Every batch gets cupped. Here’s what we check

Every batch we roast — at Roastery 01 in Magelang and Roastery 02 in Sentolo — gets cupped within 24 hours of leaving the drum, before any of it is packed. It’s the least glamorous thing we do and the single biggest reason the same coffee tastes the same, order after order.

The roast log tells us what the machine did: charge temperature, rate of rise, first crack, development time, drop. The cupping table tells us what it means. Numbers can sit perfectly inside their curve and the cup can still be wrong — that’s the gap cupping exists to close.

What the table catches

Roast defects all have flavors. Underdeveloped coffee tastes grassy and sour; a baked roast tastes flat and papery, like the aroma left the building; scorched coffee turns ashy. Each batch is tasted against the lot’s reference cup, so drift shows up as a difference you can slurp, not a number you can argue with.

The two roasteries also cross-cup weekly — Sentolo’s batches on Magelang’s table and back — so “the same profile” stays a fact rather than a hope.

The ritual, step by step

Ground coffee goes into cups and gets smelled dry. Hot water goes on, and the grounds float into a crust that steeps untouched for four minutes. Then the break: push the crust back with a spoon, nose right at the surface — this is the most aromatic moment the coffee will ever have.

Skim the foam, wait for it to cool a little, then slurp — loud, spraying the coffee across the whole palate. Taste again as it keeps cooling: sweetness, acidity and defects all become easier to read in a cooling cup, which is why nobody judges a coffee piping hot.

Do it at home with two cups

You don’t need scores or forms — just two coffees, brewed identically, tasted side by side. The pair we’d start you on: Timor Leste Full Washed against Malabar Wine. One is clean, nutty and quiet; the other is molasses, spice and pineapple. The gap between them is wide enough that your palate can’t miss it.

Ask three questions of each cup as it cools: where’s the acidity, how heavy does it sit, and what’s the last thing you taste after you swallow? Do that a few times and you’ve built the only skill cupping actually trains: noticing.

Taste with us

Or skip the setup and come slurp at ours: we host a free public cupping at the Magelang roastery on the first Saturday of every month. Bring your questions — the table is where they get the shortest answers.