On a casual inquiry of those that roast, espe­cially the micro-roasters, every one will say that they cup cof­fee on a reg­u­lar basis. Dig a lit­tle deeper and one is sur­prised that many of these roast­ers mean that they drink cof­fee on a reg­u­lar basis. They do not have a for­mal cup­ping pol­icy or pro­ce­dure. Why in the world not?

To start to answer this ques­tion I did some per­sonal reflec­tion. I started a roast­ing com­pany in 1997 on a shoe­string. Since I wore almost all the hats and was respon­si­ble for get­ting the money in and pay­roll out, I made choices about how to spend my 15 hour days. Cupping was a task I was unfa­mil­iar with and I did not under­stand its value so I pushed it to the bot­tom of the four-page to-do list. Does this sound famil­iar? We all tend to avoid the uncom­fort­able and con­cen­trate on that imme­di­ate task in front of us.

Despite a lack of time and knowl­edge, it is time to get the cup­ping pro­gram in place. To start, let’s explore why to have one. Then we can move on to how.

Why does a roaster cup?

We cup for two rea­sons: The first is to find out what is wrong with a cof­fee. The sec­ond is to find out what is beau­ti­ful about a cof­fee. They are done the same way but at dif­fer­ent times.

When mak­ing a buy­ing deci­sion on green cof­fee a roaster should cup each lot before mak­ing a buy­ing deci­sion. If there is some­thing wrong with the lot you want to dis­cover it before you buy it. I know that when you are a small roaster you rely on your bro­ker to do a lot of this work for you. And they should. But you should use the old Ronald Reagan the­ory of, “Trust but ver­ify” and cup the prod­uct your­self. If the green you are buy­ing for a blend com­po­nent has to have a par­tic­u­lar fla­vor pro­file you need to ver­ify that it shows in the cup. If you are try­ing to offer a sin­gle vari­etal that sings and dances in the cup by itself, you need to ver­ify that it shows up in the cup. Later, when we dis­cuss record keep­ing we will touch on sea­sonal vari­ances of taste characteristics.

When mak­ing fin­ished prod­uct deci­sions on sin­gle vari­etals and blends you are explor­ing your own skills and processes. I learned as my busi­ness grew that I had to do what I feared most and hand over con­trol of cer­tain processes to oth­ers. Things like roast­ing and blend­ing. In order to keep con­trol of these essen­tial processes, cup­ping is the essen­tial tool. In a short and pre­cise exer­cise you can see if your staff is real­iz­ing the cup results you want. You will also be able to cri­tique new blends that are now being invented by your team and dis­cuss them in tan­gi­ble terms to get to a new product.

How do I set up my cup­ping plan?

You can cup fin­ished prod­ucts in the same way you do green eval­u­a­tion. The tools are sim­ple but the tech­nique takes prac­tice. Below is a list of tools. What you need now is a process. I sug­gest the fol­low­ing steps:

1)    Buy the tools and get set up.

2)    Take a cup­ping class or get some­one to come show you SCAA cup­ping protocols

3)    Set a time each week, (mov­ing towards daily) to cup. No excep­tions. For about 3 hours.

4)    Always cup with oth­ers from your team so you begin to calibrate.

5)    Keep a log of every­thing you cup. History is very important.

6)    As you advance, get your Q-Grader cer­ti­fi­ca­tion from Coffee Quality Institute so you will be cal­i­brated with oth­ers in the cof­fee sup­ply chain.

So why are you resis­tant to start­ing a plan?

If you do not have a cup­ping plan I am going to share some­thing with you, which you know to be true deep down in your soul… You are a big chicken! You are not sure if you are as good as the mar­ket­ing you put out as hav­ing, “The best cof­fee in the world”. If you put a sys­tem in place you will have to prove to your­self, and your staff, that you know what you are talk­ing about. More than that, your cus­tomers may find out!

Well guess what? You are that good! Now you can just set up a sys­tem to show oth­ers. I had an AHA! moment when I took my first cup­ping class at a con­ven­tion. All of a sud­den there was a lan­guage that oth­ers spoke that said what I tasted!  I could speak up and cal­i­brate what I tasted with oth­ers. They knew what I was say­ing! A cup­ping pro­gram does this for all mem­bers of your com­pany. The tool frees you to make advances in blends, roast­ing tech­niques and mar­ket­ing. You can even edu­cate your cus­tomers to cre­ate a stronger bond.

So, bot­tom line: Get over your fear of being ‘found out’, take a class, buy the tools, set up the process and cup with your staff. You will get bet­ter at cup­ping and more impor­tantly you will improve both your buy­ing prac­tices and fin­ished product.