Making coffee is a true art. There is some masterly about the perfect cup, but the perfect cup could mean something different to each person. ?Cuppers? are coffee tasters that help assist buyers, judge contests and write reviews. It is their job to help describe the coffee so that you can figure out if you would like it.
What a Cupper Does and How You Can Do It Too
When a cupper is working they look at different aspects of the coffee they are tasting. They look for these main attributes ? aroma, flavor, acidity, finish and subtle attributes. If you are interested in trying your skills out and being a cupper then you can recreate this scenario at home. It starts with having the supplies you need. You should use filtered water, so that there is nothing from the water that will influence the taste of the coffee. In other words, good water means you will truly be tasting the coffee, not the water. Any fresh bottled drinking water will work well. You will need a tray that can hold about a dozen small glasses. You will need a container for spitting the samples into once you have tasted them. You will also need some tools to scoop and measure the coffee and, of course, the coffee blends you are tasting ? use whole beans that you will grind yourself.
After assembling what you need, it is time to prepare the coffee. You want to boil the water and grind the beans. You should use a grinder with different settings so you can get different blends for each trial. You are going to be testing each type for different grinding settings. Brew the coffee, filter it and prepare a small cup of each sample. To do the actual sampling you start by smelling first. Be sure to note the aroma and any special characteristics. When you taste the you should let it run over your tongue and hold it in your mouth for second or two. Then, as with any tasting, you spit it out. During the tasting you should note some aspects of the coffee. You will be building a profile of the coffee which will explain every detail of its character.
Things to consider include:
Acidity ? This is the tartness of the blend, basically, how dry the coffee tastes. Aging plays a big role in the acid content and is more noticeable in Mexican Sumatra brew.
Aroma ? This is the smell. It can have a range of smells form fruity to herb to floral.
Bitter ? Bitterness can be found by swishing it back and forth on the tongue. You should be able to pick up how much or how little bitterness the blend has.
Body ? Body describes the thickness of the feel on the tongue. A light roast will likely have less body then a dark roast.
Nuttiness ? As the name suggests, some coffees give off a roasted nut like flavor. Nuttiness is actually a flavor sensation that is not preferred and characteristic of a poor blend.
Sharpness ? This is the pronounced flavor of the blend. It is caused by the mixing of salt and acids.
Choosing Blends
You should try to get a nice variety of blends to test. Get them from different countries, vary the roasts form light to dark and experiment with the grinds. You will see a huge difference the more variety you have. Even with one bean you can see difference with just different grinds. Also experiment with the amount of coffee you use and the strength of the brew. Start out with a good average of two tablespoons to each six ounces of water. Also water temperature should be worked with stating from an average of 200F.
On countless occassions I have heard people complain about the tap water that comes out of the faucets in their homes. In some cases its too hard, sometimes its too soft, rarely is it just right. I actually still don't know what too hard or too soft has to do with the taste of water but I certainly have heard water described that way since I was a child. I was reading an article on NBC's site that described a taste test that was performed on the Today show. It was actually quite an elaborate test. The Today's show brought in two prominent wine taste testers to wet their palates with the tap water from twelve of the largest cities in the U.S. They actually poured the water into unmarked, clear water bottes and stored the water at 60 degrees farenheit (cellar temparture). The storage instructions were at the request of these two prominent taste testers.
The top three cities according to the experts were Seattle, Boston, and Columbia, S.C. For some reason I found it interesting that SALT LAKE was the best. It seems like it should be SALTY (but what do I know). I have visited Salt Lake City on several occassions and honestly the water did not leave a lasting impression on me. I did enjoy some excellent green tea at a local area restaurant which I assume was made with their tap water. That could have been the water or maybe it was the sugar in the sweet green tea (I remember this as I had never had sweet green tea before encountering it on this trip).
So before I venture too far away from the reason for this article let me provide the names of the taste testers to you. They were none other than the famous wine tasters David Lynch and his colleague, Joe Bastianich. They used words to describe water that I simply have never heard. For instance the Salt Lake City water was "delicious, Viscous, thick and rich," Wow! I need to go back to Salt Lake City and check this out again. It certainly sounds awfully good described this way. Well, actually delicious, viscous, and rich sound good. I think I have tasted thick (growing up on well water which was plenty thick).
I dug into the ratings of Salt Lake City's water according to studies performed by the Environmental Working Group and sure enough they did have pretty low levels of contaminants in their water. Salt Lake City had 9 pollutants, Boston had 6 pollutants, and Columbia had 7 pollutants. So, to my surprise the city with the lowest number of pollutants was not the winner. Of course, this was an unofficial taste test and toally subjective (based on the opinions of these fine wine tasters). Perhaps it means that my theory of cleaner water tasting better is simply not correct. In any event it really is interesting to me.
So a few of my own theories were certainly not supported by the test performed on the Today show, but I did learn something very valuable. I can now stop referring to water as hard or soft and introduce viscous and rich into the mix. In any event, that certainly makes an ordinary glass of water more interesting.
On another note, If you have some time and are interested in the number of water companies in your community and/or anywhere in the country please stop by waterfinder.org and take a look. It's the only place on the web to find a listing of over 300,000 water companies in every major (and most of the smaller) cities in the U.S.
Both Peter Mason & Waterfinder are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Peter Mason has sinced written about articles on various topics from Personal Desktop, Adventure Travel and Car Rental. Peter Mason routinely makes detailed articles on areas associated to coffee maker and brewmaster coffee maker. One can have a look at his contributions on