Coffee Cupping
Catador. Awkwardly bearing more resemblance to the English word “catheter" than any other, yet fortunately having no resemblance to its meaning. Providing a uselessly convenient rhyme with “matador", the word perhaps calls to mind “catastrophe", “cataracts", and “catalyst" as being related, but actually have nothing to do with it. Those three (obviously) finding ultimate derivation from Greek words relating to “downward" things, as the prefix “kata-“ denotes. “Catador" however, finds a more fitting mate with the words “capturer" and “captivater" as it is derived from Latin’s “capere" which basically means “to take".
A “catador" is a coffee cupper, or as we would be more likely to call one, a “coffee taster". Needless to say, the word took me on a wild etymological goose chase as I tried to “capture" its meaning…pun intended, bonus points if you caught it. The Latin-derived word here, catador, implies “capturing" something, or, to make it more clear, we could use the related word: “perceive". In this case, as you have no doubt figured out already, to perceive the flavours present in a particular coffee.
A little while back I had the pleasure of participating (from capere) in a tasting. It’s not at all like the preconceived (also from capere) ideas I had in mind. There is no glass swishing, no sipping, and definitely no cross-contamination! They follow a rather simple recipe (another capere derivative), tasting the coffee from rather small receptacles (yet again, deriving from capere), then recording (no relation) their thoughts on paper.
The coffee usually comes in as “pergamino" which means it still has a casing that needs to come off before it’s ready for roasting. After that is removed by a small mill, it is at the “green gold" stage, ready to be roasted. Very frustratingly the Spanish word for “roast" is “tostar", otherwise a perfect cognate for “toast"! And while coffee is definitely honoured here, it is more often drunk than drunk TO as a “toast" might imply, and it most definitely does not find itself in the same controlled inferno bread does, though many people here do drink coffee “with bread", but that’s because the Spanish word for “bread" (pan) is a much broader term that can encompass pastries, cookies, biscuits, cake, etc.
Pergamino above on the left, and green gold on the right.
Since this coffee production plant only de-shells, dries, and ships green coffee, there is no large roaster on premises. But, for the tasters, there’s a “toaster", albeit a very small one. They always do a medium roast as this allows the most flavours to be emancipated (yes, from capere) from the beans. The beans must first be sorted, with any defective ones separated and counted to give an approximation for how much of the whole crop might be damaged. The basic business is to buy large amounts of in-demand coffee that in turn can be re-sold to brokers who then provide it to local roasters in their countries. The biggest recipients (yup, also capere) of coffee are usually from the USA, Germany, and Japan. In fact, they do supply coffee to Starbucks, but bemoan the fact that they in turn burn it during the roasting process to achieve a consistent flavour. Hence, the work of the cuppers is quite important as they have a direct bearing on which coffees are purchased, and if they don’t catch a bad crop, it could get bought and damage the whole company’s reputation. Also, it serves to help the farmer who has brought the sample because he may be unaware of the defects that ultimately could hurt his livelihood.
The mill for the pergamino on the top left and the small roaster on the top right.
Sorting the beans.
Once roasted, the coffee is kept separate in little dishes (since they do about 10 coffees at a time) with a piece of paper saying where it’s from. They don’t look at that paper until they’re finished to prevent any kind of bias. Five samples of the coffee are ground into little glass bowls, and put onto the long tables in order to get ready for cupping. Almost boiling water, about 90 degrees Celsius, is then poured up to the brim of each one. The ratio is about 5.5 grams per 100 mLs of water. The tasters go over each cup individually and have a whiff. The next go over, they “break" the coffee with a spoon and take another sniff. Finally, they clear off the foam and get ready to taste. You probably already have an idea of how the next part goes, but you might be completely wrong. I was. They then take a to-go mug and a soup spoon and start tasting. I’m sure you’ve seen, or more pertinent to our conversation, “heard" certain cultures of people slurping their soup. It’s noisy and kind of annoys me, not gonna lie. Now imagine a vacuum cleaner having soup. Yes, imagine it. Because these cuppers take that spoon and inhale the coffee so fast so that it fills the whole nasal cavity and spit it out again so quickly, that if you blink you practically miss the process! The idea is to quickly taste the coffee and aftertaste to the maximum degree by inhaling it so quickly, preferably while it’s still hot. They’re looking for its sweetness, its body, and also the acidity. As it cools, the flavours change, so they might go over some a few times. The idea with having five samples each is to get a better cross section in case they have difficulty determining a flavour or whether it is damaged or not. Between each cup they dip the spoons into hot water so an to not contaminate the next coffee. What’s left appears to be beer, but is just very diluted coffee.
Now what flavours are they looking for? Well, as one cupper so nicely put it, ‘anything but coffee’. That’s right, they want it to NOT taste like coffee. They’re looking for fruity flavours, chocolate hues, smatterings of citrus, etc. In fact, a really good coffee actually should taste more like a tea! For me, it was difficult to sense all the different flavours. I want to try and get a taste for them, but it will take some practice. I think I noticed some of what they discussed about a few of the coffees.
But now don’t get in a panic, you can still invite me for coffee when I come to visit, I won’t be criticizing anyone’s brew. I’m still a fan of having a darker roast with some milk and chocolate. I’d still go for some Starbucks, even though some might think of them as coffee killers. That’s no problem, I’m not a catador, and that’s no…baloney...
A short video at:
