Jan 17th 2009: Our First Cupping

So you might wonder how do people decide which beans are are good, fair or exceptional...

Well, just like wine tasting, in coffee world people do "cupping" to decide bean's fragrance and taste objectively. Each coffee bean has distinctive flavor, acidity and body. And you can use many words to describe the qualities it possess. Simply put, more words there are, more complex the bean is, and it tend to be an exceptional bean.

So we decided to put 5 distinctive beans under our cupping test!

1. Toraja (Kopi Bali)

2. Cilemo 1st (our very own first roast!)

3. Mawar (Bali Mawar Kopi)

4. Bali Supremo (Kopi Bali)

5. Highlander espresso (Highlander Coffee)

Cupping is quite a simple affair...

The first step is to grind each of the bean in our cute and trusty bean grinder.

The second step is to put the grinds in to a cup.
(8.25g grind to 150ml water)

Then check the flavor of the bean.

Pour hot water (92-96 Celsius) and brew the coffee for 4 minutes...

Next Step is to break the coffee crust on the surface. And check the aroma of the coffee.

Remove the power from the cup using 2 spoons.

Scoop coffee using the spoon and quickly suck in to your mouth and savour the teste and fragrance.

This is what we found in our cupping...

Toraja

Flavor/Fragrance: slightly spicy, herbal

Aroma: charred, smokey, sweet

Body: light to medium body

Acidity: medium

Cupper Point/After Taste: slight acidity at first, but gets bitter after 1 min

Cilemo 1st
Flavor/Fragrance: woody, earthy, a little citrus
Aroma: woody, smokey
Body: full bodied
Acidity: mild
Cupper Point/After Taste: woody, mild acidity, bitter at first, it gets more bitter after 1 min

Mawar
Flavor/Fragrance: earthy

Aroma: woody

Body: full bodied, very strong
Acidity: mild
Cupper Point/After Taste: woody, bitter at first, after 1 min, it gets very bitter and completely looses acidity

Bali Supremo

Flavor/Fragrance: sweet, earthy

Aroma: honey
Acidity: mild
Cupper Point/After Taste: woody, bitter at first, after 1 min, it gets very bitter and completely looses acidity
Body: light

Highlander espresso

Flavor/Fragrance: balanced, ordinary

Aroma: citrus, rich
Body: light
Acidity: well balanced
Cupper Point/After Taste: balanced but ordinary at first, more bitterness but still well balanced after 1 min

Jan 03rd, 2009: Kopi Mawar Singaraja Visit

January 3rd, 2009. Early morning, we are heading to the coffee plantation in Bali. The area is called Singaraja. The distant is about 3 hrs drive from Denpasar.
Once we reach there, we went to on of the traditional coffee roaster, called "Kopi Mawar". This "Kopi Mawar" is known by the local people for the finest traditional local coffee taste. The roasting process is very traditional and they mixed the bean between Arabica and Robusta.



For this Kopi Mawar, they buy the green bean from the plantation which delivered to them daily. Because this is a home roaster, it only can roast up to 40kgs daily and sold out daily. After the roasting, some of the buyer is local traditional coffee shop. They always sell the fresh grind coffee powder. This is traditional coffee seller.




















We also bought some of the roasted bean and green bean from "Kopi Mawar" for tasting purpose and our traditional coffee research. The result of the tasting and roasting will posted on the next blog.