffee Cupping (for Non Professionals)

If you've been a self confessed coffee aficionado for so long, the term coffee cupping might sound familiar to you.

But do you know what coffee cupping really is?

Before we discuss the process of assessing coffee flavors, it’s important to understand why coffee flavors vary.

After the species, terroir, and climate, let's now discuss the coffee farming standards.

These coffee farming standards include fertilization, pruning, up until harvesting or picking.

Coffee trees require five (5) years maturity before producing good quality coffee beans.

And the higher quality coffee beans appear between seven to twenty years.

Also, when harvesting, the hand-picked cherries taste better than machine-picked.

Since cherries do not mature all at the same time, those who harvest using hand-picking harvests only the ripe cherries.

Unlike with machine-picked which harvests everything, including unripe coffee cherries.

Resulting in having the ripe ones mixed with the unripe.

Another factor that affects the flavor profile of coffee is the processing of coffee cherries.

Processing the coffee cherries means removing the coffee beans from the coffee cherries.

The three types of processing are dry, wet, and pulp processing.

The dry-processed has lower acidity compared to the pulp and wet processing.

The length of storage and the container used is also essential in the final taste profile of the coffee.

Those stored for a longer period of time loses its flavor over time.

And those freshly harvested coffee beans are more flavorful.

Also, the type of container used in storing coffee beans must protect it from unnecessary odor, air, and moisture.

Provided that we have the best quality green coffee beans, they still have to undergo roasting.

Before we can drink our favorite coffee, it has to be roasted first.

And the four roasting categories are the Light Roast, Medium Roast, Medium Dark Roast, and Dark Roast.

The roasting process greatly affects the final taste profile, caffeine content, and acidity of coffee.

Also, the flavor of a roasted coffee bean reaches its full flavor around 4 to 7 days after roasting.

These are the things affecting the smoothness, the body, acidity, and flavor of each coffee.

After knowing all these factors affecting the taste of coffee, let's now start answering what is coffee cupping.

Coffee cupping means assessing and recording the smell, taste, and flavors of roasted coffee beans.

It started around the 19th century when merchants decide on whether to buy the coffee or not.

And just a year before the 20th century, the Cup of Excellence competitions used cupping as the method to judge coffee qualities.

The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) made an organized way of recording the results of coffee cupping, by providing a cupping form.

This cupping form has 11 pointers to quantify and describe the quality of the coffee beans.

The pointers are Fragrance/Aroma, Flavor, Aftertaste, Acidity, Body, Balance, Uniformity, Clean Cup, Sweetness, Overall, and Defects.

We will discuss these items one by one below.

Aside from these factors, SCAA also set standards for coffee cupping brewing method, coffee cupping grind size, and the roasting method.

Setting standards for these things enables coffee cuppers to repeat the process of coffee cupping.

And it allows comparison of similar coffee beans by repeating the procedure.

After answering our primary question, what is coffee cupping, it's now time to learn how it's actually done.

After preparing all these, we will now proceed on how to cup coffee.

Before anything else, the taster will first examine the physical characteristics of the coffee beans and take note of it.

After that, the taster will smell the fragrance of the whole roasted beans.

Then, the taster will sniff it again after grinding.

The smell of the dry coffee beans and coffee grounds is what we call the dry fragrance. This dry fragrance varies from fruity to herbal to flowery to nut-like.

15 minutes after grinding, add the hot water (approximately 200 degrees Fahrenheit) to the coffee grounds.

The coffee grounds will then form a "crust" on top of the cupping glass.

Let the crust stay for about 3 minutes before gently stirring it three times.

Make sure all the coffee grounds are wet.

Since we prepared 5 samples for each type of coffee, you only to break a crust of one coffee at a time.

Upon stirring it, you will smell the vapors coming out from the coffee.

This is now the wet fragrance.

The wet fragrance varies from chocolatey to hint to caramel.

The combined rating of the dry and wet fragrance makes up the "Fragrance/Aroma" score.

Detecting the flavor of coffee involves both the sense of smell and taste.

Before tasting the coffee, the taster must first remove the crust on top of the cupping glasses.

