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Coffee cup testing process steps and tasting projects are shared! Flavor tasting content of high-quality coffee beans

Published: 2026-05-29 Author:

Last Updated: 2026/05/29, As the number of people exposed to fine coffee has gradually grown in recent years, many coffee shops have held various coffee-related sharing meetings or cup testing meetings, with the purpose of increasing exchanges and allowing everyone to better understand coffee. But because many of my friends are just getting started, the operation of these things may be

As the number of people exposed to fine coffee has gradually grown in recent years, many coffee shops have held various coffee-related sharing meetings or cup testing meetings, with the purpose of increasing exchanges and allowing everyone to better understand coffee. But because many of my friends are just getting started, the operation of these things may be relatively unfamiliar. For example, when a friend was buying beans at Qianjie store yesterday, he asked Qianjie about the specific cup testing process: What should I do at the cup testing meeting and how to do it?

So today, Qianjie will come to share with you what are the links when participating in the cup test, and then what we will do.

What is a cup test? I just shared with you not long ago that the so-called cup testing is a common way to test the quality of coffee beans. This method is usually used by raw bean merchants, roasted bean merchants or coffee shops when testing the quality or taste of coffee beans in large quantities. It is not only simple and convenient to operate, but also reduces human interference to the greatest extent, allowing us to better taste the full picture of beans. The following is the cup measuring table that will be used during Qianjie cup testing. Although everyone basically won't use it when participating in cup testing meetings online, from this cup testing table, we can see the process of cup testing and the items that require us to taste during the cup testing process.

The first one-third of the cup meter is observed by looking and smelling, including the roasting degree of coffee beans, the dry aroma of coffee powder, and the wet aroma emitted by adding water; the last two-thirds are items we need to taste from coffee. It has the cleanliness, sweetness, acidity, taste, flavor, aftertaste and balance of coffee. Then finally there is the sum of the overall evaluation. But as said in front of Qianjie, because most of the cup testing meetings we conduct offline are for communication and sharing, we don't need to use the cup testing table to score. Just understand a project that needs to be judged.

In order to better understand, Qianjie will use two different coffee beans to demonstrate and conduct the specific process of cup testing and the content that needs to be tasted. They are the Front Street Panamanian Poquet Rose Summer in the Front Street Doudou List, and the Red Label Rose Summer in the Front Street Ethiopian Rose Summer Village. The cup measurement parameters are as follows: powder amount 12g, powder and water ratio 1:16, water temperature 94°C, soaking time 4 minutes. The cup testing process is divided into four parts! The first part is to observe the appearance of the bean, its size, baking, and variety characteristics. It can be said to first get to know the general appearance of the bean. Although the two beans used in Qianjie are both rose summer, the former is a classic Panamanian rose summer, and the latter is a native rose summer in Ethiopia, so there will be certain differences in appearance between the two. This is what we can observe in the first part of the cup test.

The second part of the cup test is to taste the dried aroma! In this part, the coffee beans are ground into powder, and then we need to get closer to smell the dry aroma of the coffee powder and identify a general flavor characteristic. During the dry fragrance session, Qianjie smelled a strong white flower fragrance from the rose summer in Poquet on Qianjie Street, with a sour aroma similar to berries, a sweet aroma of apricots, and clean tea; while in the red label rose summer in Qianjie Village, you smelled the sour aroma of citrus and pineapple fruits, which also had the aroma of berries, and a tea aroma similar to oolong tea.

The third part of the cup test is to taste the wet aroma! In this step, we need to inject a suitable amount of 94°C hot water into the cup to start extracting the coffee, so at this time we can start to smell the moist aroma of the coffee after coming into contact with the hot water. Compared with the dry aroma, the wet aroma of coffee will be less obvious, so people may need to move closer and inhale harder when smelling it.

The last thing is tasting! After soaking for 4 minutes, we can start to break the dregs and taste the coffee. The content of the tasting is the items displayed in the cup test table, the sweetness, acidity, taste, etc. of the coffee...

Take Qianjie as an example: In this round of cup tests, Front Street Poquet Rose Summer showed a high degree of cleanliness. It tasted a balance of sweet and sour taste, high sweetness, and good acidity. You can obviously drink citrus, jasmine, apricot peaches, honey, green tea, the taste is full and smooth, with a long and lasting finish. The overall evaluation is very good; The cleanliness of Hongbiao Guixia Village in Qianjie is also very high. The taste is mainly sweet and sour, with excellent acidity and high sweetness. You can obviously drink the flavors of pineapple, citrus, strawberry and rose. The overall taste is smooth and light, with a lasting aftertaste, and the overall evaluation is also very good.

So, the above is the entire process we will go through and the content that needs to be tasted at the cup testing meeting. In a simple summary, we will see, smell, and drink, and that's all. But what everyone needs to note is that if there are many coffee beans tested in cups, then we can easily experience olfactory fatigue during the process, or it is difficult to drink coffee flavor. So if you have olfactory fatigue, we can smell the taste of our body before smelling the coffee beans to refresh our sense of smell; and if we can't drink the flavor, then we can drink a sip of water before tasting the coffee to "refresh" the mouth, and combine it with sipping to amplify the flavor capture, so that we can better taste the coffee ~

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FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou China, selling freshly roasted beans from its own farm in Yunnan as well as dozens of carefully selected single-origin beans from around the world for both pour-over and espresso. The products deliver consistently excellent quality and great value, with shipping within 24 hours. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers, and the beans are now available online at the Tmall 。