Don’t Knock the (Public) Cup!

Public cupping sessions are the ideal setting for novel coffee experiences. Some seasoned professionals may regard them as only valuable to beginners, but it’s these casual, open events that have the greatest potential to elevate the practice above its everyday application as an assessment tool. Don’t just take it from me, however, as two of the world’s most experienced coffee tasters agree: it’s time to stop knocking the (public) cup!

Acidity & sweetness

Of the many ways one can experience coffee, no other vessel reveals as much of what a bean has been through like the humble cupping bowl. Silvio Leite, co-founder of both the Brazilian Specialty Coffee Association and the Cup of Excellence competition (where he serves as a Head Judge), co-author of the 2004 SCA cupping protocols, and the friendliest person you will ever meet at a trade show, knows this better than most, as his entire professional life has revolved around the cupping lab. ‘I began more than 40 years ago, at a very young age. The very first time I saw coffee being separated and evaluated cup by cup, I was amazed. I realized that coffee could “speak” through its flavours, revealing not only its qualities but also its origin and story.’ Since that first slurp, Silvio has travelled the world as a green coffee trader and QC consultant, and in 2019, began producing coffee at his beautiful farm Cerca de Pedras in Piatã, Bahia—a region he has championed vigorously throughout his career. Regardless of his various accomplishments, Silvio assured me that ‘nothing compares to the act of tasting coffee […] it is the soul of what I do.’

When delving deeper into why this is, Silvio pointed out that he considers tasting from a cupping bowl and drinking a brewed coffee to be two separate experiences. ‘Cupping is a professional tool. It is about creating fairness and consistency—same roast, same grind, same brew—so every coffee can be judged equally,’ he specified. Though its fastidious protocols can daunt first-timers, he believes the ritual’s ability to unveil the effects of terroir and processing on flavour is its greatest strength. ‘Drinking a brewed coffee, however, is something very different: it is personal, emotional, and part of daily life.’ he contrasted. This is because brewing also ‘plays with diversity: darker or lighter roasts, different methods such as espresso… it is about pleasure and how each person likes to experience coffee.’

Ultimately, though the cupping table may present coffees with less intentionality than your favourite barista, it provides a unique sense of discovery that wows even the most skilled professionals. ‘Coffee never stops evolving,’ Silvio agreed. ‘I have seen competitions like the Cup of Excellence reveal entire regions and producers that had never been recognized before.’ Yet, this isn’t because the practice’s formalities somehow extract better flavour out of a coffee. As someone who has crashed and burned out of regional AeroPress and Brewer’s Cup heats for attempting to recreate the ceremony on stage, I can assure you: cupping bowls are not exactly championship brews. There is simply something transcendent about the slow pace at which, one-by-one, beans are weighed, ground, sniffed, and sipped, in a room full of strangers and peers, that pushes audiences to connect with coffee on an individual basis, away from the pretence or performance of the brew bar. For an exercise that strives to be incredibly precise and replicable, cupping is as unpredictable and surprising as the people participating in it. ‘This endless possibility is one of the reasons I remain so passionate about it,’ Silvio echoed.

Flavour & aftertaste

The conversations held during public cupping sessions further differentiate these events from your average cafe interaction. The feedback loop created when newcomers are encouraged to ask questions, and professionals given time to answer them carefully, is key in bridging the gap that separates both ends of the industry. Guatemalan coffee exporter and Cup of Excellence Head Judge Eduardo Ambrocio learned this lesson early on in his career while working with small-scale producers across his home country.

Eduardo fell in love with cupping coffee in high school as part of a programme offered by ANACAFE (Guatemala’s national coffee body). ‘I then started hustling for a job with them in ’92,’ Eduardo remembered with a chuckle. ‘But they couldn’t hire me because I was underage, so they made me wait—though I did offer to volunteer. I just wanted to learn and get involved in the industry.’ He nabbed a position the day he turned 18, and remained at ANACAFE for 20 years, spending much of that time assisting farmers in refining the quality of their crop through cupping.

Eduardo explained that the technical advice offered to farmers at the time had little influence on how they approached each harvest, because they lacked access to the cupping labs where their crop was sold. However, whenever they could taste coffee, experiencing why certain practices led to lower evaluation scores (and in turn, prices offered), producers were incentivized to adopt improved techniques. ‘I loved that job because I began travelling all over Guate, visiting communities with other technicians, basically carrying a library of common defects to cup with producers.’ The work laid the foundation for many cooperatives and producers that are now quite influential and earned Eduardo a spot as part of the judging panel for Guatemala’s first Cup of Excellence competition in 2001.

Since founding exporting company Prisma Coffee Origins with wife Luisa and brother Edwin in 2019, Eduardo has continued to support smallholders through tasting—a custom I witnessed during Guatemala’s 2024 harvest. On a three-day trip to the town of San Antonio Huista, Huehuetenango, the Ambrocio brothers introduced me to the El Sendero cooperative, a quality-focused association that produces astonishing lots. The region provided me with a glimpse into the reality faced by many coffee-growing communities: climate change has made the crop more challenging to farm, and high rates of migration have left fields with fewer people to work them. Keeping the remaining players engaged is pivotal in safeguarding coffee’s future here; securing profitable prices, Eduardo told me, is the most effective way to accomplish this. ‘Back in the ’90s and early 2000s, producers weren’t even fighting for a good price; they were just trying to avoid being penalized by exporters for delivering coffee with defects. We’ve finally been able to move beyond this, and now growers are focused on earning better incomes by producing clean coffees that receive high scores, and cupping has played a fundamental role in this process,’ he affirmed.

At the co-op’s warehouse, Eduardo and Edwin’s practical advice was well received, as they had earned cooperative members’ trust at the cupping table. Here, both parties had established a shared lexicon that directly related flavours savoured to farming and processing practices followed. As Eduardo described it, ‘Trying to define specific flavours is actually very complex; I focus on tasting characteristics and breaking paradigms, or as I see it, misconnected language. Only then can we begin to go into greater depth, and talk about fruit-forward coffees, or chocolatey ones, and producers can see why some lots fetch better prices than others.’ Public cupping sessions have a similar effect: they are an invitation for attendants to engage more deeply with our industry by talking through what they’re tasting, keeping roasters and baristas in touch with how their coffee is perceived.

Aroma & fragrance

In his seminal, posthumously released work Philosophical Investigations, Austrian thinker Ludwig Wittgenstein posed a question many of us in specialty have surely wrestled with:

Wittgenstein’s musings, of course, pre-date the idiosyncratic (though perfectly justifiable) flavour notes we love to describe coffees with. The 20th-century philosopher playfully recognized that, whilst we may be convinced of our ability (or lack thereof) to describe coffee’s aroma, we are invariably limited by the words we must use to do so.

Consider this: if an experienced coffee professional learns to detect and describe undesirable traits caused by less than stellar brewing or roasting, yet has never tasted a Colombian lulo or a Bolivian tumbo, could they use those fruits as descriptors the next time they taste a vibrant, acid-forward coffee (say, a classic Nyeri, for example)? Conversely, if someone has only ever eaten out-of-season, imported, straw-coloured peaches (as one does while growing up in tropical El Salvador), are they likely to consider ‘yellow peach’ a positive attribute with which to describe their morning V60? No matter how much we fine-tune our senses, we are all confined to our available language, which is inescapably rooted in our lived experiences.

Falling prey to rote, mechanical (or heaven forbid, samey) language is almost inevitable if the number of people we taste with is limited to a few familiar palates. ‘Sometimes, as a technical cupper, you become almost addicted to vocabulary you use repeatedly,’ Eduardo confessed, ‘and when you use terminology over and over, your brain automatically begins to connect the same flavours with each other.’ Inviting outsiders into our cupping spaces is a constructive way to reverse this trend, reintroducing the sense of surprise that repetitive qualitative assessment can dull over time. As Eduardo best put it, ‘Someone with a fresh outlook and a sharp palate can accurately connect distinct flavours not typically related to coffee—and hit the nail on the head—simply because they’re not bound by particular words.’ Hosting events where people from different cultures and industries feel comfortable sharing the flavour memories our coffees evoke in them is, surely, the most delightful way to learn new language with which to describe our work.

The sense of togetherness that shared discovery creates is practically absent when evaluating dozens of almost-but-not-quite-the-same production samples for quality control. It’s certainly hardly present while cupping at an importer’s office, surrounded by fellow roasters who are probably interested in purchasing the very lot you’re most keen on. Yet, is community-building not at the heart of what we do? Industry luminaire Silvio Leite reckons it should be, as he asserted, ‘For me, cupping—whether with beginners or experts—is about connecting people, building knowledge, and sharing joy. It reminds me every day why I chose this path.’