Cupping — the industry's standard tasting method

Cupping is the standardized method the specialty coffee industry uses to evaluate and compare coffees fairly. A simplified general outline: coffee is ground fresh immediately before cupping, one bowl per sample, using the same grind size and coffee-to-water ratio across every sample so the comparison is fair. The dry grounds are smelled first, before any water touches them.

Hot water just off the boil is then poured directly onto the grounds and left undisturbed for a fixed steep — commonly around four minutes — which forms a crust of grounds on the surface. That crust is broken with a spoon while smelling the wet aroma it releases, then the floating grounds and foam are skimmed off the surface. Once the cup has cooled enough to taste safely, the taster slurps a spoonful with some force to aerate the coffee across the palate, evaluating fragrance/aroma, flavor, aftertaste, acidity, body, balance, and overall impression — often against a standard scoring sheet.

A sample's character keeps shifting as it cools, so professional cupping deliberately tastes each one at several temperatures rather than once. The same underlying habits — smell before tasting, taste at more than one temperature, aerate to spread the coffee across the palate — are useful even informally, for quality-checking a batch or comparing two bags side by side.