Coffee cupping is how the coffee trade tastes before it buys. Exporters cup to decide which lots to offer, importers cup to decide which to ship, and roasters cup to decide what goes on their menu. It looks a little strange the first time you see it, with rows of bowls, people slurping loudly from spoons, and notes scribbled on score sheets, but there’s a good reason behind every step.
Cupping sits at the heart of buying and selling green coffee, including the coffees we export from North Sumatra. In this guide we’ll walk you through how coffee cupping works, what you need, how cuppers score a coffee, what those scores actually mean, and a few things to watch for when you cup Sumatran coffees for the first time.
Coffee cupping at a glance
| Purpose | Judge a coffee’s flavor and quality in a fair, repeatable way |
| Ratio | 8.25 g of coffee per 150 ml of water |
| Water | Clean, odor-free, just off the boil (about 93°C) |
| Roast | Light to light-medium, rested at least 8 hours |
| Cups per sample | Usually 5, to check consistency |
| Score range | Out of 100. 80 or more counts as specialty |
| Who does it | Roasters, buyers, exporters and certified Q Graders |
What is coffee cupping?
Coffee cupping is a standard way of tasting and scoring coffee. Every sample is roasted, ground and brewed in exactly the same way, so the only thing that changes from bowl to bowl is the coffee itself. That’s the whole point. When the brewing is identical, differences in taste come from the beans, not from the person making the drink.
Cupping is different from simply drinking coffee. A cupper is trying to answer specific questions. What does this coffee taste like? How good is it? Is every cup from the same lot consistent, or are there defects hiding in some of them? The answers decide whether a coffee gets bought, at what price, and how a roaster will use it.
In the trade, cupping usually happens alongside physical grading of the green beans. Grading counts the visible defects; cupping tells you how the coffee tastes. You need both. If you’re buying from origin, our guide to green beans coffee sampling explains how samples move between seller and buyer before and after a contract.
Who cups coffee?
Anyone can learn to cup, and many roasters and café owners do it every week. In the professional trade, though, you’ll often hear about Q Graders. These are cuppers certified by the Coffee Quality Institute after a demanding course and exam that tests their palate, their smell and their ability to score coffee consistently. When a lot is described as “84 points,” it’s usually a Q Grader or an experienced cupper who gave it that score.
In Indonesia, the Specialty Coffee Association of Indonesia runs cupping events and training for local producers and roasters. You can read more about the association in our post on SCAI.
What you need for a cupping session
You don’t need a lab, but you do need consistency. A quiet, clean room without strong smells helps: no perfume, no cooking nearby, and no smoking beforehand. Most cuppers also avoid eating for at least half an hour before they start.
| Equipment | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Cupping bowls, all the same size | Identical volume keeps the ratio the same in every cup |
| Cupping spoons | Deep, round spoons that hold a small, consistent sip |
| Accurate scale | Weighing 8.25 g for every 150 ml of water |
| Burr grinder | An even, slightly coarser-than-filter grind |
| Kettle and thermometer | Water at about 93°C every time |
| Timer | Every bowl steeps for the same time |
| Rinse cup and spit cup | Clean the spoon between coffees; spit so you stay sharp |
| Cupping forms | A consistent way to record scores and notes |
Preparing the samples
Most problems in cupping start before the water goes in, so this part deserves care.
Roast lightly. Samples are roasted light to light-medium, usually in 8 to 12 minutes, so the coffee’s own character shows through. A dark roast covers origin flavors with roast flavors, which makes fair comparison impossible. If you’d like a refresher on roast levels, see our post on light vs dark roast.
Let it rest. Cup samples at least 8 hours after roasting and ideally within a day.
Grind just before brewing. Grind each sample no more than 15 minutes before adding water. Run a little of each coffee through the grinder first to clear out the previous sample.
Weigh carefully. Use 8.25 g of coffee for every 150 ml of water. Set up five cups per sample so you can check that the lot is consistent.
How to cup coffee, step by step
- Smell the dry grounds. Before any water goes in, lift each bowl and smell the ground coffee. This is the fragrance. Note what you notice: chocolate, fruit, spice, earth.
- Pour the water. Fill each bowl to the top with water at about 93°C, making sure all the grounds are wet. Start your timer.
- Let it steep. Leave the bowls alone for around 3 to 5 minutes. A crust of grounds forms on top.
- Break the crust. Push the crust back with your spoon, putting your nose close to the bowl as you do. This burst of smell is the aroma, and it’s often the most revealing moment of the session.
- Skim. Remove the foam and floating grounds with two spoons, rinsing between bowls.
- Taste. When the coffee has cooled to around 70°C, take a spoonful and slurp it hard so it sprays across your whole palate. Note flavor, aftertaste, acidity, body and balance.
- Keep tasting as it cools. Return to each bowl several times. Sweetness, acidity and defects often show up more clearly as the coffee cools down.
