Certificate in Advanced Black Tea Cupping

Lesson One: Learn about the different types of tea. Analyse the six main categories and get to know your blacks from your greens and your oolongs from your whites.

Lesson Two: Find out about the history of black tea, from China to India, Europe and the United States, through to the modern day.

Lesson Three: Learn about the world’s main tea regions. Learn which countries produce what kinds of tea and understand how they differ from other regions.

Lesson Four: Learn about black tea manufacturing and the different grades of black tea. Work step-by-step through the different grades of black tea you have in your kit and learn about what makes each of them different and how to tell them apart.

Lesson Five: The Tea Wheel. This lesson will teach you how to use the Australian Tea Masters Tea Wheel. This is one of the key tools in being able to describe the different flavours and aromas present in black teas.

Lesson Six: This module will teach you some of the tea terminology that applies particularly to black teas.

Lesson Seven: Preparation for cupping & equipment, this lesson will explain the equipment required for tea cupping, the method, and the parameters you should use (water temperature, brew time, water volume and tea weight) to professionally cup and evaluate teas.

Lesson Eight: Put the skills you learnt in the last three modules together by cupping the black teas in your kit, evaluating these teas and learning how to use the tea terminology to describe the dry leaf, wet leaf, aroma and flavour of each tea.  This lesson will also teach you how to evaluate the tea leaves to determine their quality.

Lesson Nine: See how professional tea evaluation is completed with a tour through a Sri Lankan tea cupping room with Anil Cooke.

Lesson Ten: Learn how to compare different black teas and the key things to look for when comparing tea.

Lesson Eleven: Put the whole course together by comparing wet and dry tea leaf, liquor and aroma of different black teas to understand how the different charactertistics in the dry leaf transfer through to differences in quality and flavour of the steeped leaf.