Professional Tea Cupping PART II

Cupping Basics Help You Increase Sales!

Just as the best way to get to Carnegie Hall is to practice … so it is with improving your cupping skills. Now that you have all the equipment and tools, it’s time to practice with the professional tasting cups. Before you begin using your tea cupping set, practice using only water. It’s not difficult but there are a few tricks to using the groove tooth cup to avoid spills.

TEA CUPPING PREPARATIIONS:

•It is good to cup teas within a few hours after eating rather than on an empty stomach.

•You should be well: no allergy discomforts, no fever, no recent dental surgery. (We assume you do not smoke.)

•Allow enough time to focus on the cupping from preparation to note taking so that you can be as efficient with time and tea. If you have allergies to certain flavorings, choose a staff member to taste and make buying decisions for that category for your shop, tea room, or restaurant.

•While the water is heating, measure a portion of each tea into its own brewing cup. Check for the appearance of the dry leaves. Do they look and smell fresh? Are greens the appropriate hue from deep hunter green to a delicate sage? Are these full leaves or CTC or excessive dust or fannings? Do the oolongs or blacks have any tip? Is the color golden or dark brown as typical? Are the shapes well defined and carefully done in signature curly, twisted, flat, or rolled shapes? Do they look small or large for their category?

•Pour water onto the tea in the brewing cup, cover with the lid, and set the timer. When the brewing time is completed, work swiftly but carefully to decant. Place the vessel in a horizontal position over the tasting bowl, serrated edge down, so the liquid pours into it.

USE ALL YOUR SENSES:

Look at everything, smell and taste everything, feel the leaves in dry and wet stages, listen to how the water moves with the tea leaves. All can inform you and enable you to make the best tea-buying decisions.

SMELL: When you have poured out every last drop from the brewing cup, upend the lid and the spent leaves should appear in a small mound. Smell the leaves. Do you detect a tang, sweetness, an acrid or dull scent? Highly floral or sweet or earthy and muscatel? Smell the liquor. Is it pleasant, familiar to the category, heavy or light fragrance?

OBSERVE: How do the brewed leaves look? How do they feel? Fully opened leaves indicate complete brewing. Those that are not indicate longer brewing times may be necessary. When done, place the lid on the cup so that you can see the spent leaves. View the color of the liquor for brightness, clarity, color hue. Cloudiness indicates excessive dust or fannings. Hues can range from nearly clear to pale yellow to a bright clear chartreuse for various greens; oolongs and blacks can range even further from palest yellow to golden to mahogany red.

TASTE: Bring the tasting cup to your lips and take a taste. Now’s not the time for a delicate sip but for a good slurp with a little air. Swill the tea in your mouth, breathe in through your nose to enhance the flavor and fragrance. Any characteristic more predominant than others? Anything missing? Spit the liquid into a spittoon bowl. Take another taste if you have any doubts about this selection.

Flavor Profile Clues: The tea taster’s vocabulary is huge, but in short, you’re looking for such textural characteristics that you can feel in your mouth such as briskness, heavy, or light-body, complexity, and aftertaste plus such classic tea flavors as vegetal, sweetness, mineral, earthy, nutty, spicy, marine, floral or fruity. Ask yourself if the taste is typical of this tea type, is it ordinary or superior, how does it feel on the palate, and is there an aftertaste?

Slurp and spit OR slurp and swallow? Most professional tea tasters slurp and spit while others insist on swallowing each sip because they believe that reveals more about the characteristics of the selection. This can wreak havoc on your stomach, especially after tasting large quantities of tea. When the session is completed, eat some cheese and crackers, milk and toast, or a little yogurt with a piece of pita. This will ease any distress your stomach might develop.

REPEAT: Re-brew each sample to determine if the tea offers flavor-full second or third cups, or more. Increase the length of brewing times slightly with each brewing. Experiment with different water temperatures and different brewing times. If you’re not tasting distinct flavor this may be remedied by using more tea, however, it often means the tea is dull, old or poorly processed, and you should pass on this sample.

Clean, Rinse, Taste, Repeat. Rinse your mouth thoroughly with water after each cupping category or eat a small plain water cracker or piece of plain white bread to cleanse the palate. Cleaning utensils if you’re using the same ones. Using a pair of bamboo tongs, hold the spoon or tasting cup and dip it into a bowl of clean, boiled water. Wipe off the water with a clean paper towel or linen cloth and resume the cupping. Or, simply use extra spoons and tasting cups.

AFTERTHOUGHTS:

Taste teas as often as you can. The most experienced tea tasters develop a sense memory only possible after hundreds of cupping sessions to educate nose, eyes, and palates. Only practice can achieve that sensory skillset. Remember, no one has your palate and as the tea buyer, you must, as Confucius said, Let your palate be your guide. Trust what you like and learn what your customers enjoy so that you can choose the best selections to SELL.