Cuppings. They’re the primary way that we in the coffee industry taste and evaluate coffee. A cupping is a coffee tasting where participants sample a few different types of coffee side-by-side, evaluating the quality and intensity of the coffee’s various attributes. Tasting multiple coffees at the same time can be helpful in comparing and contrasting the coffees. If you were to sample the same coffees individually, you would probably lack the ability to notice subtle differences between the coffees because the time in between sampling each coffee would be too long.

Cuppings were originally intended to simply evaluate the quality of a green coffee, but the industry has since used cuppings for a variety of purposes. Roasters will cup samples to make purchasing decisions. They also regularly cup their own coffees to check the quality of their roast profiles and figure out what they need to tweak to improve how they roast each coffee. But cuppings can also add a lot of value to your coffee shop with minimal effort and investment.

Continue reading this guide for:

Benefits of cupping for your shop

Cupping equipment and supplies list

Cupping step-by-step instructions

Benefits of cupping for your shop

Shops that don't regularly cup coffee are, in my opinion, missing out on a huge opportunity. And cupping really isn't difficult. After just a few times hosting a cupping, the process becomes as routine as making a latte. But to help you have the motivation you need to get started, here are some benefits of cupping that you might get as a coffee shop:

Cuppings help develop your team’s tasting ability

Regular tasting and analysis practice like a cupping can help your team develop their ability to taste coffee, analyze aspects (like flavor, acidity, body, aftertaste, taste balance, etc), and ascribe flavor descriptors, or at a minimum, flavor categories. I’ve seen this happen in my own journey.

At the first cupping I attended, I noticed very few differences between the coffees on the table and didn't get any of the flavors that other participants were describing. Honestly, I thought they were kind of crazy. But as time went on, I started to think things like, "Whoa, that seems like a blueberry." When another person at the cupping table got blueberry in that same coffee as well, it helped me to realize that my ability was increasing and it felt really good.

Cuppings can help you more quickly and easily calibrate coffee

Having a team with discerning palates is the key when calibrating coffee. This makes calibrating quicker and easier and can reduce waste during the process. When you are calibrating a minimum of once a day, reducing coffee waste even marginally can really add up over time.

Cuppings can facilitate building and deepening relationships with your community

Opening up cuppings to the public is a great way to get to know your community. As baristas, often our interactions with customers are limited to the few minutes (or sometimes seconds). A cupping, on the other hand, can last between 1 to 2 hours and allows you to build or deepen relationships with customers.

Cuppings help introduce your customers to specialty coffee

Encouraging learning, exploration, and skills development among your community will no doubt make for more satisfied customers. It's why people don't visit vineyards only to taste wine, but for the broader experience and opportunity to learn something new. A cupping is a really simple way to do this since it is cheap, simple, and quick to do in your existing coffee shop space using existing equipment and supplies.

Cuppings can help your customers understand their flavor preferences and connect them with right coffee

A customer attending a cupping of your shop's coffee offering will help them discern which coffees they really enjoy, and which ones aren't their cup of coffee (pun intended). This can encourage more repeat sales in the future.

Cuppings can generate additional revenue for your shop

While cuppings are often free, there is no reason why you couldn't charge for a cupping. Getting to drink multiple types of coffee, learning how to systematically taste, and hearing more about the coffee's story from crop-to-cup makes for an event from which attendees would easily get a lot of value as a paid event.

Cuppings can help you make better purchasing decisions

Coffee shop owners and operators are often tasked with having to choose coffees for their coffee shop. If your coffee changes periodically, cupping samples of coffee from your wholesaler will help you determine which new coffees will appeal to your target customer.

Cupping equipment and supplies list

Cupping bowls (minimum 2 for each type of coffee)

These are bowls that are all the same size. If you don’t have official cupping bowls, you can use any cups as long as they are the same size. Bowls that are specifically designed for cupping tend to be black or have a black inner color so that you can’t see a difference in the color of the coffee, which may cause bias when tasting.

Cupping spoons (one per participant)

Just like cupping bowls, there are spoons on the market that are specifically designed for cuppings. They have a round and deep bowl to allow you to scoop up the coffee and distribute the liquid across your palate. If you don’t have cupping spoons, rounded soup spoons can also work.

Roasted Coffee

This is the coffee that you will use for the cupping itself. The amount of coffee you will need will vary depending on how big your bowls are and how many bowls of each coffee you will have. The formula to calculate this is:

Cup capacity (ml) / 18 x number of cupping bowls = grams of coffee needed.

Be sure to add a couple of extra grams to run through the grinder in between grinding each coffee to clean the grinder of the previous coffee’s grounds.

Grinder

You can use an electric or manual grinder to grind coffee for a cupping. Because of the high quantity of coffee that you might need to grind, we recommend an electric burr grinder.

Water

The water used for a cupping should be according to the standard that water should be used for preparing coffee. There’s nothing worse than having a great coffee made bad by pour water quality. It might cause you to write off a coffee that is actually really tasty.

Water heating device

I recommend using a variable temperature kettle or a water boiler. This way you can set the water at the desired temperature for cupping. If you will have a lot of bowls, a boiler will be more efficient as it can dispense more hot water quicker. A variable temperature kettle is better for smaller cuppings unless you have a lot of kettles.

Glasses (Around 240ml / 8oz)

Some extra glasses can be used as rinse cups, drinking glasses, and a cup to put the coffee grounds that you skim off the top of the brewed coffee before tasting.

Napkins

Napkins will be placed on the table in between each type of coffee to allow you to tap excess water off of your spoon after rinsing. Any type of napkin or paper towel will do for this.

