Coffee Cuppings At Rave HQ

So What Is A Coffee Cupping?

Ever heard of coffee cupping? To those outside of the coffee roasting world, it might sound like an alien concept, but the premise is actually pretty simple. In a nutshell, it’s a coffee tasting, and  the industry standard for sampling coffees. Think wine tasting, but for brews. 

Rave Community Cuppings

We host community cuppings here at Rave HQ, giving our customers the chance to try it out for themselves. We tend to go for a theme, whether that’s looking at roast levels, specific countries and regions, or different processes. You also get to meet our Roastery Team and Head Of Coffee, ask questions, meet like-minded coffee lovers and get a caffeine buzz post 5pm. 

Our most recent cupping focussed on washed process coffees, from a variety of different countries, roasted to different levels. After a run down on what the washed process is, what to expect and how cupping works, we tried eight different coffees, shared our favourites and what we could taste in the cup. Whether you’re trying coffee cupping for the first time, or looking to delve deeper into the process and flavour profiling, our community cuppings are the perfect place.

The Set Up

There’s only one way to know if the green coffee beans you’re looking to buy are going to hit the mark, and that’s by roasting and tasting it. Cupping is how you sample potential new coffees, taste for defects, and pull out flavour profiles. 

The set up consists of cupping bowls (any ceramic or glass vessel will do, but the key is that they’re all the same); just off the boil water, (94 degrees celsius), a cupping spoon (or soup spoon at a push) and freshly ground coarse coffee, like cafetiere grind. 

The key here is to be consistent, you want 8.25g of coffee per 150ml of water. It’s worth smelling the dry coffee first to check the fragrance, and see how these develop once brewed. 

Next up, it’s time to pour the water on the coffee grounds, then leave it to brew for four minutes. Use a timer, you want to get this just right. Then it’s time to ‘break the crust’ (practice makes perfect here…) three uniform strokes using two spoons to scoop off the foam, mostly the CO2, coffee fines and oil we don’t want to taste. Make sure to rinse the spoons between each bowl of coffee then let the coffee cool for 8 minutes.

Now for the fun bit, it’s time to slurp, the louder the better, you want the coffee to hit as many of your tastebuds as it can. Now you can be as nerdy as you want here -  create your own tasting notes, compare different roast levels, grade them in order of preference, or just decide if you have a favourite. 

 
You could create this set up at home if you’ve got the kit, or you could just come to one of our community cuppings at Rave HQ, but that’s your call.