Welcome to the Cupping Room.

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Our cupping room is quality control headquarters at Portland Roasting Company. It is here that we sort, verify and taste all the coffees that come through our doors. In addition to encouraging and assisting our growers to produce exceptional coffees, we take the extra steps necessary to make sure all beans are carefully vetted before being roasted, bagged and shipped to our customers.

Sorting – The sorting process helps us separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. We do, in this case, judge a book by its cover and examine beans for their appearance. We look for a uniform, olive-green hue that is both consistent and uniform. We also sort for moisture. We don’t want beans that are too dry or too wet, but “just right,” to avoid the appearance of mold and other mycotoxins. Just right means a moisture content of between 10-12%. Defects are also kept to an absolute minimum. We take small samples and carefully examine them for damaged or rotten beans and we limit our defects to no more than 16 per 300 grams of beans.


Verifying – We don’t take anything for granted at Portland Roasting and treat each sack of beans that travels through the warehouse as a new, yet-to-be explored commodity. Our sorting process doesn’t just happen once, it happens at least twice for each order of beans. The initial sample is sorted and flavors and scores recorded. When the actual order comes in we perform the process all over again, matching it against our original cupping notes to ensure that our sample matches our order – and quality remains high.


Tasting – We have scrutinized, sorted, discarded, and picked over the beans -- and then we come to the best part – tasting the yields of the rich, roasted beans. The cupping test is one of the most important stages in the evaluation of the quality of the coffee. Our cupping team can diagnose possible defects in cultivation or production techniques while building profiles of single coffees or blends to create a reference point to evaluate future consistency. A cupping profile is built on the following characteristics: aroma and fragrance; flavor; acidity; body; aftertaste; and overall impression.