a fig tree cannot produce thistles

this will sound weird, un/under-educated, perhaps misplaced, and so forth. but i find it nearly useless to 'cup' for espresso. here's why.

typically, when i'm cupping i'm doing so for two main reasons. one is to cup for defects. i'm slurping quickly and deftly across a few or even a large number of coffees. fast and furious, simply working the table to separate the contenders from the pretenders. i call this cupping defensively because i'm basically putting up my filter system--comprised of my nose, my tongue and my gums (yes, i'm a firm believer in chewing coffee and washing it over my gums as part of mouthfeel)--to detect stuff in my work cup that i don't want to show up in my pleasure cup.

while cupping defensively is very, very important to my decision on whether to buy a coffee it cannot be done alone, which is why i also 'cup forward,' or, cup with the goal of proactively looking for desireable stuff that will enhance someone's experience when they are at home after ordering one of my coffees. this is where i use my skill as a wordsmith almost as much (in some cases, more) as my skills in assessing acidity, body, flavor and aroma. i'm cupping forward and taking notes, sometimes mentally, sometimes feeling as though my pen will run dry before i finish with the adjectives pouring from my brain. the synapses of syntax are firing and i'm generally at a loss trying to hold both the pen and the spoon at once.

this second reason for cupping is keenly important to the frontline roaster because whereas a professional cupper who is determining whether coffee will be sent from, say, the beneficio to the exporter is mainly concerned not with the subtle nuances inherent in a particular lot, but more, as my friend edwin martinez (see the last interview below) says, on the 'health' of the cup. they are simply concerned with passing it up the protein chain. i have to romanticize it, describe it ad infinitum, to sell the sizzle as much as the steak itself. so i begin come with the flower of language, which is guided by efforts at cupping forward. i am learning to be more relaxed, to take more profound slurps which can be as much philosophical as physical. i am deliberately slowing my rate of slurp not to detect crap but to enjoy the possibility of future bliss. i'm sucking at the future, at the what will be after i (potentially) buy this coffee, not sucking at the past, at what has already been done that i have no power of control over.

what, you may be wondering, in the sam hill heck does this have to do with espresso? some of you see it already. others...here it comes.

as i mentioned at the top of the post, cupping for espresso is, for me, nearly useless. because i am a cupping hack? because i don't have a delicate enough palate? because i'm trying to get more than one person at a time to comment in the comments section by using the talk radio controversy approach to blogging? no. no. and, no. in that order. i say useless not really meaning completely devoid of benefit for me in guesstimating educatedly where an espresso will land or fly--or not--as it comes out of the portafilter. it does have its purposes. but those purposes are effectively obfuscated to me as i cup because i am using absolutely none of the same tools. it'd be like trying to run at a track meet in skis. or trying to hit a football with a baseball bat. how could one possibly be expected to make a judgment about Y using tools that have been designed to give insight into Q? another way of putting it might be to say that you're using the wrong map in the wrong laguage. when i want to determine how a coffee will taste as espresso the way to do that is through an espresso machine, with an espresso grind, at what more closely resembles an espresso roast (not necessarily an oiled roast, mind you), into an espresso holder.

maybe this is old news to any serious coffee person. but i seem to hear over and again people's conversations on making espresso blends, conversations that are devoid of the espresso machine. and that sounds a lot to me like the adage that when you're a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. maybe roasters get tunnel vision and try to approach espresso nirvana strictly from the cold science of the cupping table instead of the fanciful artistry of the espresso machine. two parts new guinea. one part brazil. three parts this, that or the other. stir vigorously and shazam! espresso alchemy.

me, i'm not built that way. maybe that means i'm more a barista at heart than a roaster at heart.

or maybe i am indeed just a hack at cupping.