WTF is cupping coffee?
Updated: Sep 19
Why coffee professionals make a bowl of coffee, wait around, break a crust and then aggressively slurp it with a spoon.
We coffee folks are weird!
We can't simply say we're tasting coffee.
No.
We have to say we're cupping it.
And when we do this, we don't even make a normal coffee.
We throw ground coffee into a cup, pour hot water over it, leave the grounds floating around on top, scrape some of them away and then—with a completely straight face—slurp the coffee loudly from a spoon.
Very sophisticated.
But despite how ridiculous the whole thing looks, cupping is probably my favourite part of coffee roasting.
And there's actually a very good reason we do it.
☕ So, what exactly is coffee cupping?
Cupping is simply a standardised way of tasting and comparing coffees.
That's it.
We're trying to remove as many variables as possible so that we're tasting the coffee, rather than tasting the brewing method.
Think about making a V60.
Grind size changes the flavour. Pouring technique changes it. Water temperature changes it. The brewer changes it. The recipe changes it.
Make the same coffee as espresso and it tastes completely different again.
That's great when we're drinking coffee.
It's not particularly helpful when I'm trying to decide whether to buy it.
Why I cup coffee
Cupping happens all the time at Al-Gharb Coffee Roasters.
When new green coffee samples arrive, we cup them.
When I'm checking the quality of one of our roasts, we cup it.
When we're experimenting with blends, we cup them.
When something tastes different and I want to understand why...
You guessed it.
We cup it.
It's one of the most important tools I have as a roaster.
Sometimes I only have 80g to make a decision
When I receive a green coffee sample, I might get around 100g of green beans.
After roasting, that becomes roughly 80g of coffee.
That's it.
From those 80 grams I might need to decide:
Do I like this coffee?
Does it fit into our selection?
Could it work in one of our blends?
Will our customers like it?
And ultimately—is it good enough for us to buy?
I don't have enough coffee to spend three days finding the perfect espresso recipe, then another bag experimenting with V60.
I need a fair way of comparing one coffee against another.
That's where cupping comes in.
We're trying to make everything boringly consistent
The idea is simple.
Every coffee gets treated the same way.
Same amount of coffee.
Same grind.
Same amount of water.
Same water temperature.
Same steeping time.
That means when one cup tastes like chocolate and another tastes like jasmine, strawberries or something slightly questionable, there's a much better chance that difference is coming from the coffee rather than something I did while brewing it.
We're basically removing ourselves from the equation as much as possible.
And then comes the fun part.
🥄 How we cup coffee at Al-Gharb Coffee Roasters
Our basic recipe is:
10g coffee| 180g water | Coarse grind | 95°C water | 4-minute steep
We grind each sample into its own cup and pour the hot water directly over the grounds.
Then we wait.
After around four minutes, a layer of coffee grounds has formed on top.
This is called the crust.
We break the crust with a spoon, smell the aromas that are released and clean the remaining grounds from the surface.
And then...
We wait again.
Because drinking 95°C coffee is generally considered a bad idea.
Then we slurp
This is the part everyone remembers.
We take a spoonful of coffee and slurp it quite aggressively.
There is actually a reason for this.
Slurping spreads the coffee across your palate and helps you experience more of its aroma and flavour.
It also makes an otherwise reasonably professional group of adults sound ridiculous.
But it works.
And yes, you are absolutely allowed to laugh the first time you do it.
Don't just taste coffee when it's hot
This is one of the most useful things you can learn from cupping—even if you never cup coffee yourself.
Let your coffee cool down.
We taste the coffees several times.
First when they're still fairly hot.
Again when they've cooled.
And again when they're approaching room temperature.
Why?
Because coffee changes enormously as it cools.
When it's very hot, it can actually be quite difficult to taste properly.
As the temperature drops, sweetness, acidity and individual flavours often become much easier to recognise.
A coffee that seemed fairly ordinary when hot might suddenly reveal peach, chocolate, berries, jasmine or something else entirely ten minutes later.
So next time you're drinking a good coffee, don't rush it.
See what happens as it cools.
What are we actually looking for?
We're not sitting around desperately trying to invent increasingly ridiculous tasting notes.
At least, hopefully not.
We're looking at things like:
Sweetness — Does the coffee have a natural sweetness?
Acidity — Is it bright and lively? Soft? Sharp? Pleasant?
Body — Does it feel light and tea-like or heavier and creamier?
Flavour — What does the coffee remind us of?
Aftertaste — What happens after you swallow it?
Balance — Do all these things work together?
And, perhaps most importantly:
Do we actually enjoy drinking it?
You can analyse a coffee as much as you want, but that last question still matters.
“But I can't taste mango, jasmine and pink unicorns.”
Good.
Neither can most people when they first start tasting coffee.
Tasting coffee is something you learn.
When somebody says a coffee tastes like strawberry, they're not saying somebody secretly added strawberry juice to the beans.
They're saying:
“Something about this coffee reminds me of strawberry.”
Maybe it's the sweetness.
Maybe it's the acidity.
Maybe it's the aroma.
The more coffees you taste side-by-side, the easier those associations become.
And that's another reason cupping is so useful.
Taste one coffee on its own and you might simply think:
That's nice.
Put four very different coffees next to each other and suddenly the differences become obvious.
This one's fruitier.
This one's sweeter.
This one's heavier.
This one tastes like chocolate.
And this one...
Well, perhaps we won't buy this one.
The best part? You don't need to be a coffee expert
I love involving our barista team when we're cupping at Al-Gharb.
I don't want every decision to come down to what I like.
Different people notice different things.
Someone might pick up a flavour I completely missed. Someone else might prefer the coffee I ranked second.
That's useful.
Coffee tasting isn't about proving who has the most sophisticated palate.
It's about paying attention.
And the more you taste, the better you become at it.
Come and make ridiculous slurping noises with us
We run cuppings at Al-Gharb Coffee Roasters in Albufeira, and they're not only for coffee professionals.
If you're curious about why coffees taste different, how we choose the beans we roast, or whether you really can taste mango in coffee, come along.
We'll provide the coffee.
We'll provide the spoons.
You just have to provide the slurping.
— HenningAl-Gharb Coffee Roasters, Algarve
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