How To Taste Your Coffee Like A Real Connoisseur

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A lot of professional tasting involves trade tricks that might seem goofy to the outside world. Swirling your glass before wine tasting is among the most parodied moves, not to mention the less elegant spitting that sometimes follows. The caviar bumps that briefly captivated the public were also borrowed from fish egg experts. And with all the coffee varieties on the market, evaluating this bean-derived beverage is no less complex.

Coffee aficionados use a process called cupping to determine a brew's worthiness. Beans are ground à la minute for a fresh taste, not unearthed pre-pulverized from a paper bag in the cabinet. The taster then evaluates those grounds for aromatic notes of chocolate, florals, spice, or other elements that might be present in a given sample. Then it gets a little unexpected: The grounds go into a cup, and hot water goes right over the grounds, filter-free. 

The steeping time can vary, but typically lasts a few minutes while the grounds become saturated and float to the surface, forming a crust. You then push that crust aside with a spoon and inhale the fragrance once more. The appraiser finally tastes the joe, musing on the nuanced notes they pick up. It's kind of an ordeal, but one that you can edit to fit your own tasting expectations.

The most obvious thing you'll notice about this muddy approach is that the pros test their coffee unadulterated by any accoutrement. Whether you want to get to know a new bean, or just reacquaint yourself with something you've been sipping for years, you need to skip the cream and sugar. Understanding what it tastes like unadorned may even help you realize that your coffee might taste even better with something like coconut milk instead of your usual dairy.

Freshness is also a factor. We won't tell if you don't replicate the formal cupping procedure to avoid getting a mouthful of grounds — you're probably just making choices for your own household, not a national hotel chain. But you will get the best sense of your beans' peak flavor if you can grind them up on the spot. OXO's burr grinder has 15 settings for your nuanced coffee needs, and it typically sells for around $100. Yes, that is a bit of an upfront investment, but once you perfect your at-home java game, it might save you the expense of a daily coffee run altogether.