Brewing Guides
Coffee Cupping
Cupping is an excellent way of tasting several coffees side-by-side. Professionals use cupping for quality control, choosing a coffee to purchase and for improving their sensory skills. Coffee Rambler believes it's a fun way for learning more about coffee and what exactly it is you like. There's much to learn about yourself in cupping too.
As coffee is tasted side-by-side, it is very important not to add to the variables; everything must be kept the same in the brewing process. This means water temperature, grind size and coffee weight, pouring style and displacement of wet grounds. This way, we can give each coffee a fair tasting.
There are more protocols than this guide provides in a professional setting but we want to taste coffee here to further our own learning. This is a great way to practice your sensory skills and understand coffee more deeply.
- Brew time
- 4 minutes
- Brew Ratio
- 1:17-1:19
- Water Temp
- 95C
Remember these are guidelines, experimentation is encouraged.
You'll need...
- Cups
- Spoons
- Kettle
- Drip Scales
- Timer
- Stirrer
- 1
Setup
Setting up first is important so that pouring of water is efficient. Use any set of cups (cups all of same size and shape to reduce brew variables). Cups that hold 200ml or have measurement markings are best for speed of pouring. If not, use scales to learn how much water the cups hold.
Use a ratio of 1:16 to 1:19. Coffee Rambler uses 9g to 150ml of water or 12g to 200ml if there are more people. That's 1:16.67. SCA standards recommend 1:18.18
Set up extra empty cups for removal of surface grounds and cups of hot water for rinsing spoons.
- 2
Grind coffee & boil water
Grind the different coffees with a burr grinder. When changing coffee, throw in a few beans of the next one to clear out the burrs of the previous coffee. This is to reduce contamination of flavours. Once each coffee of equal weight has been ground, cover to limit exposure to oxygen. Coffee is said to lose 60% of its aromas after 15 minutes of grinding. Boil your low mineral content water.
Grind fairly coarse as the grinds will be fairly immersed.
- 3
Pour and wait
Once the coffee is shortly off the boil it is time to pour. The technique is important here for speed and repetition.
Pour the water quickly and slightly off centre to create a vortex. This soaks all grounds evenly, meaning you don't have to chase the coffee and introduce a variable i.e. agitation.
Once reaching the desired level in the cup, quickly move the next cup and repeat. Then wait for 4 minutes.