Posts Tagged ‘Cupping’

Posted on September 3, 2007 - by deCadmus

Rwanda’s Golden Cup — The Results Are In!

It’s Labor Day in these United States — a celebration of the working stiff, the last gasp of Summer — and to mark the event I’ll be… laboring on the garage. (sigh)

I can’t help but take a moment, however, to mark the outstanding results of Rwanda’s Golden Cup competition and auction. In a few short years Rwanda has emerged from its national nightmare to become an increasingly prominent player in the specialty coffee trade, and perhaps nothing to-date has marked this more significantly than the results of the events of the past few days.

The cupping jury has seen some phenomenal coffees, some scoring as high as 95 — even 98! — and the results of the auction itself are now in. The winning bidders? The usual suspects: Stumptown walks away with the top lot from the Muyongwe cooperative, at $25 per pound. Lots from Ngoma, Karaba and Kanzu fetched in the neighborhood of $15/lb. and winning bidders included Zoka, Counter Culture and Intelligentsia.

Look for some of these stunning coffees at a winning roaster — perhaps even before the turn of the year.

Posted on May 12, 2007 - by deCadmus

More Voices, More Views, More Coffee

Some updating to ye ol’ Blogroll is somewhat overdue, at least so far as the college of coffee blogs goes. There’s lots of interesting new voices out there — folks who are pushing the envelope on roasting, brewing, pulling shots and delivering an over-the-top customer experience — and at the same time making some of the old-guard “coffee men” raise their eyebrows, first in alarm, and then in appreciation for what they find in their cup.

• Stephen Morrissey is barista trainer at Bewleys Coffee Co in Dublin Ireland, and his site — Flying Thud — documents his adventures in coffee. Lots of espresso porn, of course, but he’s also a fan of the drip. His posts will make you pine for European coffee shops you’ve never been to.
• Barrett Jones is a Canadian national barista champ and until recently worked the bar at Vancouver’s most excellent Caffe Artigiano. His site — Dwell Time — offers a glimpse of the extraordinary Vancouver coffee scene.
• Stephen Leighton’s blog — Has Bean — offers the perspective of a coffee guy who sources and roasts some fairly stupendous coffees, which sadly I know by reputation, only. (The reputation is certainly deserved: UKBC winner James Hoffman poured his way to the top of competition with a Has Bean custom blend.) Stephen’s been known to drop by here from time to time to offer an insightful comment or two.
• And last but not least — Barismo — a Boston based group blog contributed to by Jaime, Ben, Ben and Silas. Their writing spans coffee roasting, cupping and delivering a top-tier coffee experience in the coffee house. Oh! And they have a shiny cool tamper design.

Go visit one and all. Frequently. Maybe they’ll each get the hint to post more often.

Posted on May 10, 2007 - by deCadmus

Accounting for Taste: A Model Major Article

The current issue of Roast Magazine features an informative and very well acquainted guide to experiencing the flavors and aromas of coffee, covering matters anatomical, physiological and — for good measure — psychological, too:

“Say you’re having a rotten dayâ€â€?everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, and you need to cup one final batch of samples before you can leave for the day. Well, you might think twice about cupping those samples, because there’s a good chance your mood will alter the way you perceive the coffee. Your senses are all linked together with your brain, which also controls your thoughts and emotions. With all this going on at the same time, it is possible to allow mood to overlap with sensory evaluation, causing a misinterpretation of what you are really experiencing in that cup of coffee.

In order to get a true idea of what you’re tasting, your mind needs to be clear of clutter and stress.”

