Cupping is a standard method coffee professionals use to evaluate coffees. It gives an an ‘unbiased’ idea of how coffees will taste. Even for the casual coffee drinker, cupping is a particularly good practice to have for new coffees you don’t have experience with.
In this article, you’ll not only learn how to cup coffee like a professional barista, but also why it’s just as important as the actual brewing.
Why Do We ‘Cup’ Coffee?
When we ‘cup’ coffee, we’re looking for a baseline for flavor and expectations for a certain coffee that we get. Roasters like to do this when sourcing new coffees. They also do this as a quality control measure for coffees already in their production line.
Pour over, espresso, or any other brew method for that matter (except for the french press) needs some level of technique and calibration. These skew how the coffee will taste because the bells and whistles that make each device unique will also make the coffee taste a certain way.
Cupping is also the most efficient way to taste coffees at scale. Ideally, you’d taste more than one coffee to get a clear point of reference. And if you were doing quality control, you’d have two samples of the same coffee to make sure everything is on point.
While 2 or 3 pour overs, for example, wouldn’t be that hard to do in one go, imagine having a whole table of samples to go through. To manually brew all of those would be really ambitious. And by the time you’re done brewing the last sample, the earlier samples would not be fresh enough for you to get as good of an idea of how the flavors change over time.
What You Need for Cupping:
- 10 grams of each coffee
- Grinder
- Scale to measure coffee weight
- Timer
- Kettle filled with filtered water
- Food-grade thermometer (if not built into kettle)
- Cupping bowls or 200mL mugs
- Rinse cups filled with hot water
- Cupping spoons or any round spoon
- Mug or glass to hold cupping spoons
- An extra cup to discard / spit into
Cupping Coffee: Step-by-Step
1. Weigh each sample of whole-bean coffee.
To keep everything standardized and precise, it’s good practice to use weight measurements instead of volumetric measurements. Weigh each sample in the cups you’ll use. I recommend using 10 grams of coffee for each sample.
2. Grind each sample.
Make sure the grind size is the same across all the coffees you’ll taste. It should be slightly coarse, similar to the grind size used for drip coffee machines. On an EK 43, that’s 16 if the dial goes up to 22. But if the dial only goes up to 11, that’s a grind setting of around 8.
If you are sampling multiple coffees, make sure to purge your grinder with a small amount of the next coffee before grinding the whole sample.
3. Pour hot water and start your timer.
The Specialty Coffee Association recommends a very specific ratio of 16.35mL of water per gram of coffee. To simplify things, you can use 16mL per gram of coffee.
Set the water temperature to 200°F / 94°C and pour up to 160mL. You’ll notice a crust start to form at the top once you’ve filled the cup. Set a timer for 4 minutes and let the coffee steep.
If your kettle doesn’t allow you to control the water temperature, let it go to a boil and open the lid for one to two minutes. Use a food-grade thermometer to take the water temperature. Close the lid once you’ve hit the target temperature of 200°F / 94°C.
4. Break the crust and skim.
After about 4 minutes, use your spoon to break the crust formed by pushing outwards three times. Some foam will remain on the top. You’ll have to skim that off as that tends to be quite bitter.
Rinse your spoon and do the same thing for the other coffees you are cupping.
5. Let the coffee cool down.
Once you’ve broken the crust and skimmed all the coffees you’ll be cupping, set a timer again for another 2 minutes. At this point the coffee is still too hot for you to get a good idea of how everything tastes. You’ll also need some time to let the coffee grounds settle to the bottom of your cup.
In total, tasting can start after 6 minutes.
6. Taste the coffee.
Once the timer has gone out, you can start tasting! If you’ll be tasting many coffees, it’s a good idea to have a cup that you can spit into so you don’t over-caffeinate.
Take a spoon, get some coffee from the cup, and taste., You can better aspirate the coffee by slurping. Doing this lets the coffee hit all parts of your palette.
If you’re cupping with other people, you can use two spoons to keep things more hygienic. One to collect coffee from the cup, the other to slurp out of.
7. Take notes of the entire process.
Good coffees taste their best when they’ve cooled down slightly. It’s also easier to pick up on nuances at cooler temperatures. Pay attention to how the flavors might change from when the coffees are hot to when they are cold.