Flavor wheel

A flavor wheel can help you and other cupping participants pin-point what you are perceiving in the coffee. Check out the SCA Flavor Wheel, or alternative flavor wheels from CoffeeMind and jvcoffeehunter.

Cupping forms or app

When cupping, it’s important to have a quick and simple way to capture your observations about the coffees. Some people prefer a more analogue method such as a cupping form or a simple notebook and a pen, while others prefer an app-based solution like Cupping Lab.

Timer

These days, the timer you use will probably be your phone but you may prefer having a separate kitchen timer or using the built-in timer function in a coffee weighing scale.

Cupping step-by-step instructions

1. Decide how many bowls of each coffee you need.

This will be determined by the goal of your cupping and how many people will be participating. We always recommend having more than 1 bowl in case there are defects that ends up in one of the cups. Generally we recommend having the following bowls per number of participants:

1 - 6 participants: 2 bowls per coffee
7 - 12 participants: 3 bowls per coffee
13 - 20 participants: 4 bowls per coffee
20 - 25 participants: 5 bowls per coffee

2. Weigh out the coffee into the bowls.

Once you know how many grams of coffee you need in each bowl (see formula above), weigh out your beans into each bowl. This can and should be done in advance of the cupping itself to save time. Grinding the coffee should be saved until closer to the start time of your cupping.

3. Set the cupping table

Now you will arrange everything on the cupping table. You'll be grouping the bowls with the same coffee together and spacing out the groups apart to give space for people to move around and taste side-by-side.

In between each of the groups place a glass of clean hot water and a paper napkin for drying water off your spoon after rinsing. You can place the spoons in the glasses to prepare them for the tasting.

Finally, arrange the optional items on the table. Things like cupping forms and pens, printed flavor wheel diagrams, drinking water, etc.

4. Heat the water

You’ll then want to get your water to the temperature you will use for cupping or a bit higher and then hold it at that temperature so that it is ready for you to pour when you need it. Generally I use 93° C / 200° F water for cuppings. The water shouldn’t be hotter than that because the coffee is going to be sitting with the water for a long time and we don’t want your coffee to over-extract.

5. Grind the coffee (-15:00)

We want to preserve as much of the aromatic compounds as possible and so we don’t want to grind the coffee too far in advance. The general rule is that you should begin pouring water onto the the ground coffee within 15 minutes of grinding.

6. Assess the fragrance (-15:00 to 0:00)

During the time between grinding and brewing, participants will assess the fragrance of the ground coffee, assigning a score based on its intensity and quality. Generally, coffees score higher when their intensity is both high and good quality (which means pleasant and complex). The word fragrance is used in cuppings to describe the smell of the dry coffee grounds.

7. Add the water (0:00 - 4:00)

Once you have assessed the fragrance, it’s time to add hot water to the bowls. When pouring, start at one end and move in the same direction. Start the timer at the same time that you start pouring your first bowl. The goal is to pour the brew water neatly but quickly to minimize the time between the pours of your first and last bowls. You will then allow the coffee to brew until the timer reaches 4:00.

8. Break the crust and assess the aroma (4:00 - 8:00)

At the 4:00 minute mark, starting with the first bowl poured and moving towards the last, participants will break the crust (buoyant coffee particles that are floating on the top of the cup) while assessing the aroma of the brewed coffee at the same time. Breaking the crust will release trapped aromas. To break the crust, you use the back of the cupping spoon to break an opening in the crust, moving the spoon gently from the front to the back of the cup or in a circular motion. Like with the fragrance, you’ll assign a score to the coffee based on its intensity and quality. In cuppings the word aroma is used to describe the smell of the coffee after water has been added.

9. Skim the crust (8:00 - 10:00)

At around the 8:00 mark, it is time to skim the surface coffee. This is done to remove any remaining coffee particles that may still be floating on top of the coffee in preparation to taste the brew. Skimming the surface is done by using two cupping spoons to corral the coffee grounds towards one edge of the cupping bowl and then scoop the grounds out of the bowl into an empty cup. You should rinse your spoons between skimming each bowl. It takes a bit of practice to do this smoothly.

10. Taste and assess the coffee (10:00 onwards)

Now the fun part begins, when we actually get to taste the coffee. During this part of the cupping, you will taste each of the coffees many times as they cool from hot to warm. This will allow you to experience the coffee’s changing flavor as it moves through the various temperatures. It will also give you a chance to assess the various taste and tactile attributes that are looked at in a typical cupping. Attributes like:

Flavor
Aftertaste
Acidity
Body
Balance

Like with the fragrance and aroma, each of these attributes are given a score based on their intensity and quality, with more intense/higher quality attributes generally getting the higher scores.

11. Discuss your observations

Once you have completed your assessment of the coffee’s taste and tactile attributes, it’s time to discuss your observations. Ideally up until this point, you have kept your thoughts a secret (easier said than done). This will help prevent the problem of shaping another participants perception.

Usually when facilitating a discussion about the cupping, I like to ask participants:

Their observations for each of the attributes for each of the coffees one-at-a-time
The score that they gave the coffee
Which of the coffees was their most/least favorite on the table and why

And that’s it! Once you’ve completed this process, you have hosted a cupping. Congratulations! The process may feel like it has a lot of details to manage at first, but use this guide as an aid to help guide you through the process. Eventually it becomes like second nature. And remember, you don’t have to do it perfectly.

Does your cupping process look different than this? How would you like to see cupping protocols improved in the future? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.