(more…)

Posted on July 19, 2006 - by deCadmus

Tasting: Green Mountain’s Special Reserve Colombian Dos Quebradas

• Rating: Rating:

I’ll admit some prejudice — not altogether unwarranted — against Colombian coffee. Let’s face it, we’ve *all* been told for years now how Colombian coffee is mountain-grown; that only the ripest beans are picked by Juan Valdez (and his faithful little burro). And even while the Colombian Coffee Federation was feeding us this hugely successful marketing campaign they were rounding up beans from all over and carting them to vast processing mills and creating a single, homogeneous flavor profile. And we consumers were most all of us buying our 100% Colombian coffee — the best coffee in the world, mind you — pre-ground in its little red vacuum-packed can and we were satisfied, perhaps… if a little underwhelmed. (more…)

Posted on February 22, 2006 - by deCadmus

Tasting Two by Two

And the number shall be… three?

There’s a tried and true technique called triangle cupping that’s used to identify which of three coffees is different. (For you Sesame Street fans, it’s a game of One of These Things Is Not Like The Others.) You take two samples of one coffee, and one of another; you randomize them so you don’t know which is which, and taste them with the goal of identifying the odd one out.

Triangle cupping is an excellent tool for building sensory skills. You can start simple: identify the one Kenyan out of a flight that consists of that cup plus two cups of Colombian. And as your skills progress you can make finding the odd one out increasingly difficult: try identifying the odd Sulawesi in a field rounded out by Sumatrans; or the Kona peaberry in a triangle of coffees where the others are estate-run beans from the same farm. It’s surprising just how much you can boost your sensory ability with practice.

Triangle cupping is also an excellent diagnostic for folks who roast coffee. Want to figure out which roast level brings out the very best in a given bean? Cup a triangle of two samples roasted at Agtron 47, and one at Agtron 46. Repeat at Agtron 45, 44, 43… Want to see if you’re maintaining the taste profile for your blend? Cup a triangle of Monday’s roast compared to Wednesday’s. A single cupping session may not tell you all you need to know… but cupped again and again, sooner or later the statistical weight of your choices will become clear.

Triangle cupping is not a particularly good technique, however, for really assessing — much less appreciating — the qualities of a singular cup of coffee. That’s understandable enough. The object of the exercise is, after all, to distinguish what’s different… not necessarily to celebrate what a given cup brings to the table. When you’re wholly focused on the effort of distinguishing the odd cup out, you’re likely to miss some of that cup’s more nuanced qualities.

Neither, as it happens, is tasting a cup all by itself an ideal method. This isn’t news to anyone who frequents a cupping table. Professional cuppers — on receiving a new bean from, say, Costa Rica — will by force of habit reach for the Costa Rican bean already on their shelves to use as a reference point, much as a pianist will seek out middle C. Unless you’re a bona fide super taster – the likes of Green Mountain’s Lindsey Bolger or The Roasterie’s Danny O’Neill, both coffee pros who are blessed with the sensory equivalent of perfect pitch — you’ll use a known quantity to delineate the scale for your tasting. As a result, your cupping notes tend to look… well, scalar. All of a sudden bean X is reduced to being merely more or less of a given sensory quality than the known value of bean Y.

Tasting Two by Two

Of late, I’ve stumbled upon a method that’s both accentuated and accelerated my appreciation and understanding of coffee’s innumerable sensory qualities. I won’t kid myself into thinking this is an original invention — I expect I’ve simply rediscovered a method that’s simply not much talked about — and that is tasting coffees in dissimilar pairs.

Take, for example, the two coffees on the desk in front of me; coffees which really couldn’t be less alike. I’ve already sampled them individually… and then we’ll try them together.

First, from Raven’s Brew Coffee in Alaska — Cherry Karma — an altogether intriguing bean with a curious pedigree. Grown on Balanoor Estate in India, it’s a dry process coffee from a land that, as a rule doesn’t do dry processing. Wet-processing, yes. Monsooned coffee, even. But dry-processed? In India, it simply isn’t done. At first blush, Cherry Karma offers an aromatic whiff of cardamom, with a slightly musty understory. Its flavor is marked by vanilla and faint notes of worn leather; its body is supple and its finish — while very dry — is subtly perfumed with a return of the same exotic spice.

