A practical introduction to coffee training, why should you receive training in professional coffee courses?

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If you want to ask me, why do I need to be trained in a professional coffee course?

The establishment of any system is actually the formation of learning methods. Therefore, simply using the time of practice to repeat unthought and digested behavior is quite inefficient and even misleading.

Training system, coffee professionals coffee shops or coffee lovers can be tailor-made some appropriate training courses, and through the training courses to develop some good learning methods, thinking habits and guiding exercises.

How do professional baristas become?

Step 1: establish basic senses and learn sensory analysis (cup tester)

To put it simply, it uses people's basic sensory organs (taste, smell, touch, vision and hearing) as a measuring tool to describe and evaluate coffee. For example, if you smell flowers in your coffee, this cup of coffee is good from an olfactory point of view. You can evaluate it as a cup of coffee with floral scent. To have the ability to evaluate coffee, we need classroom training and practice, such as half a day or a day of olfactory training and teacher correction, you will be exposed to a lot of beans, and finally you can have this "ruler" to evaluate coffee to quickly distinguish between positive and negative flavors in coffee.

However, without systematic learning or sensory correction, it is difficult for a barista or brewer to correctly describe coffee and find out what makes coffee taste negative. In this way, no matter making espresso or hand-brewed coffee, without the above sensory organs' judgment of coffee, the so-called brewing time and proportion will become pale, because it is impossible to distinguish what is good coffee and what is problematic coffee.

Add: the sense is the measuring tool, and make it accurate.

Related courses: SCA Cup testing course CUPPING

Step 2: learn the theory and practice of coffee grinding and extraction.

To put it simply, brewing and brewing coffee means "beans are ground and brewed with water", so all brewing methods are based on grinding and extraction, as are Italian thickeners, and so are hand brewing. In popular terms, you choose to break the coffee beans, boil them in the pot where you cook porridge, remove the dregs and drink. Or use a "coffee shop common machine" that specializes in rapid extraction of coffee to extract the liquid from the coffee. No matter which method you use, will you control your variables? It involves a lot of content: temperature, time, powder thickness, water volume, and so on. These are the second step in learning coffee.

Add: the significance of grinding extraction is to use appropriate grinding extraction on the basis of the right senses to maximize the advantages of coffee. We want MAX, not flat.

Related courses: SCA grinding and extraction

Step 3: become a skilled hand brewer and espresso maker, using all kinds of coffee utensils.

Because both the hand brewer and the espresso maker are based on grinding extraction, generally speaking, coffee practitioners now operate both at the same time, the role of the coffee brewer in the coffee system. We need to do this:

1. Use the scientific way to adjust the grinding and brewing methods of different brewing utensils to make the coffee flavor show the best.

two。 Be able to operate machines and instruments skillfully in practical work.

3. Direct contact with customers to provide customers with quality service.

Related courses: SCA barista BARISTA (including beginner, intermediate, advanced)

Many friends will consult, apart from the above, is there any knowledge about raw beans and baking that need to be learned? Our answer is: the more comprehensive it is, the better it will be for us, but we also need to make choices according to our own career plans. At present, there are many excellent coffee tasters and baristas in the industry, as well as many very good coffee roasters.

Today's article, I would like to share with you that I am still on the road of coffee training, and a little immature experience. The courses I have attended include interest courses and professional courses. I call the courses without exams and certificates after class as interest courses, and those that can be verified as professional courses.

Author: Yangguang afternoon tea

Interest class

Before I formally accepted the professional coffee course training, I first took some interest courses. Although these interest courses are short in time and simple in content, they are helpful to be better absorbed in the professional courses. It's like studying abroad to catch up on the basics of language before taking a professional course. I have attended a lot of interest classes, such as coffee basic theory, flower drawing class, hand-making class, and a sensory appraisal class with a relatively high degree of difficulty in the interest class (blind taste, cup test for 3 days, and paralysis of the tongue).

Coffee basic theory: this is my first coffee class, which mainly describes the operation process of the whole coffee industry from seed to from seed to cup, the links involved, and the factors that will affect the final flavor of coffee. I think such a basic course is very necessary, we usually selectively intercept the information we are interested in, but often ignore some important information that we do not care about. For example, at first I only focused on cafes and baristas, but now I pay more attention to the origin, altitude and handling of coffee beans. Of course, in addition to the introduction of theoretical knowledge, there will also be many practical parts, which integrate the experience of seeing, tasting, smelling and touching all kinds of senses. Although I am not very good at drinking, I know the process of cup testing; although I do not have a rich sense of taste, I understand that there are three kinds of acids; although I do not have the ability to recognize fiery crystal, I know that coffee beans need to be selected with the naked eye or tool assistance. The one-day course, which costs about 600 yuan, is worth listening to for coffee lovers who are on the brink of entry.

Flower pulling lesson: the existence of flower pulling class is to pursue a higher level of experience-visual enjoyment after meeting the needs of taste. However, it turns out that coffee flower pulling is far more difficult than I imagined, perhaps because we watch the barista operate too easily in the cafe, but do not know that behind this simple action of a few decades of seconds is the accumulation of countless times. If you are talented, you can still learn to pull a heart through an experience lesson. The worst result will at least be able to understand and learn the operation process of espresso and correct many mistakes in self-made lattes and cabs. The course lasts about 3 hours and costs about 300-350 yuan.

