Thursday, November 11, 2010

Coffee Cupping: How Professionals Taste Coffee | Serious Eats

Coffee Cupping: How Professionals Taste Coffee | Serious Eats
What i find most interesting about his article is that it attempts to do two things at the same time which on the surface seem contradictory. The premise of the article is to give in layman terms the process by which an elite set of individuals grade coffee. This apparently needs to be done because this process is mysterious and shrouded in obscure almost dictatorial power in its ability to affix value to coffee.
It is almost like the author is saying, "Do you wanna why certain coffee is considered better than others? Well, there is a perfectly rational system in place that allows certain individuals to make those claims about certain varieties."
The other thing that this article does is to maintain the control that these 'professionals' have over this stratification of food. With just enough vague brevity the author rather successfully re-shrouds this field of action all over again. At the end of the article we feel just as bewildered as before about the whole thing. We also feel appropriately distant from being able to achieve the elite status that the professionals have in tasting coffee. We know that even if we attend some of these coffee cupping events we will remain subservient to a predetermined number set by the objective set parameter maintained by the 'gods' of coffee tasting.
as for me right now - i just wanna find some good coofee to bring home this week!

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