Cupping is to Coffee what Tasting is to Wine. There are many ways to do a cupping, as a group, by yourself, with or without a score sheet or notebook, a single coffee, multiple coffees at a time, single origin, silently, blindly, etc. There are really only a few things that are essential to cupping coffee.
Using a standard brewing method is perhaps the most important part of cupping since other people should be able to replicate a cupping with a similar coffee and get fairly similar results. Pour hot filtered water (about 195 degrees Fahrenheit) over medium ground coffee at about a 6-ounce-water to 12-gram-coffee ratio. Thats about it.
Of course there are suggested guidelines and best practices which you can find out about online or at a cupping, feel free to try new things. Even that standard brewing method is not an absolute, I love to get a cup of filtered coffee or even a shot of espresso in the morning and take notes on what I am smelling and tasting.