Next to it, another cup with an intriguing story, Green Mountain’s Special Reserve Rwanda Karaba Bourbon. This cup is comprised of all bourbon varietal beans, and more, from only those beans picked during the eleven day period that marked the very peak of the picking season. Its aromas feature cocoa and caramel with a hint of coffee blossom; its flavors offer hints of dark fruit and dark, raw sugar. This is a fairly big-bodied coffee, and its finish resonates rather sweetly.

Sampled side by side, interesting things happen…

Cherry Karma retains its exotic notes of spice, and its subtle dryness assumes a distinct — though not at all unpleasant — distilled quality. The mustiness in its aroma is revealed in its flavor as a mineral quality… a dusty limestone. This is, perhaps, the flavor of a Monsooned Malabar at its finest… without a trace of the Malabar’s notorious numbing fuzziness. It’s focused, tight and dry.

By way of contrast, the Karaba Bourbon has become extravagantly sweet — extraordinarily honeyed both in its flavor and in its rather elegant finish. There’s a slight note of ferment that, borne by the sweet cup, takes on hues of wild honey wine. Even compared to the dry-processed Indian coffee, the wet-processed Rwandan is exceptionally round in body, and syrupy in its finish.

It’s worth noting that cupping these coffees side-by-side hasn’t introduced new flavors or aromas that weren’t present in some form when cupped individually. Instead, cupping these dissimilar pairs side-by-side has thrown the sensory qualities of these coffees into high relief; magnifying the qualities of each so that they can be examined in still greater detail and appreciated all the more for it.

Dissimilar pairs… give it a try, and see what you discover.

Posted on May 4, 2005 - by deCadmus

From Tasting, To Taste

While your trusty author is caught up in the net of another conference, here’s one from the archives… This first appeared on Bloggle February 7, 2002.

In a recent article on tasting coffee I suggested a ritual that’s both more appealing and less compulsory than the traditional “cupping” form. It’s sparked a number of conversations on the sense of taste — ranging from what flavors we might discern, how we describe them, and, in particular, how we compare them to other flavors — flavors have nothing to do with coffee, or with what we’d generally consider edible things.

You’re no doubt aware that taste and smell are inexorably twined — to taste fully you must be able to smell what you’re tasting. Want to test the idea? Pinch your nose while you’re eating your next meal… you’ll not only experience how tasteless the food becomes, you will also become very aware of the texture of the food. [Interesting how the mind works, isn't it?] Not only is smell bound up in the tasting experience, it contributes to our taste memory. Let’s try another exercise…

Take a deep breath. Release it. Now recall the smell of Scotch tape… it might be jumbled up with other smells of birthdays and Christmas and other gift-giving events. Maybe the memory of the smell is lurking near other school supplies…. Got it? Good. Now… how does it taste? Even if you’ve never had it in your mouth, your sense of smell is talking to your tongue and describing it quite well.

Let’s try some more… Freshly sharpened pencils. Magic markers. Elmer’s glue. Fresh-mowed grass. These are all things that you might have never tasted — never licked, chewed or swallowed — yet still you know their tastes intimately. and consequently, you’re familiar with the tastes of wood and gum rubber, graphite, isopropyl alcohol, and grass. [Green grass, just-mowed on a Summer's day.... I imagine you can even smell the gasoline from the lawnmower.]

So what about things other than food that you have tasted? Dirt? Pebbles? A copper penny? A paper clip? A rubber eraser? Even if you weren’t one of those kids that smelled and often tasted everything he touched —like me— you probably got a mouthful of flavors from unexpected places.

Posted on February 7, 2002 - by deCadmus

From Tasting, to Taste

From tasting, to taste…
In a recent article on tasting coffee I suggested a ritual that’s both more appealing and less compulsory than the traditional “cupping” form. It’s sparked a number of conversations on the sense of taste — ranging from what flavors we might discern, how we describe them, and, in particular, how we compare them to other flavors — flavors have nothing to do with coffee, or with what we’d generally consider edible things.

