Coffee cupping advice you won't find anywhere else.

It’s said that there are only about 4000 Q-graders in the world, and only 30% of the exam takers pass. Thus, we can conclude that the Q-grader certification is a serious uptaking, and once obtained, means that you really know coffee.

So what makes this certification prestigious and how do you pass the exams?

Processing: of all the stages that coffee goes through in its journey from seed to cup, it’s processing that plays the most important role in determining unique flavor profiles. Of course, this isn’t to say that roasting and brewing don’t significantly impact flavor (because they do). Rather, processing develops the flavor profile that roasting and brewing accentuates and refines. Whether a coffee tastes like white peach and almond extract isn’t going to be a result of manipulating roast profile; i.e, you can’t “roast-in” flavor notes (with the exception of “ashiness” and “burnt” notes as a result of too dark a roast). A smart roaster would be keen to accent the peach note through careful roasting, but the fact that it tastes like peaches at all—well that’s down to the processing.

Did you know that coffee cupping and coffee tasting are different?

Even though the practice is kind of similar –to evaluate the cup quality–, coffee cupping and coffee tasting actually serve different purposes, consist of different evaluation times and even different procedures. If you can actually master both “techniques”, it will give you a better picture on how your coffee is produced from the origin to the final cup, thus you can understand your cup quality and coffee better – on how it’s roasted and brewed. Regardless of whether you want to assess the green beans quality, how a coffee is roasted and how it tastes as a cup of brewed coffee, both cupping and tasting should be included in your skillset. Rather than being a ‘versus,’ they are actually complementary protocols to serve better coffee and cup quality. 

So, what’s coffee cupping?

If you work in specialty coffee and want to get better at your job, you should be cupping coffees on the regular. But depending on your role in the industry, how you approach cupping and what you get out of it could differ significantly from role to role. Essentially, a roaster has different goals in mind versus someone who works in quality control, who, in turn, is likely focusing on different aspects of flavor than a barista.

It’s 2022 and you’re a coffee person, so you’ve probably noticed that brewing up a cup of drip or pulling a shot of espresso these days can be more high-tech than ever. It’s not just the brewing side of things that has improved either. Peer into any corner of the specialty coffee industry and you’ll find remarkable innovations - many within the last few years - that have reshaped how we buy, roast, brew and grow our coffee. From ultra-programmable espresso machines, to groundbreaking genetic research, there’s never been a time where more people have been more obsessed with making better coffee. The revolution is here and it will be caffeinated.