My First Instant Coffee Cupping Sessions

Before joining the coffee industry, I thought tasting coffee was pretty straightforward. You drink it, you like it (or you don’t), and that’s about it. 

Then I joined Sucafina Instant and started sitting in cupping sessions. I quickly realized there was an entire world hidden behind what seemed like a simple cup of coffee. 

One of the first things that surprised me was discovering that coffee doesn’t always taste the same, even when it is the same coffee. 

At first, that didn’t make much sense to me. Surely if you’re using the same product, you should get the same result every time, right? As it turns out, not exactly. 

The more I listened to our coffee experts, the more I realized how many factors can influence what we experience in the cup.  

Water quality, for example, can completely change how certain flavor notes are perceived. The same instant coffee can taste sweeter, brighter or more bitter depending on the mineral composition of the water used to prepare it. 

Another thing that caught me off guard was the temperature. Like many people, I used to take a sip the moment my coffee was ready. What I learned is that coffee’s sensory qualities continue to evolve as it cools. A cup that initially feels dominated by roast notes can reveal sweetness and complexity a few minutes later. In some cases, the coffee I preferred at first wasn’t even the one I preferred by the end of the tasting. 

Then there are the little things that seem insignificant until someone points them out. A slightly different dosage. A different water-to-coffee ratio. Even something as simple as how thoroughly the coffee is mixed can influence the final result. Suddenly, I started realizing why consistency matters so much during a cupping session. 

But perhaps the most fascinating discovery was that sometimes the biggest variable isn’t the coffee at all. It’s us. 

Whether you’ve already had several coffees that morning, what you’ve eaten beforehand, how tired you are or even how focused you feel can influence what you’re tasting. It made me appreciate just how difficult it is to evaluate coffee objectively and how much expertise is required to separate perception from reality. 

What I find particularly interesting is how this becomes even more important when you’re developing products for customers around the world. 

A coffee profile that works perfectly in one market may not be the ideal solution in another. Customers' preferences differ. What a customer expects from a cup of coffee in the Middle East can be very different from expectations in Europe, North America or Asia. For example, in some markets coffee is mostly enjoyed black, while in others it is commonly consumed with milk. Understanding those habits is just as important as understanding the coffee itself, because each preparation can reveal different characteristics in the cup. 

That’s why I’ve learned that cupping at Sucafina Instant isn’t simply about deciding whether a coffee tastes good or not. 

What fascinated me most was discovering how structured and methodical the process actually is. The teams don’t just taste a coffee once and make a decision. They look at how it behaves under different preparation conditions, how flavor evolves over time and how perceptions can vary depending on the application, the market or even the local drinking habits. Each cup is evaluated across a range of characteristics, including sweetness, acidity, mouthfeel, flavor, aftertaste and balance. A great cup of coffee isn’t defined by one outstanding characteristic, but by how harmoniously all of these elements work together. 

It also made me realize that there is no such thing as a universally “perfect” coffee profile. What consumers expect from a cup of coffee in one part of the world can be very different somewhere else, which makes understanding context just as important as understanding flavor. Perhaps the biggest takeaway for me was that while cupping follows a structured and objective approach, its purpose is ultimately very human: to understand what people enjoy and create coffees that deliver the experience they’re looking for. 

About the author: 
Christelle Mechleb leads Marketing & Communications at Sucafina Instant, helping bring coffee stories, market insights and customer solutions to life. 

Coming from outside the world of coffee, she quickly learned that there is far more behind every cup than most people realize. This article is inspired by one of the many things she has discovered along the way: how something as simple as tasting a coffee can be influenced by a surprising number of factors.