You’re no doubt aware that taste and smell are inexorably twined — to taste fully you must be able to smell what you’re tasting. Want to test the idea? Pinch your nose while you’re eating your next meal… you’ll not only experience how tasteless the food becomes, you will also become very aware of the texture of the food. [Interesting how the mind works, isn't it?] Not only is smell bound up in the tasting experience, it contributes to our taste memory. Let’s try another exercise…

Take a deep breath. Release it. Now recall the smell of Scotch tape… it might be jumbled up with other smells of birthdays and Christmas and other gift-giving events. Maybe the memory of the smell is lurking near other school supplies…. Got it? Good. Now… how does it taste? Even if you’ve never had it in your mouth, your sense of smell is talking to your tongue and describing it quite well.

Let’s try some more… Freshly sharpened pencils. Magic markers. Elmer’s glue. Fresh-mowed grass. These are all things that you might have never tasted — never licked, chewed or swallowed — yet still you know their tastes intimately. and consequently, you’re familiar with the tastes of wood and gum rubber, graphite, isopropyl alcohol, and grass. [Green grass, just-mowed on a Summer's day.... I imagine you can even smell the gasoline from the lawnmower.]

So what about things other than food that you have tasted? Dirt? Pebbles? A copper penny? A paper clip? A rubber eraser? Even if you weren’t one of those kids that smelled and often tasted everything he touched [like me] — you probably got a mouthful of flavors from unexpected places.

Posted on January 23, 2002 - by deCadmus

A Visit to Riley’s Coffee

What you notice first is how quiet it is. At 400 plus pounds of iron and brass, chrome and enameled steel, it’s quieter in operation than any of the tiny air-roasters I own.

I’m at Riley’s Coffee in Fairview Heights, Il, in the company of Barry Jarrett, the shop’s owner, roaster and torch-bearer of good beans. To the good folk of Fairview, Riley’s is a coffee shop in a busy corner of St. Clair Square — a convenient stop between Dillard’s and J.C. Penney’s department stores. To the single-minded folk of alt.coffee I am at Mecca — maybe not a singular center of compulsive pilgrimage — but certainly a focal point of devotion… Barry’s coffee is just that good.

And here I am, my hands on the controls of Barry’s Diedrich IL-7 coffee roaster. It’s a one-off… an early production model, maybe even pre-production. Call Diedrich and they’ll tell you there’s no such thing. It’s a gas-fueled, infrared-powered seven kilo roaster with its control group mounted on the left-hand side. Thus, the “L”. Of course, left-hand or right-hand has little bearing on me… I’m in a coffee-roasting happy place.

As Barry steps through the controls of the machine, two things become clear. The first is that this is a very clever piece of engineering: a single blower performs triple duty of drum convection, chaff collection and cooling. The drum itself is open-ended — at both ends — allowing not only a front-mounted sight-glass and tryer [a little piston-like scoop that's used to snag beans from the drum for closer inspection] but also making it possible to mount an array of gadgets on the back of the roasting drum, which is precisely what Barry has done. He’s augmented the built-in environmental temperature gauge with a digital probe that captures the temperature of the beans themselves… and records this “bean mass” temperature at 10-second intervals to a portable data logger.

Now, put the clever engineering and nifty bolt-ons aside, and something else becomes clear. Beyond the engineering — maybe even in spite of it — roasting coffee in Barry’s shop is very much a hands-on affair. Measuring, loading, listening… [it's a while to first crack] and then shifting the blower like a formula-one car, listening… [it's not so far to second] and shifting again, working the tryer, listening, sniffing, eyeing the beans, letting them sputter and crack until NOW! and dumping the beans to the cooling bin, shifting the blower one last time while the beans hiss and crackle and smoke, twirling in the bin, mahogany-brown and gleaming.

The gadgets, it turns out, are guides, only. And ultimately they say less about how you’re doing, and more about how you’ve done, and then only when you take the time to review the roast profile… studying the plot while you’re cupping a sample from that very roast. This is cupping for performance — think of the director watching dailies, or the coach studying tapes of last Sunday’s game — tasting this batch against the one before, and the hundreds before that, searching for nuances of flavor and aroma, body and finish. This is artisan’s work.

