BROKERS AND AGENTS IN THE SAMPLING ROOM @museum.de

The coffee price is set daily on the commodity futures exchanges and applies to the average quality. But coffees are so different that traders dealing in green coffee carry out thorough tastings before deciding on the actual quality and price in each case. More money is paid for good quality coffees than the market price would suggest, while poor quality coffees make relatively less. This plus or minus is called the differential – the extent to which the actual price differs from the exchange price.

That’s why we have sampling rooms, where experts assess coffees on a daily basis to judge their real quality.

Take a look at the tasting table in the middle of the room to see what you need to assess a particular coffee: Samples of green coffee, scales, water, timers, cups and tasting spoons and, above all, the sample roaster.

The model on the table was made in 1900 and heated with spirit. The green coffee would be placed inside and the cylinder turned constantly as it roasted over an open flame. The roasting process takes up to 20 minutes. But this sample roaster has a downside: you can’t check the colours of the beans while it’s operating.

Each coffee sample was precisely weighed, brewed and tasted. The coffees were prepared in a pot or brewed in the cups. 3 to 5 cups per sample were required. It was important for the conditions to remain the same, with only the coffee samples changing.

Would you like to know what slurping coffee from the tasting spoon sounds like?

Verkostergeräusche The slurping is essential, because you have to add air to the coffee, otherwise your nose can’t smell the aromas. Because the consumption of untaxed and undeclared goods is prohibited, there’s a wheeled container under the tasting table into which the taster spat the coffee.

Coffee is a very sensitive product. Growing, harvesting, processing, long supply routes and storage – at all those stages, errors can occur. That’s why samples were taken from all coffee shipments and stored in the sample rooms. In the event of a dispute, an out-of-court decision was reached through an arbitration service called "Freundschaftliche Hamburger Arbitrage". The green coffee sample in question was then roasted and re-assessed by experts from the coffee trade.

Hamburg’s arbitration service is still included in every coffee contract, and all the firms are obliged to abide by its finding.

If you’d like to do a spot of tasting yourself, you may like to know that it’s a skill that we offer a course for here at the Burg Coffee Museum.