Coffee Cupping
Posted by TheShot on 05 Apr 2006 | Tagged as: Beans, Foreign Brew, Quality Issues
An article in today’s The News-Gazette from Champaign, IL reported on some of the nuances of coffee cupping, or the process by which coffee professionals taste and evaluate coffee for purchase, blending, etc.: AP Wire | 04/05/2006 | ILLINOIS STYLE: Champaign coffee roaster rates Dominican coffee. A local roaster visited the Dominican Republic, where the locals treat it as a national product, and compared notes with judges as far and wide as Norway and Japan.
While coffee cupping is often considered analogous to wine tasting, it has none of its associated sophistication and class. Coffee cupping is a process that’s devoid of any pretense and reduced down to its pure sensory essence: inhale, slurp with a spoon, and spit. This is not the process I followed in all the cafés I’ve reviewed here — and I’m sure much to the thanks of the owners, staff, and patrons at these establishments.
While I lifted nearly all of my espresso tasting criteria from the SCAA cupping forms (SCAA Excel cupping forms from the legendary Jim Schulman; PDF example for the SCAA Cup of Excellence®), I am always open to new perspectives on the topic. My latest interest? I recently ordered a book, titled Espresso Italiano Tasting, that’s available from the Istituto Internazionale Assaggiatori Caffè, or the International Institute of Coffee Tasters. I’ll be sure to report on it here when it arrives — probably in another three months after someone can swim it over here.
In the meantime, for some recommended reading on the basics of cupping from CoffeeGeek.com’s legendary Mark Prince:
http://www.coffeegeek.com/guides/beginnercupping.
But be warned: many coffee promoters are recently trying to turn cupping into the social equivalent of wine tasting, which has very different purposes and goals.
3 Comments »
on 22 Sep 2006 at 10:48 am -05:00T 1.TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Know Your Coffee Reviewers said …
[...] Issue #2: Thirteen cups of coffee at one sitting is bound to make anybody think, “we were struck by how similar so many of them were.” I guarantee you that if you smack your forehead hard enough on your kitchen table a dozen times, that thirteenth smack will feel less painful than the first. When I reviewed espresso for CoffeeRatings.com, four was my limit at any one time (caffeine-induced hallucinations aside). Even at coffee cuppings, my tastebuds go numb before reaching double digits. [...]
on 04 Jun 2007 at 2:56 pm -05:00T 2.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » 12 Best Cups of Coffee of 2006 said …
[...] graders: Java Man. A coffee broker, a private taster, and now a New York Board of Trade-certified cupper, Ed Faubert can readily identify coffee defects and the states and altitudes, not just countries, [...]
on 04 Jun 2007 at 9:48 pm -05:00T 3.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Coffee craze has everyone a bit nuts said …
[...] bored with the wine tasting routine who have now turned to coffee cupping as their latest taste bud fad (I still reserve that cupping is mostly a nasty, brutish task [...]