Stone Creek Coffee Cupping Sketchnotes

If you're a coffee fanatic like I am, coffee cupping is an experience I highly recommend you try.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to experience coffee cupping for the first time, sampling coffees at Stone Creek Coffee Factory in downtown Milwaukee.

What is coffee cupping?

Cupping is a process of smelling aromas and tasting flavors of freshly ground coffee, used by professionals, like Steve Hawthorne at Stone Creek, to determine a coffee's quality.

Coffee is sniffed dry, then brewed and sniffed and finally tasted, with values and notes recorded on a 1-10 scale for later review and comparison.

Since this was my first tour of the Stone Creek Factory and a cupping, I decided to capture the experience as sketchnotes, to share it visually with others who interested in the cupping experience:

I found the Stone Creek Factory building and my cupping experience fascinating. Before cupping, Steve and Eric from Stone Creek gave us a tour of the facility to see coffee being roasted and the packaging operations in action.

Cupping was quite the experience. I was surprised at the complexity of aromas and tastes in each coffee, determined by the region where it was grown. Of the 4 coffees we tried, my favorite was the smoky, chocolatey flavor and aroma of a Brazilian coffee.

Try Coffee Cupping

If you love coffee and have a chance to experience cupping, give it a try. If you're in Milwaukee, Stone Creek offers a public cupping session every other Friday morning at 9am at their Factory location on 5th and St. Paul. Give them a call at (414) 270-1008 to sign up for a cupping session.

Thanks to Eric Resch, Steve Hawthorne and Melissa Perez at Stone Creek for making the coffee cupping session happen. I had a great time!

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