8. Rinse and repeat. Literally.
Before moving on to taste the next coffee, rinse your spoon. Ideally you should have at least one glass of water for rinsing. Better yet if you can have one glass in between every coffee.
Cupping Sheet and Note Taking Guide
1. Fragrances
Before we go further, remember this difference: fragrance describes the scent of the dry coffee (like the whole beans or ground coffees). We sometimes like to call these ‘dry aromas’. While aroma describes the scent of the brewed coffee.
Majority of tasting is attributed to our olfactory senses. Take note of how the coffee smells as both a whole bean and when it’s ground. As long as you aren’t smelling anything bad, you’re on the right track already for a good coffee.
2. Aromas
Take notes of what you smell once the water and coffee grounds interact. Aromas will be most prominent while the coffee is hot. As the coffee cools down, its aroma will start to dissipate.
3. Acidity
‘Acidity’ as a word tends to throw a lot of people off. Usually because we either think of an unpleasantly sour taste or nasty chemicals when we hear the word. But it can be a very positive thing and is actually a big part in how coffee tastes. There are 4 kinds of acidity:
| Type of Acidity | Details |
|---|---|
| Citric | One of the most prevalent acidities that gets dissolved in the brewing process; easiest type of acidity for us to pick up |
| Mallic | Apple-like acidity; also associated with the acidity in green fruits like kiwis, green grapes, and gooseberries |
| Tartaric | Grape-like acidity; hard to pick up unless you’re really looking for it since a certain percentage of it is present in all coffees; usually most evident with wash-processed Ethiopian coffee |
| Acetic | The most unpleasant among the types of acidities; it is the same pungent smell and taste found in vinegar |
4. Sweetness
Sweetness can be described with things that we’re already familiar with. It can be pastries, fruits – basically the same sensation we get from eating anything with a high sugar content.
Note: you can taste two different fruits in the same coffee. While a coffee might have a malic acidity similar to a green apple, it can have a sweetness more like a melon or another fruit.
5. Body / Mouthfeel
Body / mouthfeel is more of a tactile sensation. We can describe it with how viscous the coffee is. Or how the coffee ‘coats’ our palettes.
We can compare it to other drinks we’ve had before. Does it feel heavy? Silky? Tea-like? Certain drinks will have their own texture and mouthfeel to them that you might also find if you taste a lot of coffees.
6. Finish / Aftertaste
A good coffee will have flavors that linger and then slowly dissipate. The challenge with this aspect is that it is not as ‘quantifiable’ as the other aspects of cupping.
Example, some coffees are already packed with flavor that they don’t need a very lingering finish, while some are like desserts and can have flavors that linger for 5 or more seconds.
A bad finish is like a guest that overstays their welcome. If the finish lingers too long, whatever coffee it is, that’s most likely a roasting issue. Those are factors that point towards astringency and bitterness.
7. Astringency and Bitterness
In the different forms of brewing, astringency and bitterness are usually caused by over-extraction.
Many tend to describe bitterness like tasting a rubber tire, or cigarettes, or any unpleasant taste in general.
Astringency is like acidity’s bad twin. It’s actually what most people think of when they hear the word “acidity”.
When it comes to cupping, because it sets a baseline, it’s impossible to over-extract. Unlike the different brewing methods, the coffee will hit a certain level of extraction and stop extracting no matter how long it takes.
Assuming the coffee isn’t a dark roast, tasting astringent flavors during cupping means there’s something wrong with the roast. The same can be said about bitterness.
Note, however, that a certain level of bitterness can balance out a coffee. But if it’s too upfront, then it becomes a problem.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do measurements for cupping have to be exact?
As much as possible, yes. But it also depends on your application. If you’re cupping to get a feel for your coffees, then some margin of error is okay. But if you’re doing it for quality control, it’s best to keep error margins to a minimum.
Do you strictly have to use cupping bowls and cupping spoons to cup?
No. You can use a standard 200mL mug. You’ll just need to do some measuring to account for the mug’s volume and to make some headroom for the coffee grounds. You don’t strictly need to use a cupping spoon either. But a round spoon (like a soup spoon) would definitely hold the liquid better.
About the Author
Geo Ramirez
Geo is a barista and roaster that has worked in the coffee industry for 5 years. He has competed twice in the Philippine Brewer’s Championship and made it to the top 5 in 2019.
Follow Geo Ramirez on Instagram.