A Complete Guide To Cupping Coffee
Coffee Cupping. What on earth is that you may ask. Or maybe you've seen some coffee folk loudly slurping a whole table of different coffees one after the other and wondered what all the fuss is about?
Either way it's super interesting and you can give it a go yourself at home!
What Is Coffee Cupping?
Coffee Cupping is a fun way to progress your palette and learn more about coffee processes and determine select flavours from coffee.
Multiple coffees are brewed and tasted side by side, going back and forth between coffees and taking notes on each one.
It's used in the coffee industry by many to taste the coffees, look for flavour notes to describe the coffee, quality control in roasting, and to look out for any defects. It's a great training exercise you can do at home if you want to learn more about talking about your coffees and learning about the processes like washed, natural etc.
I Want To Try Coffee Cupping! Where Do I Start?
There's a few basic things you'll need to do a Coffee Cupping at home. You can take it as seriously as you wish or just have a bit of fun, it's up to you!
You can cup as many as you like, but I would suggest at least 3 coffees to cup so you get an interesting comparison between coffees. Blind tastings are super fun to do to if you have a second person to help you grind each coffee and know which one is which.
What you will need:
A Coffee Grinder
A kettle
Cupping bowls or some vessels to brew the coffee in
Two Cupping spoons or similar (soup spoons work well too!)
Scales
A timer or phone timer
Glass for discarding grounds
Glass filled with clean water
A pen and paper
Coffee!
In terms of bowls or vessels to brew your coffee in, the same or similar size would be best, however if you have a mix of coffee cup sizes you can just weigh each pour to ensure you get the same amount of water in each cup. You can also purchase these very cheap SCA certified cupping bowls which are linked at the end of this page along with some great budget friendly cupping spoons. These are the ones I use.
If you've gathered all these things together, great! It's almost time to get started.
Get everything setup, bowls laid out, spoons set. You will want one empty glass to discard coffee grounds and a glass of clean water to clean spoons in.
Weigh your beans
For each coffee, you will want to weigh out your beans. The recommended ratio is 8.25g of coffee to 150ml of water. Between grinding different coffees you'll want to purge the grinder with a few beans from the next coffee you will grind. This clears any excess of the previous coffee that the grinder might retain,
so it doesn't affect the taste of each coffee.
In terms of grind I use a medium/coarse grind. You'll want it a bit coarser than what you would use for your pourover brews. I use number 17 on my Baratza Virtuoso+.
Once you have each coffee in your vessels you can put your kettle on to boil. I usually go for 94 degrees C.
A side note - when I cup coffees I find it's more fun to avoid looking at the roasters tasting notes. I feel this can inflict what I am tasting sometimes. I look after I've tasted and see if I matched any!
Notes
Now you can grab your paper and write each coffee name down (if you're tasting blind write numbers and make sections focusing on:
Aroma:
Bean aroma - Can you pinpoint any smells? Sweet, Earthy, boozy etc
Dry ground aroma - As above, can you pinpoint any recognisable aromas?
Aroma when the crust is broken - What can you smell when you break the crust of the coffee? (The meaning of this term is explained below)
Taste
Acidity - Is it tangy, sharp, sweet etc
Body - Is it light, bold, heavy, thin
Sweetness - Is it a fruity sweetness, a caramel sweetness
Tasting Notes - What can you pinpoint? Raspberry, nutty, chocolate etc
Finish - Does it linger in your mouth after? What flavours?
These are guidelines for you, but if you want to add anything else feel free! You can also look at some flavour wheels online to help you pinpoint and narrow down flavours.
Water
Once you've got your notes set up it's time to pour your water. Get a timer ready and once you pour the water on start it for 4 mins. If you are using different sized vessels you will want to weigh out your water so you get the same amount in each. Once the water is added it's a great time to smell the coffees again and take any notes if you want. Or just do a little dance, up to you.
You mentioned "Breaking the crust" earlier. What on earth is that?!
Once your timer has gone off, grab a spoon. All your doing here is dipping the spoon in and pushing back some grounds. This allows you to smell the aromas from the coffee, and you can take notes on each. Once you've broken the crust you can give it a few stirs to stop the brewing process and sink the grounds to the bottom. When going from each coffee you will want to rinse your spoon off in your glass of water to avoid contaminating flavour. Once you've done that for each coffee you can grab too spoons, start from the back and scrape forward the spoons of each side of the bowl to the front, collecting and remove any excess grounds from the top and discard in your empty glass.
Now comes the fun bit! Tasting!
I tend to start with the first coffee and run through the line. I then go back to various coffees to compare and jump between different ones, taking notes as I go. Remember, there's no right or wrong answer for your notes. Coffee is a personal thing and our palettes can be different, so don't feel pressured into getting it "right", just write down what you taste!
What about that loud slurping noise they make?!
There's a reason you'll see coffee professionals at a cupping slurping so loudly. It is good to slurp the coffee this way because it will fill your mouth and palette, allowing you to taste a lot more of the coffee, so don't feel shy about giving it a go.
Keep slurping away and taking your notes. If you're tasting blind see if you can guess if it's a natural or a washed and maybe guess what origin it's from too. These can be fun things to do on your coffee tasting process.
Congratulations! You have cupped your coffees!
How did you find cupping your coffees? I would love to hear from you, and hopefully you've learned something! Maybe you just fancied a read because you wanted to know what coffee cupping was. Either way I hope it was useful to you, and you had fun!
Brew What You love, and love what you brew!
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