Objectivity in Coffee Tasting

Gee and I had an interesting conversation on Friday about coffee evaluation. The basic topic was: how does one know what a great coffee is, besides one's own preference? And what is important in coffee tasting, anyway?

This is a perennial topic among coffee tasters, and I have been thinking about it in a different way lately. Of course, the whole deal about cupping professionally is an attempt to take the inherently subjective experience of tasting coffee and putting it into a quasi-objective format. Coffee cuppers spend a tremendous amount of time trying to "calibrate" against other cuppers, making sure that they score coffees highly that are generally recognized as great (and give generally recognized inferior coffees low scores). This behavior is, of course, maximized at cupping events like the Cup of Excellence, where cuppers are actually evaluated on their ability to conform to the group's taste, and also their willingness to reward or punish coffees if they feel such a thing is warranted. This pattern revolves around whichever cupping form is being used, which usually produces a score between 0 and 100.

I have been feeling an urge to simplify lately, and streamline the documentation of the tasting experience. Conversations with Trish, Geoff Watts and George Howell have driven me along this path. The following are the categories I keep in mind when I am tasting coffee, and are be the basis of my own tasting paradigm. They are divided into two basic categories: evaluating green coffee quality (say, for coffee buying or for a contest) and evaluating roasted coffee (for quality control and reviews). This is also the closest I can get to objectivity in coffee evaluation.

Green Coffee Evaluation:

Sweetness: This is the basic sensation of sweetness in coffee, and it is directly related to the ripeness of the cherry when the coffee was picked. The sweeter the coffee, the better; I would say that is universal. This is, of course, related to various mono- and polysaccharides present in coffee, and may also be the result of "fantasia" sweetness from other substances.

Cleanness: Cleanliness is a hugely important part of great coffee, and is related to the skill of the processor at origin. To me, this is similar to “clarity” in the cup, where the sweetness and other flavors of the coffee are unobscured by any dirtiness, funkiness, or off-flavors. This value, of course, favors washed coffees.

Character: This is the most subjective of the three categories. It comprises concepts like body, aftertaste, aroma, balance, etc. To me, any combination of these kinds of categories ultimately falls short, because we have different expectations of different coffees. For example, we expect Indonesian coffees to present a certain character, and expect washed Ethiopians to present a wildly different character. Both can be great, though they will frequently fall short on one category or another. However, a Yirgacheffe that has an amazing amount of Yirgacheffe-ness will score very highly on this value. Freak coffees, like strange varietals with unexpected characteristics, might also have a ton of character. The concept of "Terroir" would also come into play here. Coffees which would score low on this would be coffees that are insipid, anonymous, bland, or common-tasting.

Roasted Coffee Evaluation:

Skilled Roast: I almost called this "Absence of Roast Defect". The goal here is for the roasted coffee to be without any of the flavors normally associated with roast problems: fishiness from dark roast, scorched flavors, sourness, roast bitterness (trigonellene) etc. etc. Since both dark and light roasts can be done skillfully, there would not be a built in bias towards either.

Transparency of Coffee Character: Do the coffees taste like what they are? Was the roaster paying tribute to the coffee, and bringing out the best parts and salient aspects of the coffee? Was the beauty inherent in the coffee (or component coffees) brought out?

Achievement of Intention: This is an assessment of whether the coffee was able to achieve what it was intended to achieve. If it was an espresso, was it successful at producing the elements of good espresso? If it was a single-origin sold by farm name, was it successful at communicating the specificity of that coffee? Does the flavor profile meet the description proposed by the roaster?

These six categories, for me, build the elements of what come closest to what I am actually evaluating when I am tasting coffee.

-Peter