Why Every Coffee-Lover Should Participate in a "Cupping"

The cupping took place in a room that felt like a laboratory with its pristine feel. We donned aprons, grabbed a pencil and a clipboard with a "sensory evaluation" form, and stood around a table in groups of six, each of us standing by a numbered coffee pot filled with a handful of coffee grounds next to two empty cups. On the table was a color wheel filled in with flavors starting broad in the center to very specific on the outer ring. For instance, some of the center flavors are "fruity," "floral," "nutty/cocoa," and "spices." Under "fruity," you can drill down to "berry" from the options, then get as specific as "blackberry."

Step one is to assess the "fragrance," the scent of the dry grounds. This is not to be confused with the "aroma," the scent of the grounds after hot water has been added. For the fragrance, you just stick your nose in the coffee pot and inhale deeply a few times. You go around the table from pot to pot, jotting down which flavors you smell in the first column of the form next to the numbers. As a newbie, I found this stage especially challenging (um, they all smell like coffee?), so I stuck with the broader descriptions, such as "cereal," "citrus," and "nutty."

Next up, you add hot water to the pot and let it sit for three minutes. You then "break" the pot by stirring the coffee grounds and water three times (it's important not to overstir, something I learned the hard way . . . oops). After that, you add more hot water and let it sit for two minutes. You then go around and inhale each pot to assess the aroma. You jot down the flavors you can smell in the second column. Compared to the first step, I found it easier to pinpoint certain scents with water added. The process should be quick so the coffee doesn't cool off too much by the time you finish all the tastings.

In our case, the coffee in each pot was then poured into the two cups. It's important to taste more than one cup per batch for quality-control reasons. The FNC professionals actually taste four cups per pot to really ensure each cup is consistent. Even crazier, they have two cuppings a day with 40 samples per cupping, four cups per sample. That's 320 cups a day, compared to the 12 cups we tasted. But don't worry, no one is going to die of a coffee overdose. As I'm about to explain, the cupping is similar to a wine tasting where you don't actually swallow the coffee, just sip and spit.

For the third step, you take a spoon and take a slurpy sip from each cup before spitting it out in a separate cup, rinsing your spoon in hot water in between each cup as you go around the table. Yes, it was a bit germ-y, but you're not actually drinking the coffee, and this isn't always the process. At Nestlé, for instance, they have their own individual spoons.

As with steps one and two, you fill out the next column with the flavors you taste from each pot. By this point I was sort of getting the hang of it and also sneaking a peek at what the well-seasoned coffee tasters were writing down just to make sure I wasn't completely off. Just checking my work, not cheating! We finished up after the three steps, but at other cuppings there is often a fourth step that assesses the body, which is how the coffee feels in your mouth.

The FNC representative who was walking us through the entire process then showed us where each sample was from and the flavor profiles for each. In our cupping, they had started with coffee from the most northern part of the coffee-growing region of Colombia in the pot labeled No. 1 to the most southern in pot No. 6. The flavors go from low acidity and more body (chocolate, cereal, and nutty) in the north to higher acidity and sweeter (caramel and vanilla) in the south. What most Americans prefer and probably think of when it comes to the Colombian coffee they drink in the States is more acidic. Personally, I preferred the cups that had more body and hints of cocoa and cereal, but with all the varieties out there, it also depends on your specific sampling.

If I were to give myself a grade for my first cupping, it'd probably be a C (and that's being generous). I still have a ways to go before I can speed slurp my way through 320 cups of coffee like the pros, but I do have a better understanding of the difference between "floral" and "fruity" and acidity vs. body, and I can't wait to continue my coffee education.