At MCA we run quarterly cupping sessions to engage and bring together the coffee community in Melbourne. As coffee educators, we see this as a privilege but also a way for us to keep learning and to develop as barista trainers.
Our last one (on March 9, 2023) was our most experimental as we really wanted to change the way we run public cuppings. We wanted more interaction and playfulness but at the same time make it educational and thought-provoking. Too often cuppings can be overly serious and unapproachable to newer baristas. Sometimes it can be threatening or intimidating, especially when you have serious coffee tasters in the room. We wanted to break down those barriers while still making it engaging for the serious coffee professional.
The key here is anonymity and the utilisation of technology to provide more creative ways of engagement. We utilised an online platform called “Mentimeter” to create an interactive presentation that each person could connect to with their phone. We then cupped 6 coffees blind but only tasted them one at a time. With each coffee, participants had to write 3 flavour notes. A fun little question/guessing game about the coffee followed this. The coffee was finally revealed and discussed before moving on to the next.
This was the first time we tried this format and overall the response has been overwhelmingly positive! We hope this starts to flip the script on what traditional public cuppings can be. As an industry, I genuinely believe we need to be more creative in how we educate to make sure we are approachable to the next generation of coffee professionals.
We’ve saved a copy of the presentation below as a reference as the results were very interesting!
See you next time!
A big thanks to Slayer Espresso for hosting us and Oatly for sponsoring the night with delicious drinks and pizza.