What Is ‘Coffee Cupping’? Insights from our San Diego Coffee Training Institute
Is there a way to know exactly what’s causing a coffee’s flavor?
Yes! And the method is actually how many professionals brew their own coffee, as well as how they might build out a cafe menu, or decide on a wholesale order.
“Cupping” (in coffee terms, we’re not talking about alternative skin therapy) is a method for teasing out taste by eliminating the filter and brewing within small containers. It can tell you whether a surprising (or disappointing!) cup is coming from the beans, or something else.
To do it, all it takes is a few bowls, a scale, hot water, and 20 minutes.
Let’s break down how coffee cupping works.
Protip: Interested in learning cupping? If you’re in the San Diego area near Talitha HQ, check out the cupping classes at the San Diego Coffee Training Institute, located next door to our Clairemont Talitha location.
What Coffee Cupping Is, and Why It’s Important
Coffee cupping is a standardized tasting method. It’s mostly used by professionals to evaluate attributes of coffee side by side. Yet truthfully, it can be done by anyone! We’ll explain how to do cupping… but first, a little context on where cupping originates and why it works so well.
Where do cupping rules come from?
People can do cupping in a myriad of ways, but there are actually official standards for how to do it which are set by the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA).
In recent years, the SCA updated its 2004 protocol with what they call the “Coffee Value Assessment,” which they explain, “...offers a complete, transparent, ‘high-resolution’ picture of a coffee, recognizing all the things we might love (and value).”
Put another way, it asks you to write down what you taste, how intense it is, and to separate those things from whether or not you liked it.
For professionals, separating out all the qualities is done for assessing flavor, aroma, and the specific qualities of the bean. (In case you’re wondering, Talitha has two certified “Q Graders” who are trained in cupping in order to assess our coffee’s value, catch defects, and ensure every batch is consistent.)
Can regular people do coffee cupping?
Yeah, of course! Home coffee cupping is not only fun, it can help build out your palette and teach you your own coffee preferences.
And sure, watching someone hunch over a row of bowls and slurp from a spoon can look like performance, and it sort of is. But after you try and get decent at it, you’ll be able to tell coffee from a French press brewed on a Tuesday from coffee made with an AeroPress that was brewed on a Friday. (That’s a pretty cool party trick, if you ask us!)
How To Do Coffee Cupping
You can sign up to learn how to do cupping straight from the professionals, but here are the basics.
Tools you need: 4 identical bowls, a gram scale, a burr grinder, a kettle, a deep spoon, and a rinse glass.
Coffee: At least two coffees, ideally four.
For beginners, we recommend starting with two noticeably different roasts. It can be challenging to notice more subtle differences.
Protip: Ideally rest a fresh bag 4-14 days ahead of judging it.
Coffee Cupping Steps
- Grind the beans coarse-ish. Put each coffee grind into a separate bowl.
- Pour water into the bowl, just off the boil. (This should be around 200 degrees.) This is the hardest part: you need to measure a 1:18 pour, about 8 grams per 150 milliliters. Same level in every bowl!
- Start a timer for 4 minutes. You’ll notice a kind of “crust” rising, which will trap the aromatics underneath.
- Break the crust, and smell! Put your nose close, then do three slow passes with the spoon. (The best smell in coffee!)
- Skim the foam off with two spoons. You’re collecting it.
- Slurp 3 times as it cools: First while hot, then while warm, then while near room temperature. (Because the flavor changes! A coffee that tastes flat while hot can turn sweet on its way down.)
- Write something down every pass. Start out using your own descriptions, you can learn official coffee terms later.
Why you must slurp: it pulls in air, spreads the coffee across your whole palate, and pushes aromatics into your nose from inside your mouth. That process is called “retronasal olfaction”, and most of what we call “flavor” arrives through the body this way. (A polite sip skips this process.)
Learning What To Write Down When You’re Cupping
Ok, so you're getting the hang of cupping. But you're probably still curious what the pros write down when they do it.
The Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel (and others like it) is one of the main tools used to identify flavors within black, unflavored coffee.
Designed by coffee professionals and sensory scientists in tandem, the wheel works from the center outward; starting simplified like “sweet,” to potentially more complex, like “brown-sugary, with molasses.”
Try using the wheel on a bag you own: Talitha Sunrise is a medium roast and tastes like a combination of milk chocolate, caramel, and almond, with a hint of raspberry.
You could cup that alongside our light-roast Banko Gotiti, which is quite different; it has notes of sweet cherries, orange citrus, and rooibos tea. If you cupped them, you’d be able to taste, smell, and write down the differences quite accurately!
Cupping Also Tells You What’s Wrong With Your Coffee Routine
For home brewers, the worst way to start your day is with a bad cup of coffee. There are usually only two reasons why coffee disappoints:
- You do not like that coffee
- You aren’t making it well
Cupping will overwhelmingly answer the first, and it also hints at the second!
Preference is truly what cupping is built for. If you tried four different coffees under identical conditions, you’d find out which ones you actually want to drink. (Most people never get that answer, because they taste one coffee at a time and compare it against memory.)
Method is where cupping gives you one more hint. Since cupping is so specific, while your morning pour-over is usually an approximation, it won’t ever taste exactly the same… so many differences between the two methods prove nothing on their own.
Yet cleverly, you can easily use that logic to help figure out what to rule out! Science!
- If only your morning pour-over tastes harsh, then it’s more likely the way you made it, not your preference. Switch up your grind, ratio or water temperature.
- If the cupping tastes harsh too, it's probably the coffee, or even the age of the bag. No technique will change it!
Come Cup With Us On Morena Boulevard
Not sure if you can have what it takes to try cupping at home? We’ll walk you through the entire cupping process!
Cupping and Sensory Essentials is a one-hour class built for palate development. It’s all the same practice as above, but with a professional instructor guiding you as you go. (Nice!) Talitha’s curriculum aligns with Specialty Coffee Association standards, and courses run seven days a week.
For serious coffee trainees, or for that special coffee fanatic in your life, you can click here to check out the schedules.
The San Diego Coffee Training Institute shares the Talitha Clairemont address at:
4140 Morena Blvd, Ste A
San Diego, CA 92117
(Enter through the Talitha Coffee cafe to reach the classroom.)
Reach out to get in on our next class:
1(858) 229-1238
info@sdcti.org
