Expertise
NESCAFÉ and the art of coffee cup tasting
December 2008
A MAN in a laboratory gown spoons and slurps steaming coffee from half a dozen bowls in succession. Outside, there are jute sacks of coffee beans stacked one over the other, reaching the high ceiling of Nestle Philippines’ Cagayan de Oro Factory. The man looks serious and unperturbed, stopping at every bowl, and noting each coffee taste and characteristic in a grading sheet.
This is the Sensory Room of the Quality Assurance Laboratory in the factory where NESCAFE is produced, and the man is a trained NESCAFÉ cup taster.
He is one of the very few who aced the stringent 12-session sensory training with a 10 percent passing rate. His prime job is to make sure every sack of Robusta coffee beans, used to produce NESCAFÉ Classic, meets the product’s strict standards.
“Cupping is similar to the wine tasting method in terms of terminology and attributes,” explains Marcel Ocampo, Vice President in charge of coffee production in Nestle’s 25-hectare coffee plant. Ocampo, a veteran cup taster himself, oversees the cup tasters in the Quality Assurance Laboratory. “Cupping It is a process used to effectively communicate taste attributes and differences between batches (against a known reference sample) made through our coffee operations.”
To put it simply, coffee cupping or cup tasting is a method of differentiating characteristics of coffee beans. In the Nestle Philippines factory, as well as in 11 Coffee Satellite Buying Stations strategically located throughout Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, cupping has remained a standard operating procedure before every green coffee bean (GCB) purchase to ensure quality. Here, all GCB from all sellers—small farmers with just one sack of coffee beans to big traders with truckloads—undergo the same grading system, which includes defect count, moisture content, and cup taste.
Cupping at a glance
A NESCAFÉ cup taster starts by sniffing the coffee ground samples then pouring off-the-boiling-point water on it. He steeps the coffee for about three to four minutes before breaking the crust then smelling the aroma. He stirs the coffee, allowing the grounds to sink then scooping out the ones left on top. Ocampo notes that the cup taster uses only a silver spoon which does not have off-tastes that can affect cupping.
When the coffee mixture cools off slightly, the cup taster then puts a spoonful in his mouth and begins to slurp – aspirate as they call it – sucking the coffee with gulps of air. This breaks the mixture into tiny sprays enabling them to reach all parts of the tongue. The NESCAFÉ cup taster then spits out the sample. He notes the many variations of taste it yields. He then drinks water or eats crackers to clear out his palate for the next sample.
A Melange of Tastes
Although the sellers of GCB have surely undertaken means to filter it out of bad beans to meet the strict NESCAFÉ standards, there may still be some particles that can affect the taste of coffee which are eliminated via cupping.
Overall, a NESCAFÉ cup taster detects a slight difference in taste that shouldn’t be there. For instance, a dirty, astringent and woody taste means black beans are present in the sample. A burnt taste means there are cherries – whole berries that have not been dehusked, causing uneven roasting.
Meanwhile, a stinker bean, coffee bean with unpleasant odor when cut, gives off an impure and fermented taste. A moldy bean, coffee bean with molds on the surface, yields a moldy and musty smell and taste. A broken bean, coffee bean with size less than three-fourths of the whole bean, causes uneven roasting, producing less acidity, and less flavor. On the other hand, an immature bean, unripe coffee bean with wrinkled surface and greenish color, results in weaker, poorer, less uniform, and grassy taste. An insect-damaged bean, a coffee bean with one hole or more caused by insects, produces weak coffee aroma and taste.
Achieving the Perfect Cup
Ocampo, who has tucked 26 years experience in cup tasting, says there are more to NESCAFÉ's strict criteria and guidelines for cup tasting, which are a closely guarded secret. NESCAFÉ’s team of cup tasters base their evaluation on NESCAFÉ’s standard of aroma and taste the Filipinos have grown to love. Each detail in the production – for instance, the temperature of the roaster, the time of roasting, and of course the quality of beans – helps them achieve the perfect cup of NESCAFÉ Classic.
“Cupping is both a science and an art,” says Ocampo. He adds confidently that NESCAFÉ cup tasters can detect defect even just by smelling. Even so, they record the results of cup tasting in their computer to establish statistical methods. And then, there is of course, the patented NESCAFÉ coffee-making technology and its 68 years of brewing heritage the world has come to love. |
