Cupping a coffee is not about guessing whether it tastes of blueberry. It is paying attention in an order, always the same one, so that things can be compared. Professional tasters use a strict format because they need their notes to mean the same thing to everyone; at home the order is enough, and it is learned in an afternoon.
The one essential is to taste two coffees at once. A single coffee cannot be judged: there is nothing to judge it against. Two different coffees side by side teach more in ten minutes than twenty cups drunk separately.
The six things being judged
| What | When | What to ask yourself |
|---|---|---|
| Fragrance | the dry grounds | what does it smell of before the water? |
| Aroma | as the hot water goes in | does it change from the dry smell? |
| Acidity | first sip | does it sparkle, like fruit? or is it flat? |
| Body | in the mouth | light like tea or thick like broth? |
| Sweetness | as it cools | does sweetness appear without sugar? |
| Aftertaste | after swallowing | how long does it last, and of what? |
Acidity is the one that confuses people most: in coffee it does not mean sour, and it does not mean it will upset your stomach. It means liveliness, the brightness of fresh fruit. A coffee with no acidity at all is usually a flat coffee, not a smooth one.
How to do it at home, in ten minutes
- Two cups, two different coffees. The same amount in each: two tablespoons of coarsely ground coffee per cup.
- Smell the grounds before anything else. That is the fragrance.
- Pour the water very hot but not boiling —wait half a minute after it boils— and leave it four minutes. A crust will form on top.
- Break the crust with a spoon with your nose close to the cup. That burst of aroma is the best moment of the whole thing.
- Skim off the foam and wait for it to cool a little. Very hot coffee numbs the tongue and lets you taste nothing.
- Slurp hard, so the coffee sprays across your whole mouth. It sounds rude and it works.
- Taste it again almost cold. This is where coffees give themselves away: a good one is still sweet, a bad one turns harsh.
Write down what you notice, not what you should notice
The most useful part is also the most awkward: write it in your own words. If it reminds you of the smell of a bakery, write bakery. Taster vocabulary —«jasmine», «blackcurrant»— exists so professionals can understand each other; what serves you is a record of your own that you can compare against in a month.
And if two coffees taste the same to you, it is not that you have no palate: they are probably similar. Try a washed against a natural — nobody misses that difference.
Cupping is the only part of the coffee craft you can do yourself. Everything else already happened on the mountain.
