What is coffee tasting? How to carry out "cup test" Cupping, cup test practical parameters

In the world of coffee, what is tasting coffee? This is a very important part of the coffee professional world. Tasting coffee is more than just drinking it. Tasting coffee can be to taste the flavor, mellow thickness, dry fragrance, wet fragrance, sour quality. And this feeling, only to really drink, to try, to continue to accumulate, can really learn how to taste.

The usual way to taste coffee in the coffee industry is the "cup test" (Cupping). And the professionals in charge of this link accordingly, we call them "cup testers". This is a very non-mainstream technical profession for the mainstream industry. Often cup testers need years of training and efforts as well as long-term accumulation in order to form an accurate judgment of everything. The most powerful cup tester I have ever come into contact with, while testing 10 kinds of raw beans, sucking them quickly (this concept is the basic concept of cup testing will be explained later). You can immediately tell whether a type of coffee has been roasted with problems or defective beans have affected the flavor, how long it has been kept in the warehouse, from which producing area in which country, or even which batch from that ship. See?

Why is it more reliable to taste coffee by cup test? Friends who have come into contact with some coffee should know that coffee made from different utensils, the same coffee cooked beans will have a completely different effect. With different methods, the results are not the same. So in order to get an accurate conclusion of coffee flavor, which is not disturbed by extraction mode and human factors, it is necessary for us to adopt a uniform brewing method that will not affect coffee flavor: cup test.

Why can the cup test give us a uniform and accurate answer? Because the cup test is to use a quantitative cup to measure the bowl, appropriate grinding degree, fixed moisture ratio (1VR 0.055), specify the water temperature within the scope, directly brew for 4 minutes, pick up the slag, and then test the cup. In this brewing process, there is no influence factor of any utensils, and the human factor can be eliminated as much as possible to taste the coffee itself.

Where do cup testers often appear in the coffee industry? Usually, the manor of the country of origin has a cup tester to carry out the quality of coffee raw bean planting, picking and processing; the raw bean buyers of coffee raw bean trading companies need to have judgment on the purchased raw beans because of the need of work, so they may be cup testers; at the same time, among traders, the mature category will also have special quality control departments to carry out Quality Control quality control of coffee raw bean samples and goods coming to Hong Kong. In some large instant groups, there will also be cup testers. However, since instant solution mainly uses Robusta raw beans, the cup tester of this kind of company is different from other links, except for the skills of Q Arabica, what must be necessary is Q Robsta Grader.

However: in fact, most of the cafes you know or roasters, they are not really very professional in tasting. In view of the fact that Chinese consumers have not yet grown up to that stage, so many links are muddling along. It is often said that there are flowers, fruit, salty, spice and caramel chocolate in the coffee. Is it true or is it the emperor's new clothes? It's true! And Africa, Central America, South America, Southeast Asia. Different regions have completely different flavors. But it cannot be generalized to say that Africa is wild, excellent in acidity, rising in aroma, rich in layers and excellent in sweetness in Guatemala and Costa Rica in China and the United States, and Body in Indonesia. Different manors of micro-batches and special treatment, often many of the most professional cup surveyors may not be able to tell.

Cup test preparation:

The ratio of water to water: 8.2 Murray 8.3 grams of coffee beans with 150ml water, the ratio of water to powder is 1 to 18.18, and the water temperature should be 94 °C.

Cup test cup: toughened glass or ceramic materials should be used

Cup test capacity: between 207ml and 266ml

Cup mouth diameter: 76-89mm, all cups should be made of the same volume, size and material

Cup test spoons: to use antistatic metal material (mostly stainless steel), each spoon capacity can have 4-5ml.