Southsea Coffee Co Presents… Cupping 101

Next Wednesday and the first Wednesday of every month, Southsea Coffee Co host special ‘Cupping 101’ events. As a fully paid-up member of Team Tea, I will hand over to Southsea Coffee’s co-owner Tara Knight who is much better placed to explain what you can expect on the evening.

It’s a super laid back event where we show you how we taste coffee! Cupping is how coffee is professionally tasted, and the cupping table is where coffee buyers select coffee at source, where roasters taste their coffee and how we select the coffees that we serve to you.

The process of brewing via cupping takes away any changes that may be introduced by brewing method and standardises each cup. This makes it possible to evaluate coffees side by side.

If you would like to get involved then one of the team look at the beans to see if there were any physical differences between each, then we grind the beans to release the dry aroma. We then smell the coffees again, once wet because when heat is applied, the aromatics become more volatile and this allows your nose to pick out flavours more easily. After 4 minutes we taste, well…slurp the coffee and decide what flavours we can taste.

We also run a sensory cupping on a Thursday once a month (next one is 19th April). This costs £8 and is a much smaller group, where we expand and explore the flavours present in the coffee in much more detail by tasting them alongside different foods.

Coffee 101 is a guided cupping, suitable for beginners, and very popular so get in quick if you’d like to be involved. It is free to take part although you will need to book your place via Eventbrite. For more information on this and other events check out their website and social media links below.