How To Cup (Taste) Coffee At Home

There is a master plan behind all this - this is part one. Part two is going in depth on tasting, so make sure you're subscribed for that.

Part three is going to be a little bit ridiculous, but very exciting!

Music:
"Still Good" by Utah

Links:

[garyosullivan]

The sincere accessibility and transparency that you use when discussing coffee is genuinely heart warming

[MihaRekar]

One thing that should also be pointed out: coffee cupping is a great way to show your friends what all the fuss is about. I had people who don't even drink coffee come over and they were 100% certain all coffee will taste exactly the same to them and they were shocked to discover how different it can be even to them.

I also like to do them in a way where I invite a couple of friends and they each can bring their own coffee to taste so we all have something new to discover and experience.

[Thefive]

That ending, exactly what I didn't know I needed. Apologize for nothing James

[krishdhruve]

I saw James, I clicked on James. I am happy now.

UPDATE: I absolutely love how James manages to simplify a process that's perceived as 'pretentious' to a lot of coffee drinkers.

[KelsomaticPDX]

Kettle temperature is the best, funniest way I've seen of indicating the length of an ad break. Brilliant idea that made me smile (and watch the full ad break).

[Esaups]

I work at a trattoria in Mexico, we've been serving really bad coffee for years untill I decided to change that, It's been two months now since I've started this journey, now, people really loves the coffee we make and it's 80% thanks to you and your videos, now, with the rest of the coffee I have on the restaurant (cause believe, I've tried a lot from specialty coffee shops of my zone to supermarket coffee) I'mma try to cup all of them, maybe it's not best cause they're not recently grounded but I'm pretty sure that'll be fun 💕 ☕

[thomaskoch]

I attended a cupping during a coffee workshop once. They had three different coffees in 6 cups and we had to find the pairs as a group. Interesting exercise for beginners and you encourage a discussion in the group!

[davidwoo]

Here to pre-game the decaf coffee tasting!

[greenlean]

I love your spoon transition @2:46! Its very smooth and I re-watched it at least 8 times trying to figure out how the spoons were edited in.

[mattbanak]

13:50 was the most majestic 5 seconds of this channel's history. Beautiful.

[clericneokun]

Once, I was too lazy to bust out the coffee maker that I just dumped a bunch of grinds in my mug, poured hot water over it and drank it that way. Years later, I find out that the fancy people called that 'cupping'.

On a different day way back when, I was again too lazy to use the coffee maker but this time, I didn't want to chew grinds while I drank coffee so I placed a paper filter with coffee grinds above a similarly sized strainer and casually poured my hot water through there. Surprisingly enough, I also find out years later that the fancy people called that 'pour over'.

Long story short: My teen years were pretty weird.

[howtodrink]

Always super helpful James, thank you!

[AstrumGV]

I love that he's doing it in three wildly different containers, even though he has a perfectly good cupping set over there. "You don't need equal sized containers, and to show you, I'm gonna do it in three of the most different containers I have."

[JacobTheLoofah]

That spoon edit was so god damn smooth, you're getting too good at this

[brettfuller]

Such a great video, and ended up doing a cupping at home because it seemed simple. It was a lot of fun, a little more work than I expected but worth it! My wife has always thought she loved dark roasts, but we learned that the region more than the roast color had a bigger impact for her and her favorite of the bunch was actually a light roast that she said she enjoyed so much she would drink without any dairy.

[mr_mr]

You could never be thanked enough for bringing your humility and honesty to this part of the coffee world.
Your inclusiveness will bring new fans to this world. This bring more consumers as well, which brings more opportunity for production, shops, accouterment and manufacturers.

[Karreth]

This did inspire me to do my own cupping at home. I did the thing you said I didn't have to, and bought 3 different bags of coffee to compare to two bads I already had (one frozen, one in use). I was surprised by the results, though. I'm someone who' have enjoyed coffee since I was in my teens, but I wouldn't characterize myself as a connoisseur. Still, I have opinions on what I like.

In the comparison I find it pretty easy to identify the acidity and sweetness, and I also got one coffee that tasted chocolatey and another that tasted delicate. I wasn't able to put any words on texture or body, though. I suspect that would need more practice to pick out.

Still, what surprised me is that the coffee I liked the best in the cupping is not the same one I liked best brewed. In the cupping, two coffees stood out to me as exceptionally good, while the others were all merely good. And one of my favorites ended up in the merely good pile.

I suspect I know why, though. I've always made my coffee the same way, quite strong and with a scoop. And ... I think maybe different coffees need to be brewed differently to be the most enjoyable they can be. I kinda sounds obvious when I type it out, but I've never thought about it that way before. It makes me kind of excited to experiment with how I make my coffee in the morning.

[ryanmclellanjr]

As a high school English teacher, I am so impressed by James' teaching ability. I've learned so much from him.

[TomTrueba]

Just to clarify, depending of the altitude is going to vary from boiling point. At sea level it's 100C, here in Quito it's 92C.
This is very important when cupping, it's a great advice from James that it's necessary to wait the 10 minutes gap. Also, at our altitude (2800masl) it's interesting to play a little with the pressure of the espresso machines! Great video!

[Canman]

I've been a participant in a few coffee cuppings, but I've never orchestrated one myself until today!

Thank you, James! My parents and I compared two barrel-aged coffees from the same roaster. One was aged in Scotch whiskey barrels, and one was aged in Texas bourbon. The cupping took a bit of work to set up, but it ended up being so much fun. And the process of tasting and talking about the coffees was wonderful. We enjoyed both coffees, but we all gave a slight edge to the bolder flavor of the Texas bourbon coffee.