Cupping - A Coffee Lover's Wine Tasting


My understanding of coffee up until this past week had been strictly that "little brown beans make tasty brown caffeine-water."

I grew up watching my mother drink boiling hot, black-as-night coffee straight from the pot before starting what would inevitably become a long, busy day. So, by the transitive property of coffee inheritance, I became a drinker of exclusively strong, black coffee. My eyes were firmly shut to the heavily nuanced and widely ranged world of coffee.

I started working at Fortuna Enterprises as the go-to "write stuff" guy about two weeks ago. During the interview process, I was naturally asked how much I know about coffee. Looking back, I'm extremely ashamed to admit that the first and only thing that came to mind was, "♫The best part of waking up…♫"

They gave me a chance, despite my pitiful lack of knowledge, under one condition: learn. And learn I have.

Recently, in order to glean a greater understanding of the complexity of coffee, I was allowed the honor of participating in my first cupping.

Cupping is essentially wine-tasting with coffee. Coffee is prepared in a very specific way before being manipulated by tasters seeking to identify the various tastes and aromas. This ritual-like procedure is done both formally and informally throughout the world and is an important part of the delicate roasting process here at Fortuna.

Our Head Roaster, Bobby, guided me through this ostensibly alien process with care, explaining each critical detail along the way. The first step in any proper coffee cupping is equipment collection. Several specific tools are required, and all need to be thoroughly and aggressively cleaned to prevent the taster from picking up any non-coffee flavors or aromas. First to the table are the cups; though we used wide-rimmed ceramic cups, some tasters choose to use 8-ounce glasses that allow them to observe the visual elements of the brew. Spoons follow, and from what I can tell, aren't significantly dissimilar in appearance to soup spoons. According to Bobby, many roasters and cupping-enthusiasts prefer to use a silver spoon for the metal's ability to abstain from overheating.


Everything else from the presence of a spittoon to the shape of the cupping table can be considered vital factors depending upon the preferences of those involved. However, with proper cups and spoons in hand, we pressed on.

Careful to empty and clean the machine between each cup, Bobby ground samples of three different types of coffee. The subjects of this particular cupping, all being new availabilities at Fortuna, were Natural Ethiopian Konga, Organic Guatemalan Huehuetenango (try saying that three times fast!), and Costa Rican Cumbres Del Poás. Bobby measured each portion out perfectly before grinding the beans at a light roast level.



The hard part, for someone like me that lacks any experience, are the activities that come next. It's not that these things are difficult to actually do, just that they take a large amount of practice to develop the proper senses to do right.

Fragrance is first to be identified in any cupping. By bringing the cup of grounds to a point just in front of one's face and steadily inhaling through the nose, a practiced taster should be able to begin picking up on certain scents. References like the below tasting wheel are used to feel around for the accurate scent (and later, taste), and show just how incredibly varied each coffee can be.



My nose, reliable as ever, determined only that there was indeed coffee in each cup. My companions, on the other hand, started catching specific, unique properties of each coffee from the first sniff. And funnily enough, as soon as they vocalized their descriptions, I started smelling those things too. Hints of orange and honey in the Huehuetenango, berry and cocoa in the Cumbres del Poás, and a mixture of berry and jasmine in the Konga.

After a few minutes of intense, passionate sniffing, we decided that it was time to move along to the next phase: aroma. We carefully filled each cup with hot water (cupping authorities insist that the water must be precisely 200°F) and carefully carried the cups back to our tasting station, delicately ensuring that the "crust" that had formed over the surface of the coffee didn't break.


Aroma, in cupping, is the scent produced when the coffee is wet. However, the aforementioned crust must remain intact as it acts as something of a closed door, locking the smell away until the taster is ready for it. Bobby instructed me to carefully press down with my spoon, breaking the crust, while bringing my nose as close to the cup as possible to catch the scent. In doing so, I again smelled little other than coffee at first. However, moving to the second cup and trying again, I was able to get some of the berry scents of the Ethiopian Konga. Though the fragrance of this coffee had been predominantly blueberry, the aroma was decidedly raspberry. I found that interesting, and was told that since this coffee is labeled "Natural," it was allowed to retain some of the flavors of the berry-like casing that the beans are hidden in on the coffee plant. Due to the unique properties I'd experienced thus far, the Konga had already become my favorite of the three.


Having broken the crust, taken detailed notes on the scents of each coffee (descriptions of these as well as our other offerings can be found in our upcoming newsletter/availability chart) and cleared any floating bits off the surface with our spoons, we were left with something that looked a lot more like a typical cup of coffee.


After allowing the coffee to cool a bit further, we started tasting. Actually, a better description of what we were doing would be "slurping." In order to properly deliver the coffee to every single taste bud at once, one is required to (loudly) slurp so the liquid reaches even the most remote regions of the tongue.

When tasting, the goal is to identify four different factors; acidity, body, flavor, and aftertaste.  Acidity is measured on something of a scale from high to low, and is the easier of the four. Body, being the physical characteristics of the drink, is also ranked from high to low. Bobby explained to me that body can best be compared to milk; you can taste a heavier body in whole milk and a lighter body in skim. The flavor aspect uses the same wheel as before, and is similarly difficult to pick up on without practice. Aftertaste, the final piece of this complex puzzle, comes as a combination of both the immediate experience after tasting and the lasting impression of the coffee as the taster continues breathing normally.

We finished our notes, cleaned our cups, and briefly discussed our findings that will later be published for Fortuna's customers to reference. And that was cupping.

I obviously need a lot of practice, but I'm excited that I was able to detect certain scents and flavors that I had never known coffee could even contain. Thanks to an open mind and an extremely knowledgeable roaster, this was an experience that I won't forget. I'm looking forward to participating in future cuppings and developing my palate beyond "this tastes like coffee!"


- Griffin Thomas
Social Media & Publications Specialist
Fortuna Enterprises, LLC

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