A good cup of coffee can take you on a journey. When you enjoy Level Ground coffee, you’re not only going on a journey back to the coffee’s origins but also a journey for your senses as you drink it.
Most specialty coffee roasters regularly perform coffee cupping to ensure consistent coffee quality. One that pleases all of your senses, not just your taste buds. If you’ve never heard of coffee cupping, we’ll share what it is, and why and how we do it.
]]>A good cup of coffee can take you on a journey. When you enjoy Level Ground coffee, you’re not only going on a journey back to the coffee’s origins but also a journey for your senses as you drink it.
Most specialty coffee roasters regularly perform coffee cupping to ensure consistent coffee quality. One that pleases all of your senses, not just your taste buds. If you’ve never heard of coffee cupping, we’ll share what it is, and why and how we do it.
What Is Coffee Cupping?
Coffee cupping is a method used to grade the quality of coffee and the many differences between types of coffee.
Put more simply, if you’re familiar with wine tastings, coffee cupping is a similar idea. Several different coffees are tasted and assessed on a variety of aspects, such as aroma, sweetness, freshness, acidity, “mouthfeel” aka how it feels in the mouth, and if there’s any aftertaste.
Why Is Coffee Cupping Done?
Cupping is done to note the subtle differences between the various types of coffees. You may not realize how many different aromas and flavours are in each type of bean and blend until you participate in a cupping. Undernotes of cocoa, berries, citrus, and other unique distinctive flavours often come to the forefront when you take the time to smell and taste. It can be an incredible experience to taste the diversity between the beans from different regions, farmers, and crops.
Flavour comes not only from the bean itself but also the weather, soil, and altitude it’s grown in, as well as the processing and transporting of the beans. Not to mention the roasting, grinding, and type of brewing method used for the beans. There are tons of factors. Even the water you use can affect the ultimate taste in a brewed cup of coffee! This is another reason why coffee cupping is essential.
Cupping regularly means you can make sure the standard is upheld through every point of processing. When we speak of standards, in our case, we’re specifically referring to the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) standards for cupping, which we follow. That way, you can always ensure the coffee you get is the best it can be and exactly what you’re expecting.
How Is Coffee Cupping Done?
Each company has different protocols for their cupping practices. But most cup on a regular basis to keep up their high standards of quality (although, Level Ground does daily cuppings!).
At Level Ground, each cup of coffee is brewed the same way. We use the same water at the same temperature and brew via filter at the same time during each cupping so we can ensure that there’s no variation and our standards are met. The coffee is cooled slightly to allow the flavours to come through before we taste them blind. Two spoons are used — one goes into the cup of coffee and the other into the mouth of the taster. Then, the coffee is most often spit out after the senses take in the entire flavour profile because dozens of coffees (and sometimes, even more!) are often tasted in one sitting. That’s a lot of caffeine!
Come Experience Our Coffee With Us!
As we mentioned, we cup coffee daily to continually meet our high quality standards, and so we can ensure each cup tells its full story from growth right through to brewing.
If you’d like to experience our coffees, we’d love to have you! We offer both guided and unguided coffee flights in our tasting room and, on request, can accommodate bigger groups for a genuine coffee cupping. Contact us for more information or stop by our tasting room today.
]]>Everyone has their preferred flavour profiles when drinking specialty and organic coffee, but those tasting notes don’t just come from the type of beans or how it’s brewed. There’s actually so much more to it — including the fermenting process.
Prepare yourself for some serious coffee knowledge!
After growing in optimal conditions, coffee cherries are picked by farmers and fermented to extract the flavour from the coffee bean. Two of the more common types of fermentation used by coffee farmers are the washed and natural processes.
But before we explain the difference between these two processes, it’s essential to understand the layers of a coffee cherry. The actual coffee bean is encased in many different layers, including skin, mucilage, and parchment.
Washed Coffees
Fully washed coffees are the most common type of fermentation. Farmers extract the seed of a coffee cherry from all the different layers by using a type of thresher called a depulper.
It’s then placed in a large vat filled with other coffee seeds and water and ferments in the open air, gaining access to free, wild yeast. During this process, the starches break down into sugars until the coffee flavour comes alive.
Washed coffees are the coffees you know and love as they provide a consistently cleaner, brighter cup of coffee.
Natural coffee fermentation isn’t commonly done, but it’s the oldest method of processing coffee. There are a few different ways of naturally fermenting, but to keep things simple, we’ll discuss the most traditional method called a “full natural.”
This dry process occurs when farmers harvest and dry the ripest coffee without removing the fruit first. In a washed coffee, we mentioned that coffee seeds are stripped from the fruit and access yeast in the open air. However, with natural coffees, the coffee seed accesses the same wild yeast naturally from the fruit and skin of the cherry. Once it’s fully dried, the seed is separated, bringing out a complex, full-flavoured, often fruity, taste to the coffee.
This method requires farmers to take great care throughout the entire process, and more often than not, we see this in countries with little-to-no access to freshwater sources. It must be closely monitored as any coffee that takes on mould can ruin the entire batch.
It’s important to note that natural coffees provide a very different flavour than the average coffee drinker is used to. These coffees genuinely take on such a complex flavour compound that it can be a surprise for people to find such a new taste to coffee. Many people love drinking natural coffee, especially after they get to know the deeply complex flavour. However, a lot of people find the flavour extremely off-putting and, as a result, choose to drink only washed coffee after that.
Talking about natural versus washed coffee can start quite the conversation between specialty coffee lovers. And for those who really want to delve into the coffee world, there are a variety of fermentation processes the coffee industry has started playing with — such as closed fermentation, commonly seen in craft beer brewing, and yeast strain inoculation, something wine aficionados will recognize.
It’s also important to note that there are many coffees on the spectrum in between washed and natural. You can also find Pulped Natural (semi-washed) coffee and Honey Processed (mostly washed) coffee. This is a lot of information to take in, we know, but we’re passionate about coffee and want to share our knowledge with you!
Level Ground consistently offers mainly washed coffees. However, we’re always on the hunt for fantastic quality natural coffees that fit both our taste and sourcing practices and will typically try to have one natural coffee. When they come across our palate, we’re always happy and proud to share these specialty coffees with you.
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