Coffee Cupping 101

The first time I actually learned skills to appreciate food was while I was working at Sustainable Harvest. While working with Peruvian coffee-farmers and their cupping training, I was able to learn so much myself--not just the ins-and-outs of the process (which I probably will explain in greater detail later), but how to actually cup the coffee: how to taste it, smell it, find the fine flavors and details in the coffee.

Cupping coffee, when I say this, most people look at me with a blank look on their face. ”It’s like wine tasting, but with coffee,” Ohh, right, okay. The word cupping even comes up wrong in spell check and the verb “catar” (to cup in Spanish) is not my my translation dictionary, or even online. It is just not something that people know about. Or don’t care to know.

Let me break it down: the principle elements to find in a cup of coffee are (there are other qualities, but only are talked about if the coffee is cupped in a national contest of something, the following are the basic) Fragrance/Aroma, Acidity, Flavor, Body, and After taste. The fragrance is the smell of the dry, ground coffee, where the aroma is the brewed coffee. In each category, one can find different qualities. Getting past the obvious fragrances of chocolate or fruit, you can find floral, vanilla, honey, spices, or herbs. Usually the acidity is compared to a fruit, for example, a coffee can have an acidity of citric fruit, dry fruit, or pitted fruit. The flavors are often described as malt, chocolate, or of various fruits. Body in a coffee can be strong, weak, balanced, or creamy and buttery. The after-taste is, of course, what flavor remains and how your mouth feels after the sip is gone.

Step-by-step: First you look at the coffee, look at the color and see the level of roast, a darker coffee will automatically give flavors of carbon and smoke, where a lighter coffee will have the flavors of fruit and honeys, and a very light coffee is roasted to find the defects in the coffee. Next, smell the coffee grounds. Move it around a bit, let the fragrance get out a bit and stick your nose right in the cup. Once the water is added, wait four minutes to brew then you do what is called breaking the cup. This is when you stir up the coffee, you are only supposed to stir it once breaking through the top layer of grounds that will have formed. That is when you can best smell the aroma. After this, the grounds are removed from the top–this is way more difficult than it sounds because you try and get all the ground off the top in one motion using one or two spoons, that way the grounds aren’t moved around too much disturbing the coffee. Then, after letting the coffee cool (as not to burn your mouth) you taste it by taking spoonfuls and slurping it up. The slurping is necessary to maximize the amount of coffee entering your mouth and so that it fills your mouth allowing contact with all taste buds. But it does sound funny the first time you see it, or rather hear it. Once you have tasted the spoonful of coffee, you spit it out. Unlike wine, coffee tasting cannot get you drunk or anything, but if you are tasting a lot of coffee I guess you can get a caffeine buzz. I don’t usually spit it out though, maybe if it is bad coffee, I guess, but it seems wasteful to spit out good coffee–plus I like a good caffeine buzz!

I found that it is very hard to pin-point what I actually find in the coffee. Get past the fact that I am drinking a cup of coffee and find the flavors of “honey, raisins, chamomile, cinnamon, passion fruit, or peaches” in a cup of coffee is challenging. Not only identifying the flavors, but to describe them is an even greater challenge. I find myself saying, “Hm, it has a flavor that reminds me of…something… I just don’t remember what it is at the moment.” It’s amazing, someone who is a good cupper can taste a cup of coffee and know where the coffee came from, the region, altitude, and climate, they can identify the path of the bean, the problems along the way, if it was damaged in anyway, the processes it went though. It is amazing, when I taste coffee, well, I taste coffee! I am starting to be able to pick out the flavors, but I am no where near that level.

Cupping coffee helps me to pay more attention to details. To have that mind set when it comes to eating, helps you to appreciate the food and not only that but involve all the senses, and try to find more to something that you previously knew about it. A cup of coffee is a cup of coffee. But you can find something more to that cup of coffee if you look past what you thought you knew about it.