What is Coffee Cupping?
I’m sure you’ve heard of coffee’s described as having “cupping 
flavors” or “notes” such as chocolate, nuts, fruit, spices etc. Many people think that their coffee is just supposed to taste like “coffee” and they don’t understand all of the complex flavors that are within the actual beans and are brought out by the delicate roasting process. The reason most people are not aware of the natural cupping flavors within their coffee is that they are buying cheap, poor quality, and over roasted beans. This is the main difference between small batch specialty coffee roasters and big chain coffee roasters.
As small batch coffee roasters, we strive to provide coffees with only an 80+ cupping score, every time!
Finding the perfect beans and the proper roast profile that brings the beans to their full potential is rather difficult and the coffee cupping process can be long when searching for the perfect cupping score.
Coffee cupping is the process in which roasters order several sample sized bags of coffees from a particular region, such as Guatemala for example. With 125,000 coffee producers in Guatemala, how do you know which farm has the flavor profile you are searching for?
The coffee growers do an initial cupping process on the coffee’s they offer. There are strict protocols that are used by the Specialty Coffee Association for grading and cupping coffees.
In addition to only buying green coffee that meets SCA’s strict cupping standards, we also do our own cupping session to determine the flavors within the coffee and to determine if there any defects in the coffee which may make it taste undesirable.
The coffees are roasted based on the roasters Specifications and then the beans are ground. Some roasters may choose to do a medium roast as well as a dark roast and sample both roast profiles with each particular coffee to ensure a uniform flavor profile.
Next they grind the coffee beans and assess them based on their smell. Then, the coffee is brewed several different ways; Typically a good roaster will then brew that coffee using a standard drip, pour over, an espresso machine and also using a subpar machine such as a Keurig. The smells of the coffee are charted and assessed first and then the flavors of the coffee are charted and assessed.
The coffee is often slurped from a spoon so that it hits the back of the palate. The coffee is also sipped from a special cup. The cupping notes and flavors are assessed and charted. The coffees are then scored using a point scale rating system. A coffee cupping at 80 to 90 indicates a great cup of coffee. Once the roaster has sampled several coffees from one particular region, a decision is made based on the most pleasing flavors within each roast profile and finally the perfect coffee is selected.
Specialty Coffee Association Grading Scale:
