Cup Tasting Top 10

After round one of the cup tasting competition, the results are as follows with the top 8 progressing through to the semi-finals:

Place	Competitor	Country	Cups Correct	Time
1st	Georg Branny	Austria	8	6:47
2nd	Tassos Moschopoulos	Greece	7	3:06
3rd	Luis Gerardo	Guatemala	7	3:50
4th	Donovan McLagan	South Africa	7	5:00
5th	Kim Ossenblok	Spain	7	5:28
6th	Christophe Rubino	France	7	5:43
7th	Cory Andreen	Germany	7	5:45
8th	Jose Francisco Castro Tenorio	Costa Rica	7	6:47
9th	Kalle Freese	Finland	7	6:51
10th	Cinzia Linardi	Italy	7	7:22

              

The WorldCup Tasters Championship is probably less promoted than it should be. The competition is set out so that it awards the professional coffee cupper who demonstrates speed, skill, and accuracy in distinguishing the taste differences in specialty coffees.

Coffees of the world have many distinct taste characteristics, and in this competition format the objective is for the cupper to discriminate between the different coffees.  Three cups are placed in a triangle, with 2 cups being identical coffees and one cup being a different coffee – There are 8 triangles in total.  Using skills of smell, taste, attention and experience, the cupper will identify the odd cup in the triangle as quickly as they can.  While it sounds easy, some coffees may be different in the sense that it is the same bean just roasted by different roasters, or even just from different altitudes at the same plantation. What makes this more difficult is the flavour saturation the coffee has on the palate, as such as the cupper tastes more coffee, the harder it is to distinguish.

While it’s probably not the most entertaining thing to watch, as people are racing against the clock, you can still live stream it from 12pm Vienna time on Thursday the 14th (8pm Australia time) – the revealing of the cups is always the most suspenseful!