Coffeeholics were in for a treat recently when World Barista Champion 2023 Boram Um visited Singapore for a coffee cupping workshop organised by Luckin Coffee. While I’m no coffee snob and enjoy flat whites as much as I do kopi si peng (Southeast Asian-style iced coffee with evaporated milk), mostly eschewing black coffees for my love of dairy, I could not pass up the chance to learn more about the serious business of specialty coffee from such a hallowed icon of the global coffee scene. So I trooped down to Collyer Quay for a crash course on how to up my game in the coffee experience.
An afternoon learning about coffee cupping with Boram Um, World Barista Champion 2023. Photo © Fen Chia.
Um looks totally Korean as one would expect from his name, but he is in fact a Brazilian born to South Korean immigrant parents who founded a coffee plantation. He clinched the first ever WBC title for Brazil. As a Luckin Coffee Chief Coffee Master who is part of the coffee chain’s “Global Bean Hunting Initiative” that was launched in 2023, Um and his team seek out premium coffee beans from renowned estates worldwide, which count locations to-date like Ethiopia, Panama, Indonesia and Yunnan in China, though Luckin Coffee will be venturing into even more core-producing regions going forward.
Boram Um. Photo © Fen Chia.
During the coffee cupping workshop, we evaluated Single-Origin Espresso (‘SOE’) beans, which are premium beans that are from a single area and not blended. Um said SOE matters as a single origin allows the specific region’s soil, climate, altitude, and other environmental conditions to impart unique flavours and aromas to the beans and allows you to taste the distinctive flavour characteristics in the coffee. We were to assess the Hambella (Ethiopia), Gesha (Ethiopia) and Sumatra Gayo (Indonesia) SOEs, all of which are currently available at Luckin Coffee together with Yirgacheffe, another Ethiopian SOE.
Hand grinding the beans takes a bit of work – but serious coffee drinkers do it just before brewing rather than using preground coffee, if they can help it. Photo © Luckin Coffee.
Sumatra Gayo, Hambella and Gesha. Photo © Fen Chia.
This was my first time hand-grinding beans and it takes a bit of work! But when the aromas started coming through from the completely ground coffee like a morning stopover at a cafe, I realised this was a pleasure that could be replicated at home as a pick-me-up at the start of a long day. Next, we poured hot water into the cups to brew the coffee, before ‘breaking the crust’ that forms at the surface and removing the foam to further release the aromas.
Brewing the coffee. Photo © Luckin Coffee.
Breaking the crust to release the aromas. Photo © Luckin Coffee.
As a novice who is relatively unexposed to SOEs and even black coffees, it was not so easy to discern the different aromas and flavours of the three quality coffee varieties when I closed my eyes. I can probably easily tell my kopi-si robusta from an arabica but the nuances we learned this day were much more complex for the average coffee drinker. Guided by a Flavour Wheel that professional coffee tasters regularly use, our senses tried our best to pick up the aromas, acidity, sweetness, bitterness, body and aftertaste of the three coffees.
The coffee taster’s flavour wheel is quite a standardised and established industry tool to assess coffee. Photo © Luckin Coffee.
Sumatra Gayo, Luckin’s latest SOE is intense and bitter (this is not necessarily bad in the coffee world). On the other hand, Hambella is known for its sugary and fruity notes. Then we have Gesha, launched just last month before Sumatra, is known for its high acidity, floral and fruity notes and one of the most expensive coffees in the world, costing up to a few thousand dollars a kilogram. I thought about my affordably-priced Dirty Gesha recently at Luckin Coffee-I would not have known how revered this variety is if not for the workshop.
A Gesha SOE order at Luckin Coffee. Photo © Fen Chia.
The cupping workshop was extremely useful in giving me a better appreciation of the entire process that takes coffee from bean to cup. Somewhere a couple of thousand metres up in the mountains in a far off land, coffee hunters seek out the best beans in the world, and it takes a long journey of thousands of miles before it ends up in an SOE drink at Luckin Coffee. So why not head to your nearest outlet now, where you can get a Luckin Black Cup SOE starting from just S$5.60 per cup for an Americano?
