FLAVOURS is not within the boundaries of your taste buds only, rather it includes registering the taste to ones brain for a wider spectrum of its flavours’ properties. There is a need to do so with coffee, as it is not just about the taste but also the aroma the coffee has to offer. According to Earthlings Coffee’s co-founder, Raven Kwok, coffee has over 2,000 chemical flavour compound, so instead of drinking the coffee, we should be smelling it.
“You can taste the sweetness, bitterness, sourness, and saltiness – however, it does not give you the vibrancy compared to the smell of the aroma we get while ‘slurping’ our coffee in receiving the wide spectrum of aroma we get from coffee which are fruity, flowery, nutty, and sometimes chocolatey”, he added.
Therefore, the coffee industry offers coffee tasting which is more commonly known as a cupping session – it is similar to wine tasting within the wine industry, only with coffee! A cupping session is what determines the good properties of a coffee bean and its harvesting consistency; it is usually done by buyers wanting to make a purchasing decision, farmers trying out samples of their harvest, or roasters tasting the flavours to check whether there is a need to tweak his roast profile, and others.
Furthermore, there are times the price of coffee beans is judged through cupping session competitions where the winner with the highest points is able to commercially supply his harvest for a higher price.
The Cupping Session During a session, each coffee variants depending on beans, farms or processing method, it is required to have several cups (three, four, five or more cups) within the sample to test for taste consistency. The sample cups is known as subject tests of the session.
Step 1 : Measuring the beans before grinding, usually around 14 grammes.
Step 2 : Pouring the same amount of water into each sample cups. Water temperature is usually at 93 degree Celsius – cannot be boiling water, cannot be cool water as well.
Step 3 : Wait for four minutes before breaking the coffee’s crust.
With consistent times, stir the coffee usually 3 to 4 times before using two spoons to skim the floating grounds on the surface.
Step 4 : After skimming, the coffee needs to be cooled down to drinking temperature. While some cuppers prefers it to be slightly hot, there are also those who prefers the coffee to be cool. Advisable temperature between 50 degree Celsius and 60 degree Celsius. An obvious change in taste would occur after 40 degree Celsius.
Step 5 : ‘Slurp’ your coffee using a cupping spoon which is similar to a soup spoon for the unique aroma of each coffee samples. During a cupping session, the cuppers will be accompanied with a cupping form for them to recalled the flavours of each samples, usually to translate the flavour and taste into numerical value.
This form also calibrates a fellow cupper with another to check whether the same level of observance had been achieve. The coffee industry takes pride in their cupping session, thus each session is prepared with immense concentration as a single mistake may ruin the session. The grinding size of a coffee bean is essential as while it is grinded too fine, the sample will be over-extracted and it might let out a bitter flavour. Meanwhile grinding the beans too course would disabled the intensity of the coffee flavour. Other careful details during a session includes measurements of the beans and water temperature.
