Exploring coffee tastes is an enjoyable pastime that takes you beyond the simple 'relax in a chair with a cup' and into a world of delicate aromas, evocative descriptions, and noisy slurping.
While there’s certainly no need to try to emulate professional testers and roasters to simply enjoy your coffee, there’s plenty to enjoy from cupping coffee. Through it you can develop your palate, compare blends and roasts, and discover your favourite coffees - truly enhancing your experience.
At Niche Coffee, we love delving a little deeper into the craftsmanship of coffee creation. Join us as we explore the art of coffee tasting at home.
What cupping coffee is and why it matters
In the coffee industry, cupping is the primary method used to quantify coffee flavours and qualities. It is used to separate the good from the bad and has been the adopted approach for approximately 100 years. Professionals use the coffee cupping process to generate an overall score. This score is used by buyers to determine if this bean or blend is worth their time.
But that’s at a high professional level where it can get very detailed and serious.
At a home brewing level, cupping coffee allows you to explore the different coffees available to you, developing your sense of taste so that you can select the types of coffee you truly enjoy and providing a technique to compare coffees. There’s no need for a score sheet or to try to learn the language of top baristas – though you are certainly welcome to do so. Home coffee cupping is about getting a little more from your coffee by developing your hobby.
Importantly, coffee cupping provides a neutral ground to evaluate the coffee, eliminating variables from the brewing technique to ensure the comparison is done cleanly – you’re tasting the coffee itself, not your brewing style.
In this guide, we’re going to focus a little more on method and a little less on the specifics of taste – giving you the instruction and techniques you need to compare coffees in the kitchen without going overboard on floral language. Once we’re through, you’ll have the skills and knowledge you need to make your next coffee selection an informed choice based on taste and quality – not just a review and appreciation of quality packaging.
What you need for coffee tasting at home
Coffee cupping doesn’t require a range of complicated equipment – if anything it’s one of the simplest ways to brew coffee possible. You will need:
Coffee beans
While it goes without saying that you need some coffee, it’s worth delving into what coffee and how much. Coffee cupping is a comparison exercise where you evaluate each coffee by spending time exploring how it tastes and feels on the tongue. When you compare multiple coffees, you develop a better baseline for evaluation. Too many, of course, can quickly become overwhelming, so it’s important to set a reasonable limit.
At Niche Coffee, we like to cup between three and five different varieties at a time. Two is perfectly reasonable, providing a clear contrast between your chosen coffees, but more than five and it can start to feel more like a chore than a fun exercise.
When cupping we like to test between three and five different varieties at a time. Two is perfectly reasonable, providing a clear contrast between your chosen coffees, but more than five and it can start to feel more like a chore than a fun exploration.
A Niche grinder
An accurate, zero-retention grinder is a key piece of equipment for a good coffee cupping session. You will be grinding precise quantities of different beans, and you really don’t want contamination between grinds. Zero retention means no delay in cleaning out the grinder – you can grind and go with each sample.
With a Niche Zero or Niche Duo (preferably with the filter burrs when doing cupping), you are assured that clean, uniform grind that makes a comparison test fair. With the dial set precisely, you can go ahead with the confidence that there’s no variation skewing the results. Clean, perfectly ground coffee every time.
Grinding should be done to a coarse level, similar to French Press brewing. For a Niche Zero, this means a setting between 35 and 40 on the dial. For the Niche Duo, around 40-45. Want to learn more about how to dial in your grinder? Check that our here.
Water
Like beans, water is an obvious ingredient, but it’s also worth taking a few thoughts into consideration. Water for cupping should be filtered and soft to improve clarity. Hard water may introduce minerals to the brew, muddying the flavour and throwing your results off slightly.
It’s also important to use the same water for every cup. Boil the kettle with enough in it for the whole cupping to avoid variance. A temperature controlled kettle is also very important, as you want your water to be around 93ºC for brewing.
Spoons
You’ll use a few spoons during your cupping, but they don’t need to be special. While you can buy dedicated cupping spoons (many of which are very nice), an everyday dessert spoon is perfectly serviceable. There’s no magic here – just a utensil to get the coffee from cup to mouth.
Scales
Measurements are key, as precision is an essential part of coffee cupping. Scales should be accurate to at least one-tenth of a gram – most digital kitchen scales are perfect.
’Cups’ or bowls
The coffee cups that professionals use are handleless bowls that hold 250ml of coffee – and of course these are perfect if you have some. However, a heatproof glass or even a simple mug is also sufficient.
Cupping at home is made a lot easier if your cups are of an exactly similar size, as you do not need to scale your recipe to ensure each brew matches, but it’s not essential, and the quick maths to do that scaling is unlikely to be a strain.
Make sure you plan for both the water and the coffee in the cup – you want it to reach the top but not overspill. 200ml of water and 12g of coffee is a good ratio to fit into a 250ml vessel – so if your mug holds 400ml, for example, this can be scaled up to 350ml of water and 21g of coffee.
Make sure you have one cup per sample, plus one or two to the side with clean water that you can use to rinse your spoons between tastes.
Preparing for your coffee cupping
Before the actual tasting, it’s important to get things right – after all, while cupping coffee is an enjoyable activity, it also benefits from a scientific approach.
- The ratio of coffee to water - Home coffee cupping is best done with slightly weaker coffee than you might normally drink. This makes the tasting easier and stops your palate from becoming overwhelmed – especially when you are tasting multiple coffees back-to-back. We recommend a ratio of 60g per litre, which equates to 12g of coffee in 200ml of water, up to 18g in 300ml if your cups are slightly larger. Remember, it doesn’t matter if all your cups don’t match in size, but the ratio for each should be identical.
- Identical coarse grinds - You want the delay between grinding and brewing to be as short as possible so the coffee doesn’t spoil even slightly, so don’t grind early! With a Niche Zero or Duo, you can efficiently grind moments before adding water, but if you are using a grinder with significant retention, you should clean it out between grinds to avoid contamination. In the absence of a quality zero-retention grinder, a hand grinder can actually be an effective alternative. Make sure your grind is coarse as described above and – importantly – identical in size. Weigh before and afterwards to ensure accuracy to within 0.1g (i.e., 11.9g to 12.1g).
- Line up your cups – Make sure you have your clean and dry cups all ready – one for each coffee. Line these up on the work surface and mark or label them accordingly so you know which is which.
- Extra cups on hand to rinse – It’s a good idea to have a couple of cups of clean water to rinse your spoons as you go. This helps you focus on the cupping.
- Your notebook – Have your notebook or equivalent to hand so that you can jot down your thoughts throughout the coffee cupping experience.
- Timer – Making sure you brew for the exact time is another scientific accuracy worth adhering to. A timer helps here.
- Scales – measuring both coffee grounds and water is important.
- Pop the kettle on – You want to add water a little off the boil – 94° is perfect. Boil the kettle when you’re ready to begin.
Step-by-step coffee tasting at home
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Savour the dry aroma - Ground coffee has a wonderful smell, so take a moment once ground to breathe in and delight in this. Professionals will take this opportunity to note some key aromas, but don’t worry about that for your home experience. It’s enough to enjoy the moment and maybe scribble down anything that forms in your mind.
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Pour the water - With the cup on the scales, pour the water to add the desired volume (200ml to 12g of coffee) and start your timer for four minutes. This gives the coffee time to bloom and brew. During this short break, you can grind and brew the next cup along.
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Break the crust and smell - Once the coffee is bloomed, the crust will form on the top. This should be ‘broken’ and removed:
1. Make three uniform strokes through the cup with the spoon, releasing the coffee aroma.
2. Draw in the scent, leaning down into the cup to breathe in the wonderful smells – again, you can note down what you feel and think at this stage.
3. Use two spoons to scoop off the remaining crust foam from the top and discard in a spare cup. Drop the spoons in a prepared rinsing cup.
With this done, you have experienced the initial aroma of the brew and have a clear coffee for the tasting. - Allow the coffee to cool - Give the coffee eight minutes to cool. Too hot and you won’t really taste the flavours – you’re more likely to burn your tongue. While the coffee is cooling, you can move on to break the crust of the next one, returning here later.
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The slurp - The wonderful tasting part at last! Coffee cuppers like to slurp their coffee, making a great deal of noise while sounding like a toddler having a drink. This isn’t just tradition, but it serves the important purpose of getting a spray of oxygenated coffee in your mouth. As you slurp, the air mixes with the coffee to fill your whole mouth for a brighter, wider taste experience.
- Explore the taste - Give it a moment to settle and then give your mind over to thinking about how the coffee tastes. Again, there’s no need to strive for any specific words here, just enjoy the coffee and note down the tastes it evokes for you. These might be familiar words, such as ‘caramel’, ‘strawberry’, or ‘acidic’, or they might be a little more personal for you. There’s nothing wrong with writing ‘tastes like the garden’ or ‘reminds me of cold apple pie’ - everything and anything is perfectly acceptable.
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Clean your palate and move on - You may want to take a quick drink of clean water to reset your tastes before continuing. Move on to the next coffee and enjoy a slurp and taste there.
- Continue as the coffees cool - The tastes will continue to blossom as the coffee cools in the cup, sometimes growing stronger, othertimes changing. Don’t be surprised if your impressions of each coffee evolve over the cupping experience. Keep making notes and comparing the different brews as the coffee cools over the next half an hour. There’s no rush!
Comparing the coffees
Your coffee cupping complete, return to your notes and see how you felt about each coffee. You might have written things like ‘I enjoy number 2 more than the others’ or ’this one tastes a bit like dirt’. Not every coffee is for every drinker and the purpose of the home coffee cupping experience is to enjoy yourself and discover the blends and beans you do like.
Try comparing thoughts such as light roasts vs. medium or dark ones, counties of origin, blends vs. single origin, etc. There’s a vast variety out there to explore and experience.
Developing your taste
Your first time cupping coffee is unlikely to result in a professional understanding that aligns with your favourite coffee tasting YouTuber or local barista. However, over time, you’ll gain in the experience needed to put certain words to specific tastes, developing both your palate and the language coffee professionals use - but there’s no need for that in the early days.
As with all things coffee, at Niche Coffee, we recommend experimentation and enjoyment, simply doing it because you love to do so. There’s no need to turn your love of coffee into a chore - that’s why we invented a grinder that makes everything so simple. Take a look at the Niche Zero or Niche Duo, premium zero-retention grinders that take the work out of coffee cupping.
All that’s left is to clean up, choose the coffee that impressed you the most, brew up, and relax. Fantastic!