Barry would scoff, I think, if I called him a master roaster — a term that’s been so over-used in the coffee business it’s as much a pejorative. Instead, I’ll suggest simply that Barry is a craftsman — especially skilled, and always seeking to better his craft — the almost elemental melding of fire, steel… and curious beans from faraway places.

Posted on January 20, 2002 - by deCadmus

On Tasting Coffee

Slurp. Swish. Spit.

Not very attractive, is it? And certainly not the romantic stuff that much of the business of coffee is built on. Still, slurping, swishing and spitting — better known as cupping — is the foundation of professional coffee tasters the world over. Armed with silver spoons, twirling tables and the ever-present spittoon, cuppers have employed the technique for more than a hundred years.

Just the same, there are iconoclasts even within the community of coffee professionals who feel that cupping is a bit of a throwback to earlier times, when it’s purpose was not so much to identify really great coffees, but to cull those that had defects, those that had been damaged in storage or shipment — even to ferret out those rascals who might try to pawn off inferior beans for the good stuff that was originally purchased.

Cupping coffee is a ritual. Ken Davids, author of Coffee: A Guide to Buying, Brewing and Enjoying, suggests that there really is no like ritual for “the lay person”– those outside of the professional coffee world. I disagree.

Consider the breakfast cup. For hundreds of millions of people around the world their day simply hasn’t begun ’til they’ve had their morning cup — whether alone, or in the company of croissant, beignet, bagels or bacon and eggs. There is perhaps no more contemplated cup in the world.

Consider the ritual of the dessert cup. Whether your after-dinner treat is tiramisu, death by chocolate, or a few chocolate chips, there are few better companions than an equally rich cup of fresh-brewed coffee.

There are more… coffee and a smoke. Coffee and biscotti. Coffee and Mozart. Even coffee and Zen. No rituals, indeed.

Tasting coffee — savoring it, really — can’t be achieved with a simple slurp and a spit. Frankly, savoring a great cup of coffee deserves a ritual. It merits taking some time. Paying attention. Allowing yourself to be in the moment… and focusing on it. If you’d like something a bit more structured, allow me to suggest the following ritual — a “lay-person’s guide” for savoring coffee.

• Grind your coffee. Note the fragrance of the fresh-ground beans… spicy, earthy, nutty.
• Brew your coffee. Enjoy the aroma as it brews… heady and full of promise.
• Pour your coffee. Find a comfy place to sit. Feel the cup warm your hand.
• Sample the aroma of the cup. Is it sweet? Fruity? Notes of caramel?
• Breathe deeply. Release your breath.
• Sip your coffee. Go ahead… slurp it if you like. Feel the coffee bathe your cheeks, blanket your tongue. Focus on its flavor… is it complex? Is it direct, simple? Swallow… enjoy its warmth.
• Breathe out through your nose. Savor the aromas that waft through your sinuses… are there herbal notes? Fruit?
• Breathe deeply. Release.
• Sip your coffee again. Wiggle your tongue. Does the coffee feel heavy? Viscous? Is it light and delicate?
• Breathe out through your mouth… feel your breath on your tongue. What new flavors and aromas do you sense?
• Breathe deeply. Release.
• Repeat, as often as you like.

Enjoy your coffee. Savor a cup. Savor the world.

Posted on July 8, 2001 - by deCadmus

A Second Cupping

A Second Cupping of the Tarrazu Triple Play yielded notes enough for a formalized review. Formalized, in this case, means I scribbled down tick-marks and cobbled together some charts. What I don’t do is try to suggest an overall rating–a la Wine Spectator–as I’m not at all certain that coffee can be rated in such a manner, and I’m absolutely certain that I’m not the guy to do such a rating.

While I was at it, I finished the charts on this year’s St Helena, and have filed those cupping notes in the articles section as well. I have no idea how what little remains will last the rest of the year as I keep dreaming up occasions which warrant roasting some more.