Coffee Basics: What Characteristics Are Evaluated in Coffee Cupping? How Is Scoring Done?

What Is Coffee Cupping?

Cupping is the industry's standard method for tasting and judging coffee. Before a lot is bought, roasted, or put on a menu, it is scored on a fixed set of attributes so that different coffees can be compared on equal terms.

Aroma

How intense the aroma is when the coffee is brewed.

Body

The weight the coffee liquid has in the mouth.

Flavor

The taste the coffee delivers as it enters the mouth.

Acidity

Whether the coffee's acidity reads as bright and lively, or as sharp and dull.

Sweetness

How much sweetness lingers when the coffee is swirled around the mouth.

Aftertaste

The flavor and aroma that remain after the coffee has been tasted and spat out.

Professional bodies such as the SCAA (Specialty Coffee Association of America) and COE (Cup of Excellence) use far more detailed cupping forms. Beyond aroma, body, flavor, acidity, sweetness, and aftertaste, these forms also evaluate and score fragrance, uniformity, clean cup, mouthfeel, overall, taint, and fault.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Cupping is the fastest way to train your palate, and light-roasted, fruit-forward coffees make the attributes above easy to read. FrontStreet Coffee's Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Gudingding is a classic place to start: it shows clear citrus, berry, and floral notes with a green-tea-like sweetness, and its acidity is soft and fruit-like rather than sharp, so even a beginner can separate the sweetness and acidity lines on a cupping form.

If you want a more dramatic exercise, try FrontStreet Coffee's Ethiopia Huakui. Its tropical fruit aromas are unusually forward -- strawberry, passionfruit, jackfruit, and even lychee -- with high sweetness and very little bitterness, which makes the flavor and sweetness categories almost jump out of the cup.

For a brighter, more structured coffee, FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya Cherry Tomato is a light-roasted washed Kenyan from the Thika region, grown at 1,550-1,750 m from the SL28 and SL34 varieties and given a 72-hour double washed fermentation. Expect clean cherry-tomato and dark-plum acidity over a full, juice-like body -- a good test of how you judge acidity, sweetness, and clean cup.

Set your grinder to a medium-fine grind size, use water just off the boil, and keep the same dose, water, and ratio every time you cup so the only variable left is the coffee itself.