The Importance of Cupping in the Specialty Coffee World

Cupping, or professional coffee tasting, is an essential practice in the specialty coffee world. This standardized method allows for objective evaluation of coffees' sensory characteristics, ensuring rigorous quality control throughout the production chain.

What is Cupping?

Cupping is a tasting technique that involves analyzing the aromas, flavors, acidity, body, and finish of a coffee. This method is used by producers, importers, roasters, and baristas to select the best lots, adjust roasting profiles, and ensure an optimal tasting experience for consumers.

The Cupping Process

This process begins with the preparation of samples where coffee beans are ground to a specific particle size and then arranged in bowls. Next, hot water, typically around 93°C, is poured over the ground beans. The beans steep for approximately 4 minutes, forming a crust on the surface. After infusion, this crust is delicately broken with a spoon to release the aromas, which are immediately sniffed to evaluate the initial aromatic notes. Once the crust is removed, the coffee is tasted by slurping a small amount of liquid with a cupping spoon. This slurping action allows the coffee to be evenly distributed in the mouth, enabling perception of all its nuances. The tasters then note the various gustatory and aromatic characteristics of the coffee.

The Importance of Cupping for Professionals

Cupping is a mandatory step for roasters to better understand coffee. Let's take espresso as an example: it's crucial to understand that a cupping session often involves tasting more than five different coffees (and that's a minimum). Indeed, after, say, just five espressos, the palate would quickly become saturated. Infusing ground coffee preserves the palate's sensitivity and precision. This process thus makes it more capable of evaluating the quality of aromas with endurance.

Unlike extraction methods such as espresso or Filter, which can be affected by variations like over-extraction or under-extraction, cupping offers a more stable and uniform evaluation. This is paramount for rigorous quality control that is understandable to all stakeholders in the production chain.

It is important to distinguish cupping from traditional tasting within the specialty coffee realm. Cupping involves evaluating coffee in its ground form, with suspended particles in the cup. Traditional tasting, on the other hand, focuses on appreciating the coffee once extracted, without bean residues. This distinction allows for analyzing coffee from different perspectives. It helps ensure an optimal quality level throughout the production chain.

A person cupping a specialty coffee using the Brazilian cupping method.

A Regulated and Standardized Process

Strict regulations

Cupping is often compared to wine tasting. It is a strictly regulated and standardized process concerning Grind Type, ratios, extraction time, and equipment used. This codification is essential as it ensures uniform quality control that is understandable and accepted by all. Cupping serves as an international scoring system and a universal language in the coffee world. It facilitates communication among various stakeholders in the coffee supply chain, providing common references for bean evaluation.

Comparing for better evaluation

Comparison is a key element of cupping. It involves contrasting coffees in various contexts (terroir, extraction method) to analyze differences in quality and organoleptic properties. For instance, while certain terroirs are renowned, such as those in Burundi or Rwanda, a roaster cannot solely rely on origin to evaluate a coffee. The 'Potato Taste Defect,' for example, which is only perceptible through taste, clearly illustrates this need for comparison. This disease affects coffee cherries and remains almost undetectable when the beans are still green. However, it becomes perceptible after roasting and fully manifests in taste once the beans are ground and brewed.

Cupping is also about training the senses, a skill acquired through experience and practice. The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) promotes this expertise by certifying Q-Graders, professionals whose cupping skills are recognized. These experts are qualified to evaluate and score the coffees they taste. To be proficient in cupping means being able to distinguish the subtleties between a coffee scored +75 and another scored +92. It also involves understanding the reasons behind these quality differences. At Tanat, this expertise is embodied by one of our co-founders, Alexis Gagnaire, a certified Q-Grader, who personally oversees the cupping of all our coffees.

This is why cupping is essential for every roaster and enriching for the entire industry, from barista to consumer.