The World of Professional Coffee Tasting and Cupping

Because coffee has so many complex tastes and aromas, highly trained tasters play a vital role in coffee tasting to ensure coffee quality. It takes years of practice and experience to identify and judge coffee quality. Every respectable coffee company will have their own professional tasters; it’s the best way to guarantee the quality and consistency of every uplifting cup. These days, professional coffee tasters are so well trained that they will all agree very closely on the exact characteristics of any coffee they taste.

The Art and Science of Coffee Flavor

Expert coffee tasters need to understand the subtle differences between coffees. How has the way the coffee was grown, milled and roasted affected the final flavour? Did the type of soil the tree was planted in make a difference? Or maybe the way it was watered and fed? Even the type of bags the beans have been stored in could change that final flavour. After harvesting, coffee cherries go through milling, which removes the outer fruit and the parchment-like skin around the bean. The end result is called green coffee, and quality-control at this stage is vital.

Many experts in the coffee-tasting profession use a book called the Sensory Lexicon. It’s a bit like an insider’s guide to the strength of the different flavours in coffee. It lists more than 100 different flavours, and they’re organised into groups such as:

• Floral, spices, sweet, cocoa
• Fruity, green/vegetative
• Roasted, cereal, nutty

There can be many flavours in each group, as shown in the following data based on the lexicon:

Becoming a Professional Coffee Taster

To qualify as a professional taster, you’ll need to be an expert in ‘cupping’ – the technique for identifying the complex tastes and aromas in coffee. The Coffee Quality Institute created The Q Arabica Grader Program in 2003 as a way to professionalize and certify coffee cuppers. Known as Q Graders, certified cuppers complete a series of sensory and physical coffee trainings and tests to fairly and consistently grade specialty coffee.

This program is no joke. The training course is a week long, and at the end, there are 22 different tests. To get certified as a Q Grader, you have to pass all 22 tests. During the training, you’ll learn about:

• Le Nez du Café Aroma: Appreciating the 36 basic scents of coffee.
• Sensory skills: Judging the strength of various tastes like sweet, sour and bitter.
• Peer calibration: Blind-tasting coffee so you can match the judgment of experienced tasters.

The Q outlines a system of grading coffee not based on preference, but rather on a universal understanding of what makes specialty coffee special. It should be clean, sweet, and uniform, with other outstanding characteristics. Participants are exposed to different coffees that are in the global market, tasting four different categories: washed mild coffees, coffees from Africa with characteristic bright acidity, “natural” or “honey-processed” coffees, and coffees from Asia.

Empowering Coffee Farmers through Sensory Skills

Why should coffee farmers learn coffee tasting skills? As we know, information is often power. With these skills, farmers can more confidently identify the quality of their crop and demand higher prices for higher-quality coffees, which is good for them and for the industry. This role of on-site coffee cupper has opened the door for more women and young farmers to find a new professional path.

When farmers understand not just the coffee quality in the cup but also what farming and processing practices ultimately influence cup quality for good and for bad, they can problem-solve and make practical improvements. They can figure out where in the coffee cultivation or processing steps they can adjust something that could lead to better quality in future harvests.