Metro Cigar News Spring 1998: Coffee Cupping

Coffee Cupping:
A different king of tasting party.
If you host another wine tasting, your friends will recommend counseling. So how do you entertain adults looking for cultivated diversions to share with friends? Hold a coffee cupping.

According to Ted Lingle, executive director for the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA)and author of The Coffee Cuppers' Handbook, a cupping party might well appeal to the same audience that enjoys sniffing and sloshing wine. Says Lingle, "Coffee is identical to wine, in that people enjoy teaming that they can make sensory discoveries on their own."

Just like a wine tasting, there are some ground (no pun intended) rules you'll want to follow when staging a coffee cupping.

First, you probably wouldn't feature the family-size $2.99 jug-o-wine at your winetasting event...neither should you proudly present a genetic discount brand of canned ground coffee at your cupping. Talk with a specialty coffee retailer or retailer/roaster in your area to get some recommendations for complementary coffees to offer your tasters. Ask the retailer for descriptions of the coffees so that you can provide "tasting notes" to your guests. Like wine, coffee notes might include: coffee origin and growing conditions (horticulture); regional designation (similar to appellation); mouth flavors (for instance, Guatemalan Antigua might be described as 'smoky cinnamon with bright, lemony flavors'), and, for finesse, suggested coffee pairings.

If you're really feeling ambitious, you might want to provide tasting sheets, with spaces for cuppers to record the various sensations imparted by each coffee.

Ideally, your freshly roasted beans would be ground at home so that they are at a peak when brewed. Unlike wine, roasted coffee beans are not improved by aging and begin deteriorating from the moment roasting is completed, therefore it's a good idea to find out when roasting occurred for the beans you're using. If it isn't possible to grind the beans at home, ask the retailer from whom you've purchased the beans to grind them for you at the optimum grind for a "coffee cupping."

To evaluate the aroma and taste characteristics of coffee beans, compare at least two (preferably several) samples of brewed coffee side-by-side. Pour nearly boiling water (195° to 205°F) onto the roasted and finely ground coffee in a small cup. The particles rise to the surface and as they steep, they sink. The process takes about three to five minutes. The professional coffee-to-water ratio is 7.25 grams of coffee to approximately five ounces of water. Be sure to use bottled drinking water and drink the coffee black.

Following are the sensations you'll be looking for.

Fragrance: If you've been able to grind the beans at home, place the grounds in the cup and sniff the gasses released from the bean cells. Sweet scents are indicative of acidic taste and stronger, more pungent scent indicates sharp taste. The fresher the roast (when the original green coffee bean was actually roasted) the more intense the fragrance.

Taste: Using a rounded soup spoon (preferably a silver or silver-plated spoon that allows rapid dissipation of heat), bring the liquid to your mouth and slurp the coffee. Feel free to slurp loudly and forcefully, spreading the liquid over the tongue and taste buds. Keep the coffee in your mouth for three to five seconds and record the type and intensity of sensations. Because temperature can change taste, you may notice a difference between the initial slurp and the prolonged flavor.

Note: While you are slurping, vapors will enter your nose. This is what gives coffee its special flavor - the taste and nose combination. The nose can be citrus or berry-like, nutty, flowery, sweet or spicy. It can be malty or even like caramel. In a standard roast coffee, for example, the nose tends to reflect the character of a sugar-browning byproduct. In a dark roast, the nose tends to flavor the character of a d distillation byproduct. In a dark roast, the nose tends to flavor the character of a dry distillation byproduct.

Aftertaste: After holding the coffee in your mouth, swallow a bit of it. The flavors may remind you of chocolate (sweet); campfire or tobacco smoke (burnt); spice such a clove (pungent), or pine sap (resinous).

Body: Mouthfeel is as important in coffee cupping as it is in wine tasting. Gently slide your tongue across the roof your mouth to ascertain the level of oiliness or slipperiness. This indicates the fat content of the brew. The thickness or viscosity of the sensation determines it's fiber and protein content. Together, the oiliness and viscosity determine the body of the coffee.

Once the coffee cools, repeat steps three through five. This will allow you to see how temperature affects the basic taste and will give you an overall taste impression.

Traditionally, similar to wine tastings, when cupping large number of different coffee samples, the cupper may use a cuspidor in which to spit the liquid that is not swallowed. This helps clear the palate for the next sample to b tested. In addition, it's probably a good idea to provide cuppers with tepid water to rinse the mouth.

Following the cupping, it can be interesting to compare tasting notes. A twist on the straightforward cupping would be to ask cuppers to try and identify the origin coffees they are sampling. Chances are that few will succeed, but it makes the tasting more challenging. No palate is alike and, like wine tasting, there is no right or wrong. What one person experiences as "cinnamon spice, another may taste as "burnt chocolate."

Coffee cupping is an entertaining and innovative alternative to wine tasting. Today, with more specialty coffee blends available than ever before, and more expertise available to you through retailers and roaster/retailers who have studied and understand the art and science of coffee, virtually anyone can host a successful cupping party. For more information about coffee, call the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA), a nonprofit trade association resenting more than 2,500 businesses and individuals in the coffee industry, at (562) 624-4100. You can also visit the SCAA website at www.scaa.com. The website contains formation about books and other resources available to serious coffee aficionados.