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7/29/2019 Laying It on the Table
1/6
24 r o a s t September | Octo
conti
by Andi C. Trindle Mer
As I said in the rst half of this two-part state of
industry series, when youve been doing some
a while, you become compelled to step back and
look to make sure youre doing something worthwhile and
doing it the right way. This sentiment is especially true if
a perfectionist. Although I have grudgingly abandoned the
achieving self-perfection, I seem to still expect it of system
computers, cable TVand cupping. Coee cuppingas our
formal and, thus far, only universally agreed-upon sensory
assessment tool that has very real nancial implications
that should be perfect. Right?
By all accounts the industry has come a long way over t
but perfection in cupping is probably as likely as perfection
an industry, we may need to pursue the next e volution of c
at the very least, we need some reection and realignment
on the
A look at
t stat of Cupp
Laying
Table
photocourtesyo Font Cofee
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Laying It on the Table | Cupping (continued)
continuedon page28
photo byChad Trewick
Why We Cup
Before we dig into some of the reasons for re-evaluation of the
cupping process, lets look at some of the reasons why we cup in
the rst place. According to the Specialty Coee Association of
Americas cupping curriculum, we cup coees for the following
reasons:
Purchasing
Quality and price discovery
Subject to Approval of Sample (SAS) applications
Quality assurance (incorporating roast proling, as well as
consistency monitoring)
Blending
Palate enrichment
Education/training
These are some valuable motivationsparticularly those
that inuence which coees are bought and sold and at what
prices. And, as Brian Ali, green coee sourcing manager at
Minnesota-based Caribou Coee, states, Cupping provides a
simple tool for evaluating multiple samples in a convenient
time frame and with a minimum required sample size.
Without spending any more time acknowledging the value
and need for cupping, we can probably all agree that we need to
have a formal, ecient system for evaluating coees. But
Is the Cupping
Process Working?
Short answer: yes. More accurate answer: not wholly.
As Martin Diedrich, founder of California-based Kean
Coee, says, Its so amazing to go to origin and be able to
speak the same language. This simple statement reects
whats generally working with cupping. We have developed
an industry language that allows us to understand each other
across borders. This language of ours includes vocabulary and
numbersi.e., descriptors and scoreswhich theoretically
help us agree on an objective coee quality. From here, we can
make informed buying and selling decisions that allow our
businesses to succeed while, in turn, securing the growth of
specialty within the greater coee industry.
Getting back to the longer and more realistic answer of not
wholly, however, imperfections of the cupping process are
manyfrom protocols to calibration to bias.
Protocols
Protocols is the term generally adopted within our industry
to identify the best practice/industry guidelines for preparing
a formal cupping. Protocols for consistency in roast degree,
steeping time, grind degree, water quality and temperature,
lighting, and many other factors exist to ensure that a cupping
session is as scientic as possible, thereby yielding (in theory)
objective results. Because coee tasting is inherently rife with
uncontrollable variables, such as the dierences between tasters
(taste buds, taste experience, psychology and physiology to name
a few), its particularly important to identify and systematically
manage these controllable variables.
The SCAA, Cup of Excellence and CQI training programs,
among other programs and companies in the coee industry,
have done an excellent job instilling cupping protocols around the
globe in recent years. Although these organizations impart slight
variation in protocols, they generally espouse similar guidelines,
and all agree that consistent practices from session to session
are critical. However, in general, scientic practices are notconsistently followed in most cupping labs, says K.C. OKeefe,
founder of Caf Verde Peru, a coeehouse in Lima, and the chair
of the SCAAs professional cupper development committee. This
introduces unacceptable margin for errors in extraction and avor
development in the cup, OKeefe notes.
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Laying It on the Table | A Look at the State of Cupping (continued)
continuedon page30
Indeed, my own impetus for writing this article came from
my frustrations owing to variant protocols in a lab setting. Earlier
this year, I found myself participating in origin cuppings where
some important, basic protocols werent followed. The intention to
host a formal cupping was very clear, and these producers (unlike
most around the globe) had appropriate equipment and the general
setup for professional cupping. (Credit must go to dedicated NGO,
industry partners, and government organizations around the world
for devotedly dispensing cupping
training and supplies in recent
decades.) Nonetheless, training and/
or resources simply didnt support
meticulous analysis. In these cases,water temperature wasnt monitored,
roast degrees between samples were
wide, and cuppers did not rinse their
spoons from cup to cup. There were
more problems than these, but these
particular inconsistencies stuck out as highly problematic. Could
I really make an informed buying decision or even provide helpful
commentary about coees where so many inuential variables were
uncontrolled? (Note: A buying decision on the ground at origin is
separate from a nal pre-shipment sample approval process.)
To be clear, protocol lapses are in no way limited to origin-side
operations. I posit that many professional coee buyers and sellers
dont maintain proper protocols 100 percent of the time and some
dont even attempt them.
