Cupping coffee - The official way to taste your coffee
When you start our roasting coffee, there is a very big chance that you will just roast, brew and drink. In fact that is the road most home coffee roasters go. However, when you start to scale up, when you start selling your coffee, testing new roasts and beans and need a fast and effective way to do it. Well, that where coffee cupping comes into play.
My first year and a half of roasting I never cupped anything. However, as soon as I started roasting in larger batches and getting commercial orders, I found that roasting 1kg tests and testing all of it all the time became a real hassle. I normally just do 1kg roasts at a time as my system (Aillio Bullet) seems to be best adjusted at 1kg roasts, or atleast I understand my roaster with 1kg roasts best. With that said, with the onset of getting tons of different beans to test, I found that I had to dial in my roaster to do 150g gram roasts at a time. I find the Aillio bullet works fine for small roasts as well. Under 150g tends to be a bit difficult.
Anyway, coffee cupping has become an essential tool for me in my day to day production. I can't say I always use the scorecards, for example - if a roast is just nasty, I won't bother scoring. I just trash. But when I am trying to discearn several different recipes on the same bean, this is when I find cupping to be an essential tool. It helps me plow through my samples quickly and get the best roast available. This is far more difficult to do with just brewing and drinking. I usually do a cupping to bring my recipe's down to just two. And with those two I will brew, let cool and taste to get the recipe that I really like.
My cupping tools:
I use the Tiamo cupping cups 6 pack (great cups with measurements)
And standard cupping spoons
Sometimes I use trays, sometimes not. I use trays more to decearn bean color than anything else. (I use white trays)
My cupping procedure:
1) Measure up 12g of coffee beans and grind 'em coarse
2) Add 200ml of boiling water
Set your timer for 15 minutes
3) After 4 minutes I carefully remove the coffee grounds that have floated to the top while at the same time sniff up the amazing aromas from the beautiful brew
4) After 15 minutes take out your spoon, slurp and inhale the wonders of your coffee
5) Spit or swallow, your choice but make sure you clean the spoon before the next cup...can't have cross contamination now!
6.) be sure to jot down the results on the SCA aroma card