Here is a great series about common mistakes people make when cupping coffee. I found it really good. On hot water: Far and away the biggest problem I’ve run across is not enough hot water. There are only two ingredients that go into a cupping bowl: coffee and hot water. No one ever seems to forget the coffee. Remarkable how often the hot water gets neglected. On smelly cups: Of course, it’s much better when I take that inhale and find that there’s no odor at all! Then I can concentrate all my powers of olfaction where they belong: on the coffee. On blind tast testing setup: There’s a simple way to get around this. Just double-code the coffee. Imagine I am setting up a cupping with one other friend, and we both want to score blind. I will write down one set of codes. So a coffee from the farm “Finca Alfa” becomes 001 and “Finca Beta” becomes 002, etc. Part 1: Hot Water Part 2: Smelly Cups Part 3: Not Really Blind Good tips!
