I started the first two months of the year with all things coffee – roasting my first harvest, joining tours of coffee farms and postharvest facilities during a town's coffee festival, and participating in a training on postharvest processing and coffee cupping. I had all these reading materials on coffee the year I planted. They followed the whole cycle from the seedling propagation to the cup, though I didn’t pay attention to the mid- and tail-end part of the cycle as it’s a long way to go before then. Until booom, what was a long time to go is already here! A few of my two-year old trees decided to bear berries early, and I was left scratching my head on how to go about them.
You learn as you go. You learn as you do it. The early-bearing trees understood this when they bear early, even if in very small quantity, in order to give me an appetizer before the main meal. My coffee trees are my best teacher. Without words, they show me the way by simply Being. I’ve learned so much from the early harvest. I had to pay more attention on how to handpick berries, whether it’s better to do the dry method or the wet method, how long is the fermentation, etc. I still have many questions but tending my trees and going through the postharvest made my questions more concrete and specific, and hence the coffee practitioners whom I approach can give me more informed advice. You wouldn’t believe the questions I had, very general and speculative, when I was starting and everything was let’s-see-how-it-goes. I proudly posted on Facebook a collage of my coffee beans indicating medium roast and dark roast. I learned in the postharvest training afterwards that roasting should be done evenly, and the black beans on my supposedly medium roast started dancing before my eyes! I’m obviously an amateur :p
Among the postharvest practices, I would like to focus for now on coffee cupping. I first heard of coffee cupping when I was asking information before planting. I was describing the place where I was going to plant, and accordingly, the environment where the coffee grew is manifested in the coffee during tasting. Coffees that were planted for instance among bananas and jackfruits took a flavor of the fruits. It sure caught my interest. Then in the coffee festival, the Q grader was presenting the result of the cupping they did: "The coffee of Farmer A has flavors of honey, apricot and fermented fruits." Or "The coffee of Farmer B has flavors of wine, red bell pepper and dark chocolate." I got curious what kind of nose and tongue the person had. It's not just chocolate; it's particularly dark chocolate. It's not just bell pepper; it's particularly red bell pepper.
I got curious all the more how far my nose and tongue would go when I found myself on a coffee cupping training days after. After the introduction on quality assessment which is what cupping is about, we were given guides on how to do the cupping and fill-in the cupping form. The cups were labelled and the coffee grounds were poured into the cup. I smelled the coffee, one cup after another. The only thing I could took note of was the difference in degrees of their coffee smell - like Coffee #2 was the strongest while Coffee #4 was the weakest. There was no olfactory recognition whatsoever on what particular smell was in the coffee. I took a deep breath and smelled the different coffees a second time and the conversation in my mind was like this:
Does it have any chocolaty or peanut smell?
Uhm, it smells like coffee.
Does it have any flowery or apple smell?
Uhm, it smells like coffee.
The taste evaluation comes after the fragrance and aroma evaluation. We took a spoonful of coffee and slurped it loudly so that it will cover the whole tongue and palate. Once again, I could only note whether Coffee #1 is stronger or weaker in taste than Coffee #2 but can’t get further than that. It became more baffling because the coffee that had the nicest smell didn’t have the nicest taste. The conversation in my mind continued:
Is there a tinge of sweetness or salty to it?
Uhm, it tastes like coffee.
Does it have any crispness or liveliness to it?
Uhm, it tastes like coffee.
I did note that Coffee #4 had a wine-like flavor, and this was corroborated by another who said “It’s like whiskey” and yet another who said “Medyo umipabartek a” (Can get you drunk).
Contrary to my earlier belief that cuppers must be super tasters, super tasters in fact don’t make good cuppers because they are oversensitive to certain flavors. What cupping takes is not a special kind of nose or tongue but a lot of practice. The intention really is awareness and cultivation of the senses that are not usually given attention. We can describe different shapes and colors, but we don’t have that much word to describe tastes and smell. Jennifer Rimando, an organic coffee farmer from Sagada and certified Q grader who gave the training on cupping said: “It should only be you and the coffee when you’re cupping. Nothing else.” That can be extended to when we’re drinking our morning coffee and our attention is on the day ahead and not the coffee in our hands. There are no-talking restos that provide earplugs (for silence) to its diners. The room is dimly lit, just enough to see that you’re not cutting your finger with your knife. The idea is simple but radical in this age of constant distraction and multitasking: It should only be you and your food when you’re eating.
Cupping is not tasting for tasting’s sake. The main goal is assessment of the quality attributes of the coffee. Those with scores of 80 and above would be labelled as specialty coffee and could demand higher price. A technical report would be prepared for coffees that had scores of 79 and below so the farmer would know where improvements could be done. Overripe or immature berries could be discerned during cupping. Parchment coffee that were dried in the ground without elevation or near where burning was done (nagsisinga) would absorb the earthy or smokey smell, and these again could be discerned during cupping. The result of the cupping therefore reflects the agricultural and postharvest processing practices of the farmer, and this is what’s reflected in the technical report.
I find so many things about coffee poetic, and one of it is that every single stage in the journey of the coffee from a seedling to the cup will be manifested in the cupping. It is a story being told – not through words but through the smell and taste. Pay attention to the story that your coffee is telling you next time you drink your coffee.
Cosmic Ride by Dayyuman Marie Ngoddo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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