Transcript

Hi everyone. I'm going to talk you through a cupping. The purpose of it is to really understand the flavor characteristics of the coffee. The way that we start is always with fragrance and aroma. We evaluate that first. So there are dried coffee grounds in these five cups and we do that because obviously one of the first things you evaluate a coffee with is really with your nose. When you walk into a coffee store, that's the first thing you're gathering. I have 12 1/2 grams in an 8 oz cup. 250 milliliters will smell. Pour some water, let it steep for 4 minutes and then we'll do something that we call breaking the Crest. And I'm really evaluating what is the characteristics of the dry grounds and I'm getting some caramel brown sugar kind of notes. And the purpose is to kind of identify something unique in those aromatics that I can go back and pay attention to when I pour water on them. We're going to let it sit for 4 minutes. We evaluate about 10 different characteristics. Seven of those are unique flavor attributes. So like after taste, flavor, acidity, which is kind of like the. Brightness, the body is basically the texture of the coffee, the mouth feels, and then we're also looking at after taste. So what does that coffee taste like? Does it stay on your tongue? Is it prolonged or does it just kind of dissipate really quickly? So now I'm going to do what we call breaking the crust. I'm going to basically take my spoon and sweep off the top and kind of take a quick sniff in and understand the what are the aromatics of this coffee? We're going to let it cool 10 minutes and then we'll go back and clean the tops. The coffee is now cooling and when we're tasting, we really want to go and taste the coffees at hot, medium and cold temperatures. That hot temperature is really extracting the flavor and the after taste. As the coffees cool, you'll kind of get some more fruit notes and sweeter characteristics that come out. So now the coffees cooled, we're going to taste these five coffees, these 5 copies. Represent basically 40,000 lbs of coffee or a container of coffee. So what I'm looking for is really understanding what are the things I'm tasting and if I'm tasting, let's say a chocolate, is it what kind of chocolate is it? Is it, is it a dark chocolate? Is it a milk chocolate? Is it a bittersweet chocolate or bakers chocolate? Or if I have, if I'm identifying a really nice bright acidity. So for example, is. Eating coffee that's a coffee that's really citrus forward or stone fruit forward, I might identify, OK, I have some type of citrus coffee here. Is it grapefruit? Is it orange? Is it blood orange? Is it lime? Is it lemon? And all of those are kind of quality markers for each, for different profiles. And the purpose that we do here is to really understand how is that coffee performing? Is it going to maintain that flavor characteristic throughout the cupping process? Now I'm going to go in for my. Medium temperature pass. I really want to make sure that the coffee is still consistent. It hasn't changed much. I'm going to go do my cold pass, which is our third pass. And we do this basically to identify if the copies, most of the time copies have sweetened as they cool down and maybe more floral or fruit characteristics have come out. So I'm going to go through and taste again. And I'm looking to make sure that the coffee is still performing to where it was and when it was hot. That's a sign of a high quality coffee. If I can drink a coffee when it's cold, I know it's a good coffee. And that's one of the things that we do here at a Lego is really vet these coffees, use this cupping protocol that's established by the Specialty Coffee Association as Q graders and really identify what are the flavor characteristics of this coffee and how we can bring it to you in these packages.