In addition, some question whether existing protocols are
sucient and wholly accurate. As one example, Eton Tsuno,
director of coee at Sacramentos Temple Coee Roasters, suggests
that water protocols should be published in exact gram weight of
water in addition to traditional
volume recommendations, since
this echoes the current habits of
baristas in measuring and evaluating
espresso and lter drip extractions.The quality of water is even more
important as water comprises
approximately 98.75 percent of the
brewed beverage in a traditional
cupping. Despite the importance of
water quality, however, labs around the world (and even within the
United States) dont use a standardized water base.
For Christopher Schooley, a roaster who works with Coee Shrub,
a huge weakness of current cupping practice exists in the roast degree
I posit that many professional
coffee buyers and sellers dont
maintain proper protocols 100percent of the time and some
dont even attempt them.
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Laying It on the Table | A Look at the State of Cupping (continued)
continuedon page32
recommendation. You have to look at more than one
roast, he says, because there are problems with taking
a qualitative measurement of both acidity and body, two
things greatly inuenced by roast development, unless you
are looking at a couple of dierent roasts.
OKeefe also feels that the sample-roasting
specications are too lax and instead requires that his
samples are roasted within 10:3011:15 [minutes] rather
than the eight- to 12-minute window of the SCAA.
Certainly, there are many other conditions and
variables in cupping that might be better controlled or
dierently managed. Without postulating conclusions
here, I suggest to the industry that we review existingprotocols and best practices to see where we can improve
upon them in the interest of achieving greater objectivity
and balance of results.
Of course, until everyone is rigorously employing
protocols, creating more of them or adapting them doesnt
x anything.
Calibration
Even if we had a perfect tasting process available to us
and we employed its protocols religiously, a more dicult
challenge manifests in the concept of calibration. Calibration is
the notion that, assuming equality of sample and process, cuppers
around the world are consistently infusing vocabulary and scoring
with like meaning. Are the words citrus, fruity, savory and oral
applied consistently among cuppers of the same coee, for example,
photo byChad Trewick
photoby Chad Trewick
or does fruity mean cherry to some and over-fermented to others?
Is an 85-point coee in one lab at least in the range of 8486 among
cuppers of the same coee elsewhere? For cupping to serve its critical
purpose as a buying and selling tool and price determiner, we have to
have semantic consensus among our professional tasters. As Tsuno
states, [Without calibration] pricing will break down, since in our
small sector of coee, price should
be in direct relation to quality/
cupping score. (Tsuno also suggests
that availability, sustainability and
traceability are part of the pricing
equation.) If we arent speaking the
same language, how do we determine
fairly if a coee is worth a dierential
of +50 versus +250? And, are we doing
ourselves a disservice by selling coees
to consumers at prices they arent
really worth?
Over the years, I have frequently
questioned whether we are universally
calibrated as tasters. For example,
many times, I have been witness to or
part of debates over whether a fruity
sample (in the same cupping session)
is over-fermented and defective or
whether it is a 90-plus-rated coee.
Well-respected and experienced tasters
can land on opposite sides of this
debate.
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Laying It on the Table | A Look at the State of Cupping (continued)
co
Tsuno, having also experienced this
particular argument, states, I believe many
people need more training in identifying
uncontrolled ferment as a defect since what
we like about honeys and naturals is a result
in controlled ferment. Tsuno is exactly
right: as an industry, we need more training
to calibrate. In this particular case, we need
more training of processing manifestations
both controlled and uncontrolledto
nd some objective end to these debates.
However, even if we can come to agreement
and can taste accurately whether fruit is
caused by happenstance versus deliberate
eort in processing, I suspect we will still
have variation on what is positive fruit
versus fruit that is defective. Some of these
issues get into bias (which we will discuss
later in the article), but some of it is
because we dont have universal language
agreement.
Despite the frequency of these debates
over the years, to my pleasant surprise
when I questioned some fellow tasters
about calibration, they were largely
positive about their success in matching
their results with their outside partners.
For Ali, Caribou nds that they trend
in the same direction as our industry
contemporaries more often than not.
OKeefe asserted that his industry partners
consistently score/calibrate within
our results, but he also acknowledges
that they have some trading partners
whose results are very inconsistent.
For OKeefe, these inconsistencies are
attributable to counterparts neither
scientically running the lab, nor
consistently cupping, though, and
not problems of semantic variation.
Ali also says that for calibration the
greatest challenge is practices in the
lab. Without doubt, poor protocols yield
result variation, but part of the problem is
semantic. We are not speaking the same
languageboth in words and numbers.
Scoring certainly shows itself to be
widely varied among dierent tasters and
dierent groups of tasters. Obviously,
exact score matching isnt possible or even
ideal, but it seems important that we
are generally in agreement with a fairly
narrow range of, say, two to three points
as a two- to three-point variation can
put a coee into a dierent quality and
corresponding price categorization.
