It's a sunny afternoon in mid-September when I join Victor, who has more than a decade of experience in the coffee business, and part of the Rum Baba team for almost a year – to start setting up the table in the back of Rum Baba Elandsgracht for the store's new workshop.
A coffee cupping that will feature some of the exciting new beans that have appeared on the store's shelves in recent weeks.
I’m super-excited about it as it’s the first coffee workshop to be held at Rum Baba since I started working here a couple of weeks ago. I’ve always loved coffee cupping because it’s an awesome way to learn more about coffee. I already know that today I’ll have the chance to try some delicious beans while learning more about them.
As more and more people begin to fill the space, Victor proceeds with preparations for the cupping. First, he weighs all the beans we are about to taste, preparing two cups for each specific coffee. Then, he grinds all the beans and sets up the table, before starting the cupping. After all of us already present have had a chance to smell the dry beans to feel all their nuances - Victor starts the timer and begins pouring hot water into each cup, filling them to the rim.
Once all the cups are filled, Victor moves on to the next step of cupping: breaking up the crust of ground coffee that naturally forms on top with a spoon, before cleaning it off with the help of a second spoon. Finally he can take a few minutes to meet his guest and properly introduce what is about to happen.
Victor begins: “My idea when I hold a cupping is to give people an experience, not a lecture. I want to inform customers about coffee tasting in an educational, but informal way, and I also like the opportunity to present our current range of coffees, with a focus on what I like best.”
He then briefly introduces what coffee cupping is and why it is such an important sort of “ritual” for us at Rum Baba, essential for internal quality control, but also for selecting new harvest lots from producer partners, and why it can be a fun and interesting experience for everyone to do at home as well. It is a great and easy way to compare coffees with each other; with a type of immersion brew that can be related to French Press or some ways of brewing with Aeropress.
When the 10 minutes are up, it is time to taste the coffees.
Armed with two cupping spoons, we all line up and start sipping the coffee.
To make for an interesting experience, Victor chooses to cup seven very different coffees, mixing super fruity beans such as the Colombian Holguin and the Kenyan Gichathaini with chocolatey beans as the Costa Rican El Fuego, and other exciting beans.
As a form of cupping, Victor opts for a blind cupping: during which the other participants and I will not know which beans we will taste initially. After a few rounds it is revealed which coffees are which.
In this way, our judgment of coffee taste and personal preferences will not be guided by misconceptions or preconceptions, but will be based solely on taste.
After a second and third round of tastings, it's time for all of us to share our experience: someone points out their favorite cup, another person joyfully shares that they recognized a specific coffee, and a third points out how cup number three definitely tastes like raspberry. For me, the juicy notes of melon from the second cup – the Holguin that I was already in love with, from brewing it behind the counter – are to die for.
When Victor reveals all the coffees we tried in the workshop, we can finally draw conclusions about which were the most loved. The aforementioned Gichathaini and Holguin turn out to be the two favorites, along with the Colombian decaf, which, with its delicious sweet and caramelized notes, surprisingly makes everyone forget about the lack of caffeine
Happy with the experience, some of the participants decided to stay longer in the café. There are those who want to try one of the cupped coffees as an espresso, others who want to buy a bag of coffee, and some who simply want to stay longer to talk and learn more about coffee, eager for the next Rum Baba Workshop.