Learning to Taste

Learning to taste coffee, or technically, learning to cup is an involved process of training your senses in all the nuances of coffee. It consists of many intensive exercises to training the palate. Our quality advisors were about to embark on a disciplined journey of taste. They were to be schooled in the exercises of standards, of similarities and of contrasts. Anyone who worked at Starbucks for any length of time was schooled in the art of coffee tasting. It was a romantic ritual which began every meeting, became the focal point of training and taught us the finer points of our product. It taught us that coffee could be more than a beverage. It could be a way to connect, to reminisce, to tell stories. Cupping coffee on the other hand was business. Cupping was about flavor, and quality, and defects, and roast. Cupping coffee is a disciplined routine of evaluation around the flavor characteristics of coffee. It attempts to standardize or instill objectivity into the squishy relativity of taste. Those of us lucky enough to work in supply chain saw the business of cupping, and its place in selecting specialty coffees. Yet, I don't think I ever appreciated what it took to learn the craft. And so, traveling half way round the world, today I spend a morning getting a glimpse into the training of quality advisors. Quality advisors are the folks working with farmers and staff to help them understand what maintains coffee quality and what creates defects. Cupping puts objectivity to the characteristics of taste (sweet, salty, sour and bitter), flavor (chocolate, blueberry, , etc.), aroma (floral, spice, citrusetc.) and body (light, medium, full). Developing a common vocabulary around these paramters and then calibrating the team on those standards is a rigorous practice. First there are the standards. Standards which bear more resemblance to a chemistry experiment than coffee. Small vials with tinctures of vanilla or essence of caramel. And graduated cylinders for precise formulation of solutions with phosphoric acid or glucose.

Next there is the preparation. Time spent describing equipment specification and precise instructions of operation. Plus, the sharing of tips for executing these routines with consistency. It takes a certain kind of person to run a tasting room, and perform the tasks in a flawlessly identical way day after day. Incidentally, that device with a series of chambers is a sieve for separating particle size. Used here for calibrating the coffee grinder, it is borrowed, I might add, from soil science (once again, grad school pays off).

Finally, there's coffee. Dozens of glass cups each with their roasted coffee stand ready to be brewed. Multiple samples per coffee give repeatability to allow for sample variability. Piping hot water, just off boil, is added to the fresh, ground coffee. As the samples steep, each is sniffed for their aroma. Then grounds are removed, and the slurping (and spitting) begins.

Training quality advisors and calibrating palates is a long process. Some experts spend years honing their skills. My brief morning is but a glimpse into their world. It's a world of routine and precision and quality that brings you that fresh cup of coffee every morning.