Does Coffee Cupping Create Specialty Coffee? How Does the Flavor Wheel Help in Coffee Cupping?

In the world of coffee, two craftspeople define this unique product: the roaster and the professional barista. With fire, the roasting machine transforms dry green beans into something completely different. The barista, with knowledge and experience, "brews" the roasted beans, extracting aromas in pour-over coffee and creating the perfect cup.

First, anyone can become a good taster. Second, the perfect tool for improving your coffee-tasting map is something called cupping. FrontStreet Coffee believes many people have heard of wine tasting or tea tasting - today we are going to talk about coffee tasting.

What is Coffee Cupping?

Cupping is one of the foundations of producing specialty coffee. It is an independent activity conducted worldwide to evaluate the quality of coffee beans. Similar to wine tasting, cupping evaluates coffee from several angles: visual analysis, aroma, texture, and taste.

The method also requires some tools: sample roasters, grinders, special cups, an electric kettle, water glasses, tasting spoons, and sometimes even a colorimeter to determine the degree of roast.

In short, cupping is a way to truly understand a specific coffee. Ultimately, you will thoroughly feel and understand the coffee from bean to brewing cup.

For a barista or avid coffee enthusiast, it is a noteworthy experience worth discussing in detail.

How Does Cupping Help?

Tasting coffee better - or tasting anything better - helps all of us understand what we consume daily.

Generally, cupping is used by roasters to judge bean quality, by cafe owners to select the best coffees, and by baristas to better experience coffee and improve its taste.

It can also be a unique way to benchmark your wine- and coffee-tasting knowledge - and it is the perfect way to pick your favorite beans.

So how do you taste coffee?

As mentioned, it requires some tools, though having all of them is not mandatory. Let's keep it simple and cover only the basics.

Quick tip: you need at least 3 different coffees for a cupping, or at least the same coffee roasted in 3 different ways.

Cupping Equipment:

Cupping cups or glasses. Glass or ceramic vessels are recommended, between 207-266 ml, with matching lids.

Ground coffee. It should be slightly coarser than what you would use for paper-filter drip brewing, and every sample should be ground to the same size.

Water at 93°C/200°F. Use clean, odorless water, but not distilled or softened. The ideal TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) is 125-175 ppm, and it should not fall below 100 ppm or exceed 250 ppm.

Timer. It is important not to let the grounds steep for more than 5 minutes.

Spoons. A few deep spoons will suffice.

Warm water. This really matters: after each tasting you must rinse the spoon before the next sample.

Lids. Each cup needs a lid; a small plate will do.

Cupping Preparation

Arrange the cups of ground coffee in a row on the table, and place a card in front of each cup describing the coffee so you can better track your preferences.

Then set out glasses of warm water for rinsing spoons and an extra glass for the removed crust. Prepare the spoons and timer.

Pour the water carefully over the grounds and start a 4-minute timer, placing a lid on each cup.

After 4 minutes, break the crust and smell the aroma rising off the coffee. Try to memorize it - you will need it to evaluate the cup. Write down whatever you notice each time.

Skim the crust off into the dedicated discard glass. Now comes the fun part: tasting.

Take a clean spoon, scoop a spoonful, and slurp. For the best read, aspirate - draw air through the coffee while it sits on your tongue, spraying it across your palate. You are essentially volatilizing the aromatics as you taste.

Yes, it is loud - but it is the best way to find the notes.

For a truly thorough analysis, taste the coffee at its peak (around 5 minutes) and again at 10 and 15 minutes to see how it evolves and how the notes change.

Take notes for each cup, and rinse your mouth with cool, fresh water between cups to keep your palate clean.

How to Taste Coffee Flavors

First, variety and processing method are key: washed and naturally processed coffees have very different taste profiles.

Now let's look at the main criteria and the correct way to describe them.

Taste. This covers the basic tastes perceived on the tongue: sweet, salty, stimulating, nutty, buttery, spicy, woody, fruity, wine-like, astringent, honey-like, malty, velvety, and so on.

Body. Judged by the tactile sensation in the mouth: weak, watery, full, rich, and so on.

Acidity. This describes the effect of fruit acids during tasting. It is characterized as lively and versatile, and can be sour, fruity, citric, and so on.

Flavor. This evaluates the range of aromas and their interplay. It involves the nose - which is why coffee is sniffed and spread throughout the mouth during cupping. Descriptors include mild, strong, floral, rotten, roasted, smooth, creamy, sharp, ashy, smoky, medicinal, tobacco-like, fresh and lively, and more.

Aftertaste. This tells you how long the flavor lingers and whether it is pleasant.

Balance. This defines how all the criteria interact.

Most Common Considerations

Everyone can conclude what is good and what is unsatisfactory. But what are we looking for in a cup? Fresh taste and aroma, of course.

Good main notes include sweetness, nuttiness, chocolate, fruit, richness, freshness, and smoothness - each cup should generally show these positive qualities.

However, mistakes happen, and that is exactly why cupping exists: to make sure a coffee carries no bad flavors or tastes.

Considerations You Should Avoid

The SCAA flavor wheel is a handy reference here. Take acidity: there are different types, such as winey, hard, or rich acidity. Winey acidity can be a good sign in a cup, while harsh sourness is not.

Sweetness is another good example. It can be rich, crisp, or cloying - cloying sweetness is a bad sign, while crisp sweetness is a good one.

For aromas perceived through the nose, there are two broad families: enzymatic (floral, fruity, herbal) and dry-distillation (spicy, resinous, carbonized).

So if a coffee smells of flowers, that is a good sign; if it smells of charcoal, it is not.

In conclusion, good coffee is easy to spot once you cup regularly. Flavors like pepper, sourness, pipe tobacco, and spiciness should be avoided.

Meanwhile, notes like vanilla, walnut, apricot, tea rose, and coffee blossom are good signs - only well-grown, well-processed coffee produces them.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Once cupping has sharpened your palate, put it to work on a pour-over. The Hario V60 dripper is the classic choice: Hario, a Tokyo glassware maker founded in 1921, redesigned the V60 in 2004 around its signature 60-degree cone angle and V-shaped ribs, and released it a year later. The cone forces water to flow toward the center before dripping through, extending contact time for fuller extraction, while the single large outlet lets flow rate depend entirely on your pour control. FrontStreet favors the resin version, which holds heat well and is the most precisely molded in mass production.

For light-roast, floral-and-fruity coffees that shine in a V60, FrontStreet recommends the Yirgacheffe Idido (bright citrus, berries, florals, and a green-tea finish), the natural Ethiopia Huakui (strawberry, passion fruit, jackfruit, even lychee, with almost no bitterness), Panama Esmeralda Red Label Geisha (elegant jasmine, citrus, bergamot, and black tea with a long, clean finish), and Kenya Cherry Tomato from Thika (1550-1750 meters, SL28 and SL34, 72-hour double-washed fermentation, light roasted for vivid cherry-tomato and damson acidity with yellow-sugar sweetness).

If your palate leans toward the darker, heavier end - as in a cupping of dark-roast samples - FrontStreet's PWN Indonesian Golden Mandheling offers low acidity, thick body, herbal and dark-chocolate aromas with a faint earthiness, and Brazil Queen Estate beans deliver balanced, nutty, caramel-sweet cups through pour-over, espresso, or moka pot.