At Coalition Coffee Roasters, every batch of coffee we produce goes through a cupping process to ensure you experience the best flavors in every cup. Cupping is the heart of our quality control, allowing us to evaluate the intricate details of each coffee bean before it reaches your home or favorite café.

Here’s a look at how we use cupping to maintain our high standards and why it matters for your coffee experience.

What is Cupping?

Cupping is a time-honored method we use to taste and evaluate the quality of our coffees. It's our way of analyzing the flavor, fragrance, aroma, and overall profile of the beans we roast. This process helps us maintain consistency, identify potential defects, and ensure that each roast brings out the unique qualities of the coffee.

Whether we're sampling a single-origin bean or perfecting a blend, cupping gives us valuable insights into how the coffee will taste in your cup.

Our Cupping Process

Cups lined up up freshly ground coffee & whole beans

1. Fragrance: Capturing the Essence of Freshly Ground Coffee

It all begins with fragrance. Once the beans are roasted and ground, we assess the dry fragrance released by the coffee grounds. This first whiff reveals hints of what’s to come, giving us insight into the coffee’s potential. Whether it’s a bright, fruity note or a deep, chocolatey scent, the fragrance helps us understand the characteristics we’ll be working with.

2. Aroma: Unlocking the Depth of Flavor

Next, we pour hot water over the grounds, releasing the aroma. The interaction of water and coffee reveals even more complexity, as the aroma deepens and evolves. This is where we get a fuller sense of the coffee’s potential flavor profile, allowing us to spot any flaws or highlight specific qualities. Whether it’s floral, nutty, or spicy, the aroma tells us how the coffee will develop during brewing.

3. The Break: A Key Moment in Evaluation

After allowing the coffee to steep for a few minutes, we break the crust of grounds that forms on the surface. This step releases a concentrated burst of aroma that gives us a deeper understanding of the coffee’s flavor. The break is an important moment to observe how the coffee’s scent has changed and to gather more information about its overall quality.

Cups lined up of freshly brewed coffee & whole beans

4. Tasting: Bringing All the Elements Together

Finally, we taste. Using a cupping spoon, we slurp the coffee to fully experience its flavor, acidity, body, and balance. The slurping helps to aerate the coffee, spreading it across the palate so we can evaluate the taste as accurately as possible. During this phase, we note the coffee’s sweetness, brightness, and complexity, as well as any potential defects.

Why We Cup: Our Commitment to Quality

Cupping is essential to what we do because it ensures that every bag of coffee we roast meets the high standards we’ve set for ourselves—and that you’ve come to expect from us. Each cupping session allows us to assess whether the coffee is consistent and true to its flavor profile. It also helps us adjust roasting techniques if needed, so we can bring out the best in every batch.

Through cupping, we can guarantee that the coffee we send to you is perfectly roasted, well-balanced, and full of the unique flavors that make it stand out.

Better coffee together

At Coalition Coffee Roasters, quality isn’t just something we talk about—it’s something we taste, evaluate, and refine with every roast. Cupping is our promise that the coffee in your cup will always be exceptional, bringing you the richness, depth, and complexity that only comes from a careful, hands-on approach.

From the first fragrance to the final sip, we’re dedicated to making sure your coffee experience is as satisfying as possible.

Cupping: How We Ensure Quality in Every Roast