Cupping. Ugh.
I don’t regularly cup coffee at home. The SCA cupping protocol asks us to evaluate coffee 8 to 24 hours after roasting: ground coarse (~850 microns), steeped in 200 degree water at 8.25g per 150ml for four minutes, unfiltered, then slurped off a spoon after breaking the crust and skimming the oils.
It’s a standardized method and it exists for good reason. I respect its place in the supply chain. But I trust my suppliers and their quality testing more than I do my own.
What I want to know is different: how will my customer experience this coffee four weeks after it leaves my hands and is being brewed in their home with an unknown set of variables?
The protocol says to cup within 24 hours of roasting. But everything we know about resting tells us that coffee at 24 hours isn’t the same coffee at 24 days. How a coffee performs half a day out of the roaster, unfiltered, with grounds floating in the cup, tells me very little about what it will taste like when you brew it at home on a Tuesday morning weeks from now.
So instead, I brew the way my customers brew. I use my Moccamaster method: the same ratio, the same grinder, the same water, the same filter, every time. It’s repeatable, it’s transparent, and it lets me evaluate how a coffee actually performs in the context where it matters most. It’s also not overly sophisticated or requiring lots of intervention by me.
It turns out that after brewing this way for years now, I discovered a few surprising things along the way.
I love coffee made this way. It’s light and bright and rarely has even a hint of bitterness.
This method also easily reveals roasting characteristics I personally find unfavorable for my tastes. (I’m trying to move away from the word “defects,” because some people genuinely enjoy what others would call a defect.)
When I’m making a selection to feature at Dry Heat Coffee, I’m not scoring them on an SCA sheet. I’m asking one question: would I be excited to drink this on a random weekday morning? If the answer is yes, it goes on the shelf.
