To Be a Great Coffee Taster

A few years ago, I wrote the first book about the coffee buying role, Dear Coffee Buyer. I explained my motivation to share my experience as plainly as I could in the preface:

I’ve made my fair share of coffee-buying mistakes. Some of them were likely unavoidable, but others could have been sidestepped if I had only had access to training for the job. Know-how and skill-building for the position, like an urban legend, has been passed on through the oral tradition. If you don’t work directly with someone who has been buying coffee for years, you just have to figure it out on your own. My goal is to help you avoid the mistakes I made and to shorten your path to proficiency in coffee buying as quickly and painlessly as possible.

I’m satisfied with the effort to share what I know about coffee buying, but there’s a limit to how much you can learn from reading a book.

Since its publication, it has become clear to me what I didn’t--what I couldn’t--include in Dear Coffee Buyer.

To be a truly great coffee buyer, you have to be a great coffee taster.

To be a great coffee taster, you have to cup with other, experienced tasters. You have to cup the same roasts of the same samples, brewed with the same water at about the same time. “Go out of your way to cup with others,” I write in Dear Coffee Buyer. “Getting someone else’s opinion on a cup or sample--even, or especially, if it’s different from your opinion--is incredibly valuable.”

Unfortunately, this work cannot be done alone or in isolation. It cannot be done with your importers or other suppliers, because (please keep in mind) they’re trying to sell you something.

Typically, this could be done in-person, but this isn’t always possible, and for the past year, has been very nearly impossible.

Scott Rao and I are launching a cupping subscription designed to help you become a better coffee taster. Our goal is to provide you with an exact copy of the coffee we’re tasting so that we can cup them together, live and online.

Each month, you will receive several unique coffee samples, expertly sourced and roasted.* I will evaluate the samples online while you taste along at home and compare notes, live or in your own time. We’ll invite guest cuppers to share their takes on the same coffees you have brewed in front of you. You’ll have the chance to improve your skills while you gain insights about origins, processing, and samples.

It’s called Facsimile, and it’s available in limited quantities now.

*This may sound glib or superficial, but we’re dead serious.

We could wax poetic about how we collectively come with decades of green sourcing and roasting experience, or how we’ve written definitive, seminal books in our fields, or how we promise nothing short of exceptional coffees roasted flawlessly, free of any defects.

But we’ll make it simple: We guarantee your satisfaction. If you’re not happy we’ll refund your money in full.