Cupping exists so that two people on two continents can discuss the same coffee in the same terms. How the protocol works, and how to set up a tasting at home without buying anything.
What it's for
Cupping is the professional tasting of coffee, and its whole purpose is comparability: if everyone prepares the sample identically — same ratio, same water, same timings — then the differences you perceive belong to the coffee and not to the method.
That allows a buyer in Almería and a producer in Huila to discuss the same lot in the same terms, and it means a score signifies something outside the room where it was given.
The protocol, step by step
- Fixed ratio: 8.25 g of coffee per 150 ml of water. Medium-coarse grind, slightly coarser than for filter.
- Five cups per sample. Not excessive: it's how you detect whether the lot is uniform or whether there are stray defective beans.
- Dry fragrance. You smell the freshly ground coffee before wetting it.
- Water at 93 °C poured directly onto the grounds. And then left alone: no stirring.
- At four minutes, break the crust. With a spoon you push back the layer of coffee floating on top, nose close. It's the single biggest release of aroma in the whole session.
- Skim off the foam and wait until it drops to around 70 °C.
- Slurp hard, spraying the coffee across the whole mouth. The noise, which startles people at first, has a purpose: it aerosolises the liquid so it reaches the upper nasal cavity, where most aroma is actually perceived.
You taste it as it cools
And that's no minor detail. A coffee doesn't taste the same at 70 °C as at 40 °C: as the temperature drops, volatile compounds present differently and sweetness becomes far more obvious.
A good coffee improves as it cools. A mediocre one falls apart the moment the heat goes: with no temperature left to mask anything, the defects surface.
Incidentally, it's the fastest home test there is. Leave half a cup on the table for twenty minutes and try it. If it's still pleasant, the coffee is good.
How to run a tasting at home
No special equipment needed. The only essential is to compare two coffees side by side: in isolation almost nobody picks out nuance, but in parallel the differences jump out.
- Two identical glasses, one per coffee. The same amount of coffee in each, around 8 g, and 150 ml of water at 93 °C.
- Smell both dry, one after the other.
- Pour the water, wait four minutes and break the crust, nose close.
- Skim the foam off with two spoons and wait until it's cool enough to slurp.
- Taste alternating: A, B, A, B. It's the immediate comparison that reveals things.
Note what you find in your own words, without hunting for the technical term. "Reminds me of toast" is a perfectly valid tasting note and probably more useful to you than borrowing vocabulary from a flavour wheel.
What's being looked for, beyond the score
Three things, in this order:
Cleanliness. That there's nothing off: earthy notes, mould, uncontrolled fermentation, cardboard. One defect sinks a whole lot however interesting the rest of it is.
Sweetness. With nothing added. It's the most reliable indicator that the cherry was picked ripe and processed well.
Complexity and balance. That there's more than one thing to say, and that none of it flattens the rest.
Why it matters before buying
Cupping every lot before approving it is what stops a problem at origin — uneven drying, an over-run fermentation — from reaching the customer. It's a filter that volume coffee doesn't apply, simply because at that scale it isn't viable.
If you want to put names to what you're perceiving, the tasting notes guide organises the vocabulary. And to understand which part of the flavour comes from the bean and which from the roast, there's the article on how roasting transforms coffee. To taste side by side you'll need two different origins: they're in the shop.
