How to cup coffee: a step-by-step cupping guide

Cupping is the coffee trade's standard tasting method. Roasters use it to choose green coffee, check roast batches and agree on what a coffee tastes like. Producers and importers use it to price lots. Its power is that it is a controlled brew: every cup gets the same dose, grind, water and steep time, in identical vessels. When two cups taste different, the difference comes from the coffee, not from someone's pour-over technique.

The procedure below follows the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA). Its 2024 Coffee Value Assessment standards (SCA 102, 103 and 104) replaced the long-running 2004 cupping protocol, but the brewing steps are almost the same. Where the two differ, this guide gives the current value and notes the older one.

• Coffee: two to six samples. SCA 102 caps a session at six coffees.
• A burr grinder: you will grind every cup separately.
• A scale reading to 0.1 g.
• Cupping bowls: tempered glass or ceramic, 200 to 350 mL, all identical. Matching rocks glasses or small bowls are fine at home.
• Cupping spoons: deep, round soup spoons that hold about 4 to 5 mL.
• A kettle and thermometer, and a timer.
• Two rinse cups of hot water, and a cup to spit into for each taster.
• A way to record: a paper form, a notebook, or the Coffee Tasting app.

Water matters more than most people expect. SCA 102 recommends water with no chlorine, calcium hardness of 50 to 175 ppm CaCO₃, alkalinity of about 40 to 70 ppm and a pH of 6 to 8. A good carbon-filtered tap water or a mineral water in that range will do.

The steps are listed in full above, with the numbers you need. A few points matter more than they look:

Grind each cup on its own. Grinding one big batch and splitting it hides a bad bean in one cup. Grinding cup by cup is what lets you judge uniformity.

Fill to the rim. Your dose is calculated against the cup's full capacity, so a short pour changes the ratio. If a cup ends up short, SCA 102 allows topping it up after the break.

Break gently, sniff hard. The break releases a concentrated burst of aroma. Put your nose right over the cup, push the crust back, stir about three times, and let the foam run down the back of the spoon.

Rinse between every cup. SCA 102 requires the spoon to be rinsed in hot water before it touches any cup. If several people are cupping, you can use one serving spoon per cup to pour into your own spoon or a small glass.

Start tasting hot, but not too hot. The classic protocol starts at 71 °C (160 °F), about 8 to 10 minutes after the pour. SCA 102 says about 70 °C.

Slurping looks theatrical but it does a real job. SCA 102 asks that each spoonful be slurped "in such a way as to cover as much area as possible, especially the tongue and upper palate." Spraying the coffee across your mouth puts it on every part of the tongue at once and aerates it. As you breathe out, aroma travels from the back of your mouth into your nose. This is retronasal smell, and the SCA defines it as how we pick up "the olfactory component of flavor."

Hold the spoon just below your lips, draw in air sharply as if sipping hot soup, then hold the coffee for a moment, breathe out through your nose, and spit. Spitting is normal: SCA 102 notes it avoids "swallowing too much caffeine in a cupping session."

Temperature changes what you can perceive. The classic SCAA protocol scores flavor and aftertaste first while aromatics are strongest, then acidity, body and balance as the coffee falls from about 71 to 60 °C (160 to 140 °F), and judges sweetness, uniformity and clean cup only once the cups are below 38 °C (100 °F). SCA 102 asks for at least three rounds of tasting.

Your opinion of a coffee can change as it cools, and that is expected. The classic protocol has cuppers rate their preference "at several different temperatures (2 or 3 times)" and mark the direction of any change with an arrow. The 2024 form does the same. So keep tasting until the end.

For each coffee, note the standard attributes: fragrance, aroma, flavor, aftertaste, acidity, sweetness, mouthfeel (body), balance, clean cup, uniformity and your overall impression. For each one, record two things separately:

1. What it is. Descriptors such as "red apple", "milk chocolate" or "black tea". A flavor wheel helps you find the word.
2. How much, and how good. Intensity (how strong) is not the same as quality (how much you like it). The SCA's descriptive standard puts it plainly: "Intensity does not imply quality."

Scores are optional. If you want them, read the cupping score explainer first, so you know what a number can and cannot tell you.

• Coffee too fresh or too old. Rest samples for 8 to 24 hours after roasting, as SCA 102 says. Very fresh coffee releases a lot of gas, which can make a cupping uneven.
• Uneven doses. Weigh every cup. A heavier dose tastes stronger and can fool you into calling it "fuller bodied".
• Scented rooms and hands. Perfume, hand soap and cooking smells interfere with what you can smell. Taste somewhere neutral.
• Judging too early. First impressions at high temperature are not the whole story.
• Knowing what is in the cup. Expectations change perception. Code your samples so tasters don't know which is which; see how to host a cupping.

Coffee Tasting replaces the paper form: set up a tasting, add each coffee, and fill in fragrance, aroma, flavor, aftertaste, acidity, mouthfeel, uniformity, clean cup, balance, sweetness and overall, picking words from more than 250 built-in terms. It saves as you go and works offline. To cup with friends, each on their own phone, use group tasting.