Hand-made class: in my opinion, hand-made class is the most practical interest course. As long as you can accept it, drinking high-quality coffee at home is definitely not a dream. The channels for the purchase of good coffee beans have been extended in all directions, as long as the brewing process is slightly adjusted, their own hand-brewed coffee can also be comparable to the standard of the coffee shop. I have also taken courses in using different cooking utensils, such as V60, Philharmonic pressure, and siphon pots. I also walked my curiosity all over again, avoiding the impulsive cost of being defeated by curiosity. In this way, the cost of 300-350 yuan per class will be worth it.

Sensory appreciation: this course is not offered by all training institutions. Fortunately, I became a student of Mingqian's first sensory tasting course and took a day off to complete the 3-day course. The content of the three-day course is very rich, to sum up, it is to change the pattern to "toss" the tongue, not only to drink all the beans of the Mingqian family, but also to eat sour, milk, chocolate, and all the food that can help the tongue improve the taste of coffee. I have to say that under such intensive training, it is indeed very helpful to identify some conventional flavors, and have a certain understanding from a sensory point of view. Lemon, berries, citrus, apples, caramel, chocolate and other commonly used flavor descriptions, such as ink sprinkled on rice paper, the imprint is gradually clear, jumping in my mind. While being able to distinguish the good flavor, I also have an unforgettable impression of the defective flavor (the flavor of the defective bean is not only bad for the whole person, but also for the whole house! Sensory tasting course is like a mini Q-Grader course, or the first class of Q-Grader, for coffee lovers who want to improve their coffee tasting ability or have ambitions to take the Q-Grader.

Specialized course

Once upon a time, there were two world-class authorities in the coffee industry, one called the European Coffee Association (SCAE) and the other called the American Coffee Association (SCAA). Is there any big difference between the two associations? In my opinion, no. So, in January 2017, they officially merged, and the merged name was easy to remember-SCA (official pronunciation: "schua"), removing the regional logo completely. SCAE and SCAA have their own exams and certificates respectively. After the merger, the curriculum does not seem to have changed much, but the logo on the certificate has been updated. The only professional training courses I have attended so far are SCAE baristas (Barista Skill) and Gold Cup extraction (Brewing).

What courses are available in SCAA and SCAE?

The courses of SCAA are as follows:

This big yellow course is compulsory for beginners, and only after completing the Foundation of Coffee can you take the following three types of courses. It seems that there are only quality courses in SCAA courses in Shanghai.

The courses of SCAE are as follows:

By comparison, we can see that we don't seem to find a practical course for baristas in the SCAA course. There are only three classes in the second row that can get an SCAE in China.

To learn more about the course, you can check https://sca.coffee/education-1/ on the official website.

What is the difference between SCAE's Barista course and Brewing course?

Barista's course is aimed at the comprehensive study of espresso. The contents of the elementary courses range from the use of semi-automatic coffee machines, the standard process of espresso production, how to adjust the parameters for different beans to achieve the appropriate effect of extraction, to the handling of milk bubbles and different treatments of different milk coffees, the final learning result is to learn to use a standardized process to make different kinds of milk coffee. A higher level of study will deepen the skills of flower drawing, menu design, customer service, and eventually be able to undertake the management of the day-to-day operation of the cafe.

Brewing's course focuses on the brewing of individual coffee. The primary course mainly learns the brewing methods of different utensils, and the intermediate course aims at the adjustment of brewing skills and the control of various parameters. My biggest gain in the intermediate course is to learn how to mix water that meets the conditions for coffee brewing. Water is a very important factor in the quality of individual coffee. If you are interested, you can try to buy different brands of mineral water for home cooking and comparison (it is recommended to buy water including Evian and Nongfu Spring for comparison. The advanced course focuses more on the analysis of the reasons behind different flavors of coffee (temperature, water, brewing process, etc.).

Which courses can coffee lovers take?

From a practical point of view, I think coffee lovers can take Brewing courses first, because we may not make espresso at home very often. The reason is...

1. The household semi-automatic coffee machine has many shortcomings, but the commercial semi-automatic coffee machine needs certain conditions for home use.

two。 Turn on a semi-automatic coffee machine for at least half a day.

3. And a bean grinder for espresso.

So every time I turn on my semi-automatic coffee machine, there must be guests at home. Friends who can drink lattes in my house are all true love! After the Brewing course, you can also consolidate the practice at home. If you can update the coffee brewing methods constantly improved by the coffee gods, I believe that after a certain period of time, the coffee you produce at home will definitely be as good as many cafes outside.

What are the other courses you can learn after the Barista and Brewing courses?

Although there is a table of difficulty in the baking equipment at home, the baking of beans is a very interesting skill. In terms of the entire coffee chain, it is brewed before baking. Holding a well-baked bean in hand is like holding a dragon knife, even if a rookie does not know the best cooking method, but it will not be messed up under the standard process. So the baking course is worth taking.

Both SCAE and SCAA have their own coffee tasting courses. From the perspective of domestic courses, there are more SCAA Q-Grader courses. Coffee tasting license is not only applicable to baristas, large importers of raw beans will also hire professionals with tasting licenses to test each batch of raw beans. Do you feel that there is another way to get a job?