{"id":59417,"date":"2023-03-21T07:00:54","date_gmt":"2023-03-21T05:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/koffietcacao.com\/blog\/coffee-cupping-what-how-and-why\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T21:23:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T19:23:53","slug":"coffee-cupping-what-how-and-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/koffietcacao.com\/en\/blog\/coffee-cupping-what-how-and-why\/","title":{"rendered":"Coffee cupping: what, how, and why?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Coffee cupping is almost indispensable for professionals\u2014whether they\u2019re baristas, roasters, importers, or producers. It\u2019s time to dive deeper into this ritual. Because what exactly is cupping? And why do you do it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Cupping involves evaluating coffee based on its scent, aroma, flavor, mouthfeel, and aftertaste. This doesn\u2019t involve drinking espresso or cappuccino, but rather sipping with a spoon. It\u2019s a standardized form of coffee tasting<\/a> and is conducted the same way all over the world. You essentially eliminate the variables that come into play when brewing coffee, which makes it possible to compare coffees more accurately. <\/p>\n\n

How does cupping work?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

Freshly ground coffee<\/a> is placed in small bowls, and hot water is poured over it. Usually, there are several bowls per coffee on the table to check for consistency. If the same coffee varies from bowl to bowl, this may be a sign that the coffee was not processed consistently. <\/p>\n\n

Dit brouwsel laat men een tijdje trekken zodat de koffie al zijn smaken kan afgeven. In die tijd komt een deel van de koffie samen met de onoplosbare stoffen naar de oppervlakte drijven. Vier minuten na het opschenken wordt deze ‘korst\u2019 gebroken met een lepel en het resterende schuim afgeschept. <\/p>\n\n

After letting it cool for a few more minutes, the coffee is ready to be tasted. This is done using a cupping spoon. By scooping up a small amount of coffee with it, everyone avoids having to put their lips to the same cup. By rinsing the spoon in between, you prevent flavors from one cup from influencing the next. Nowadays, the \u201cdouble spooning\u201d technique is often used, where you use one spoon to scoop up coffee, pour it into a second spoon, and taste it from that second spoon. This way, the spoon that has touched your lips doesn\u2019t come into contact with the water you\u2019re sharing with others. <\/p>\n\n

Coffee cupping is often accompanied by a lot of noise: slurping. Just like with wine tasting, slurping allows more oxygen to mix with the coffee and helps it spread across all your taste buds. In theory, this allows you to taste more, but be careful not to force it, because then the drink might go down the wrong way and you won\u2019t taste much at all! <\/p>\n\n

Why?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

You can cup coffee for all sorts of different reasons. As an exporter or importer, you usually cup coffees to compare different microlots, describe their flavors, and assign scores. <\/p>\n\n

As a roaster, cuppings are part of quality control: do different batches of the same coffee taste the same? It can also be used to check the quality of newly arrived coffee and, if necessary, compare it to a sample from a few weeks or months ago. <\/p>\n\n

As a (home) barista, you can cup coffee not only to check its quality, but also to get to know all aspects of the coffee. That way, you\u2019ll know exactly what flavors you can find in the coffee, allowing you to determine which brewing method\u2014and perhaps even which recipe\u2014would be best. <\/p>\n\n

What do you need for cupping?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

Basically, cupping is pretty simple to do on your own. All you need is a small bowl, a coffee grinder, hot water, a scale, and coffee. Measure the capacity of your bowl beforehand: a 200-ml bowl will likely hold about 180 ml of water if you fill it to the brim with coffee and water. Base your coffee dosage on this. The rule of thumb is always 60 g of coffee per liter, so in this case, 11 g of coffee should be sufficient. <\/p>\n\n

You can grind the coffee fairly finely\u2014a bit like when you make a single cup of filter coffee. Put the ground coffee in the bowl, fill the bowl with water that\u2019s just come off the boil, and let it steep. After 4 minutes, break up the crust with a spoon and use two spoons to skim off the remaining foam. Let the coffee cool for a moment, then enjoy! <\/p>\n\n

How do you practice your cupping skills?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

Cupping is a great way to learn how to taste coffee better, because this brewing method allows you to taste all the flavor aspects. It\u2019s also not as intense as, say, an espresso, which makes it easier to detect the subtle notes. To get better at this, there\u2019s only one thing to do: cup very often. <\/p>\n\n

While cupping, try to write down everything you taste. You can describe flavors as \u201cpeach\u201d or \u201cchocolate,\u201d but you can also simply note that the coffee tastes creamy or, conversely, fresh. Anything goes, and you\u2019ll find that over time you\u2019ll become more and more confident in describing flavors. What you initially thought was sweet, you\u2019ll later find to be fruity; then it\u2019ll taste like peach; and eventually, you\u2019ll be discussing the difference in flavor between wild peaches and nectarines. <\/p>\n\n

Try tasting your coffee with acoffee flavor wheel<\/em> next to you. Who knows\u2014it might inspire you to find the right words to describe the flavors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cupping is a standardized method of coffee tasting. But why do people actually do it? And how does it work?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5222,4713],"tags":[5526,5529,5533,5527,5528,5032,5525,5531,5530,4662,5532],"class_list":["post-59417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coffee-2","category-tutorials","tag-coffee-cupping","tag-coffee-flavor","tag-coffee-flavor-wheel","tag-coffee-tasting-2","tag-compare-coffee","tag-cupping","tag-cupping-2","tag-cupping-spoon","tag-flavors","tag-specialty-coffee","tag-what-is-cupping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/koffietcacao.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/koffietcacao.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/koffietcacao.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koffietcacao.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koffietcacao.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59417"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/koffietcacao.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59471,"href":"https:\/\/koffietcacao.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59417\/revisions\/59471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koffietcacao.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/koffietcacao.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koffietcacao.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koffietcacao.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}