- Score and compare. Fill in your form, compare notes with other cuppers, and taste again if your scores differ.
What cuppers score
For two decades, most of the trade used the Specialty Coffee Association’s 2004 cupping form. It’s still the system behind most of the scores you’ll see on offer sheets today. It rates ten qualities of the coffee.
| Attribute | What the cupper is asking |
|---|---|
| Fragrance / aroma | How good and how intense does it smell, dry and wet? |
| Flavor | How pleasant and complex is the taste in the mouth? |
| Aftertaste | How long does a pleasant taste linger after swallowing? |
| Acidity | Is the brightness lively and pleasant, or sharp and sour? |
| Body | How heavy and rich does it feel in the mouth? |
| Balance | Do flavor, acidity and body work together? |
| Uniformity | Do all five cups taste the same? |
| Clean cup | Is it free from off flavors from start to finish? |
| Sweetness | Is there a pleasant, natural sweetness? |
| Overall | The cupper’s personal judgment of the coffee as a whole |
Points are added up to give a score out of 100. Points are then taken off for defects, such as a sour, fermented or musty cup.
What the score means
| Score | Classification |
|---|---|
| 90–100 | Outstanding |
| 85–89.99 | Excellent |
| 80–84.99 | Very good (the entry point for specialty coffee) |
| Below 80 | Below specialty grade |
How reliable are these numbers? A 2019 study in the Journal of Texture Studies by Pereira and colleagues put seven Q Graders through three days of blind cupping, covering more than 140 coffees. They were very consistent when scoring excellent and outstanding coffees. The errors showed up on coffees around the 77 to 80 point mark, right on the line between specialty and non-specialty. In practice, that means a coffee scoring 79.5 in one session and 80.5 in another isn’t unusual, and it’s worth cupping borderline lots more than once before you decide.
The new SCA system
In late 2024, the Specialty Coffee Association officially adopted a new set of standards called the Coffee Value Assessment, which supersedes the 2004 form. It separates two jobs that the old form mixed together: describing what a coffee tastes like, and judging how much the cupper likes it. Many buyers and sellers still quote scores on the familiar 100-point scale, so it helps to ask which system was used when you see a cupping score.
Cupping Sumatran coffee: what to expect
If you mostly cup washed coffees from Africa or Central America, Sumatran Arabica can feel unfamiliar at first. Most of it is wet hulled, which gives it a heavier body, lower acidity and earthy, herbal, spicy notes. Those are the coffee’s character, not its faults.
The skill is telling a pleasant earthiness from a real defect. Clean earthy notes, such as forest floor, cedar or dark chocolate, are typical and welcome. Musty, moldy or dirty flavors are not; they usually point to problems in drying or storage. Our guide to Sumatra Mandheling coffee explains how wet hulling shapes the cup, and our overview of coffee processing methods compares it with other methods.
Robusta is usually cupped with its own adapted protocol, because judging it against Arabica’s standards isn’t fair to either. If you’re cupping both, our Arabica vs Robusta guide covers how differently the two taste.
Common cupping mistakes
Roasting too dark. Roast flavors hide the origin. Keep sample roasts light and consistent.
Getting the ratio wrong. Eyeballing the coffee instead of weighing it makes every cup a different strength.
Tasting only when hot. Many defects and much of the sweetness appear as the coffee cools. Keep going back to the bowls.
Cupping one bowl per sample. One bad bean can ruin one cup. Five cups tell you whether the problem is the lot or just that bowl.
Cupping alone. Even experienced cuppers disagree. Comparing notes with someone else keeps your scores honest.
Cup our Sumatran coffees for yourself
Request green samples of our Mandheling, Gayo, Lintong or Sumatra Robusta and put them on your cupping table.
Frequently asked questions
What is coffee cupping?
Coffee cupping is a standard method of tasting and scoring coffee. Every sample is brewed in exactly the same way so that cuppers can compare coffees fairly and judge their quality.
What is the coffee to water ratio for cupping?
The standard ratio is 8.25 g of coffee to 150 ml of water, at about 93°C.
What does an 85-point coffee mean?
It means cuppers scored it 85 out of 100, which places it in the “excellent” range of specialty coffee. Anything from 80 points up is considered specialty.
How long do you steep coffee when cupping?
Usually 3 to 5 minutes before breaking the crust. Most cuppers break at around 4 minutes.
What is a Q Grader?
A Q Grader is a cupper certified by the Coffee Quality Institute after passing a series of sensory and scoring exams. Their scores are widely trusted in the coffee trade.
Why do cuppers slurp the coffee?
Slurping sprays the coffee across your whole palate and pulls aroma up toward your nose, so you taste much more than with a normal sip.
CV. Buah Berdikari is a coffee trading and exporting company based in North Sumatra, Indonesia. We source Arabica and Robusta green coffee from North Sumatra and Aceh. See our coffee offerings or get in touch to find the right lots for your roastery.