And since we used 200 degrees Fahrenheit temperature for water, it has to cool down first to 160 degrees Fahrenheit before tasting it.

Once you removed the crust, and the coffee cooled down to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, it's time to taste the coffee.

Tasters have to slurp the coffee to incorporate air and to splash the coffee all over the tongue area.

By the way, you might ask if slurping coffee is rude. But, actually, there's no such thing as slurping coffee etiquette.

SCAA came up with a Coffee Flavour Wheel Print to standardize the flavors we can find in our coffee.

Here's a short video on how they come up with a Coffee Flavour Wheel/ Coffee Taste Chart:

Aftertaste is the positive lasting taste at the back of the palate, while the flavor is the first impression of our taste buds.

Whether you swallow or spit out the coffee, a good quality coffee should have a lingering aftertaste.

If the aftertaste doesn't last, the score on this factor is low.

Acidity is coffee's liveliness, brightness, sweetness, and sparkling sensation when it is the right balance of acidity.

While the unfavorable acidity can be described as sour, sharp, or bitter.

Acidity is one of the factors noticed by tasters when they slurped the coffee.

The Sumatran and Mexican Dark Roasts have low acidity, while a Kenya coffee has high acidity.

The rating of coffee acidity varies not because of its acid content (high or low), it actually depends on how pleasant the acid tastes.

Body refers to the tactile feeling of density, consistency, weight, and texture of the coffee to your mouth.

You determine the body of a coffee by concentrating on its mouthfeel, lightness or heaviness.

Is the mouthfeel grainy, oily or watery?

The top 3 best full-bodied coffees are Kenya AA, Sumatra Mandheling, and Guatemala Antigua.

The balance of the first four factors is important to get a high rating on "Balance".

There should be no overpowering Flavor, Aftertaste, Body, or Acidity.

These four factors should create a harmonious and pleasant balance of taste.

Sweetness refers to the intensity of the coffee sugars without the harsh or unpleasant taste.

The sweetness in coffee is a product of amino acids, sugars, and alcohols. Usually, the lighter roasts have a sweeter taste than the darker roasts.

Some of the coffees known for its sweet/ chocolate notes are Guatemalan Antigua, Costa Rica Tarrazu, and Burundi Kayanza.

Since we use 5 samples for each coffee, the consistency of the taste and flavor is the basis for the score of Uniformity.

The taste from the first up to the fifth sample should be the same, to get the highest score.

While the clean cup refers to the absence of unpleasant taste, like burnt or other non-coffee flavors.

The Overall rating of the coffee depends on how well it ranked on the first mentioned categories.

When the taster combined everything, from its flavor to its uniformity, plus the personal preference, that's how the overall rating appears.

The answer is yes.

There are two types of "defects" that lessen the score of a coffee during cupping.

First is "taint", this is the noticeable unpleasant aroma when drinking a coffee. However, this unpleasant aroma doesn't overpower the whole coffee experience.

And the second one is the fault.

Unlike taint, fault greatly affects the overall flavor profile of coffee, making it an unpleasant coffee.

Taint has a 2 point deduction, and the fault has 4, depending on the intensity of the defects.

Now that we defined all the terms relevant to coffee cupping, I'll show a sample of coffee and their coffee cupping notes.

Sumatra Mandheling

Ethiopian Yirgacheffe

Colombian Supremo

Costa Rica Tarrazu Amapola

The whole article is about answering the question what is coffee cupping.

Coffee Cupping is a method to assess, record, and compare the flavor, aftertaste, body, acidity, balance, uniformity, sweetness, cleanliness of the cup, defects, and overall taste profile of the coffees.

During cupping, the tasters use the sense of sight, smell, and taste to evaluate the results properly.

The Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) set a certain standard on how to conduct coffee cupping.

They have set rules on the roasting time, grinding, grind size, water temperature, and preparation.

They also came up with the helpful tool called the coffee flavor wheel, for ease in identifying the flavors of coffee.

The main flavors of this coffee flavor wheel are roasted, spices, nutty/choco, sweet, floral, fruity, sour/fermented, green/vegetative, and others (chemical/papery).

We hope this article provided you with fruitful answers to the question what is coffee cupping.