This group score just manifested itself
in our oce as we hosted a tasting of the
Nicaragua Cup of Excellence (COE) coees.
Generally speaking, the entire group of
more than 12 outside tasters, plus our
four cuppers, ranked the various lots with
scores ranging from 82 to 90 and generally
a solid few points (or more) lower than the
COE jury panel across the board (all jury
scores were above 85). Protocol variation
like roast degree might very well have
been dierent and the inuence of time
between the jurors evaluation and ours
was likely impactful (as an agricultural
product, green coees properties will
change over time regardless of sample
preparation and evaluation methodology),
but who is right in these scenarios, and
can there even be a right score? After
all, cultural consumer preferences are
distinctly dierent and one communitys
good is another communitys
outstanding, which warrant very
dierent scores. Still, with purchasing
decisions and price points at stake,
calibration has merit.
The good news is that some level of
calibration among knowledgeable and
practiced tasters can happen. Tsuno
advises that one should learn protocol
from an industry professional, and
constantly review and communicate
scores with other cuppers. In particular to
scoring calibration, he suggests cupping
true commercial, 60- to 70-point coees
and 90-plus-point coees in order to put
80-point coees into relation. (Although
we have many discrepancies when looking
at smaller score ranges, we are calibrated
enough as an industry that this 10-point-
range categorization is generally agreed
upon and, therefore, a tasting can be
organized eectively.)
For Caribou, Ali suggests that
continued exposure to events through
the SCAA and around the industrythe
likes of barista competitions, Coees
of the Year judging, COE events and
Rainforest Alliance cuppingshas
rounded our abilities and helped us
develop and maintain our consistency.
OKeefe echoes COE participation as an
important calibration tool, in addition to
honest, open sharing of blind cupping
scoring/categorization with your trading
partners.
Bias
One of the most prevalent problems with
the cupping process is the inuence of
bias. Fortunately, many biases are readily
apparent and relatively easily mitigated.
For example, if a cupper knows that aparticular sample is from a producer who
pays scrupulous attention to quality or
from a farm with an excellent reputation,
they may be inclined, without conscious
awareness, to score it higher than they
would score a coee coming from an
unknown farm or from an origin with
a generally poor reputation for quality.
Similarly, if a well-known industry taster
has scored a coee highly, then others may
trend their own scoring on the high side.
And, of course, the reverse is true as
well. A sample might be very good, but,
because a cupper is disinclined to believe it
based on past experience, they score more
conservatively, awarding it an 85 score versus
a deserved 88. Or, sometimes
feel that everyone elsea CO
a group of vocal roasters, for
overrating a particular coee
critical of it in an eort to ass
bias. Allowing these inuen
evaluation is, of course, unp
wed all like to believe we do
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Laying It on the Table | A Look at the State of Cupping (continued)
However, even among experienced tasters,
these biases can occur despite best intentions
and rm belief that we are in control of
our partialities. Human psychology is very
powerful.
So, cup blind. This simply means, cup
without knowing what youre cupping. Have
someone else set up your tasting sessions
ideally using codes only and dont even try to
gure out or guess what you may be tasting.
Just taste and evaluate honestly and with
focus. Blind cupping isnt always possible or
practical, and sometimes there are distinct
advantages to cupping with knowledge of
what you are tastingcalibration training,
for example. Nonetheless, as participants in a
process with results that impact pricing paid
to farmers and feedback that can inuence
their future care of their beans, we should
control the controllable variables.
The Next Phase
Ultimately, I feel that the cupping process
is a worthwhile and important one, but
its a process fraught with imperfections;
the current cupping process will never
achieve true objectivity. Of course, we
dont necessarily need complete objectivity;
there are cultural preferences and biases
that create a need for subjective variety in
the marketplace. The key as professionals,
however, is in having a system with as much
impartiality as possible. As specialty coeetasters, it can be easy to think of our job
as just choosing the very best coees from
around the world to showcase, but we should
remember that our decisions at the cupping
table have real nancial implications for
hard-working coee producers around the
globe. So, knowing the limitations of the
photo byChad Trewick
cupping process, as Schooley recommends, it
would be considerably helpful for [buyers] to
look at coees a couple of dierent times and
in dierent iterations before making a nal
judgment. Maybe we can all agree to do at
least that while we re-evaluate and improve
cupping evaluation in the long run.
ANDI C. TRINDLE MERSCHis a greencoeetrader withAtlantic Specialty Coee, Inc. in
California, whereshe also runs thequality-control lab.Shehas been workingin specialty coeesince 1989. Andi
has volunteered withthe SCAA TrainingCommittee since
1995and joined theboard ofdirectors inMarch2010. She
canbereached at [email protected].