What are the ways to learn boutique coffee? What is boutique coffee? Where can I learn how to make coffee?

Coffee, which can be seen almost at any time in our daily life, interacts with coffee by ordering a cup of coffee in a coffee shop. However, if you want to really understand coffee, you will find it difficult to find a starting point.

Qianjie was fortunate to learn about a friend A's coffee entry experience, so he intends to use his experience as a blueprint, as well as market conditions to analyze the pros and cons of some common entry paths.

Friend A's experience of getting started with coffee

There is a question that has been bothering A for a long time. How to get started with coffee? Have you learned to drink coffee? Learned to make coffee? Or do you know about coffee? I still don't know.

Why friend A chose the road of coffee in the first place, he still can't explain clearly. I only remember that when he was in his senior year, at the time when he was about to leave campus and enter the society, like many new graduates, he was full of confusion about the future. Until one day, he made his career plan and resolutely embarked on the road of coffee study.

Even if the goal is set, it is still a question of how to get started. At that time, A learned through consultation that there were two basic ways to enter the coffee industry, to study in a training institution or to be an apprentice in a coffee shop.

Going to the special coffee training institution is the easiest way for many people to know. Indeed, going to the institution can quickly learn the special coffee knowledge, but for A, who has not even got his diploma, his high tuition fee has put him off this idea.

Then there is only one way to go to the coffee shop as an apprentice, but he did not choose this way, because he knows that when an apprentice learns coffee, the growth of knowledge is very slow. One reason is that A, which is almost white, knows that coffee is only a cup of drink. There are not many coffee shops that allow rookies like A to learn coffee knowledge. After all, coffee shops have to make a profit. The coffee shops that spend money on cultivating rookies are still one of the few.

The second reason is that atmosphere is very important, and if you stay in an atmosphere that is not what you want for a long time, it is easy to forget your original mind. A's goal is clear, and he is eager to really know coffee and know all about it. So under the introduction of his friends, he bought some books about coffee to learn.

After reading and learning, A has a certain knowledge of coffee, which is no longer the original "my next Amon". And friend A, who has accumulated some theoretical knowledge, decided to work in a coffee shop to accumulate practical experience. He was so lucky that he was soon hired by an independent coffee shop.

After working in that coffee shop for a period of time, he found that what he had dabbled in before was all superficial, and there were often contradictions in some knowledge. An also gradually began to be unconfident and suspicious of life. So he decided to study in a coffee training institution. After being systematically combed by coffee training institutions, he has successively moved to several coffee shops, and recently he finally opened his own coffee shop.

When asked recently if he had any regrets about his coffee study, he said that although he had gone the wrong way, he did not regret the choice he had made at each fork, because combined with the reality at that time, he has chosen the best solution. Even now, he is learning new coffee knowledge every day.

And how can we get started with coffee?

Coffee training institutions are currently the most scientific way of learning for rookies. It is not that coffee training institutions are so powerful, but that this is an era of paying for knowledge. If you give money, training institutions will do their duty. Of course, it will be easier to learn under the framework of mature coffee knowledge such as SCA. Of course, Qianjie refers to the framework for learning coffee knowledge, and as to whether you can become a great coffee expert after training, it is obvious that those who have this idea do not understand the purpose of SCA.

When you complete the SCA credits and get the final certificate, congratulations, you are finally getting started with coffee. Yes, after completing the entire SCA course, you can only say that you have some knowledge of the basic framework of coffee.

Of course, many friends will ask that the coffee training course is not worth learning. Of course it's worth it. After all, there are teachers who can solve doubts more efficiently than introspection. The premise is to find reliable teachers. As for the expensive tuition fees, it depends on everyone's economic situation. The general sentence is summed up as: useful, but not cost-effective.

The second is self-study, there are many kinds of self-study, some read their own books, buy their own equipment practice, some go to coffee shops to work, and as lovers go to major coffee shops to learn lessons. Generally speaking, the time cost of self-study will be higher, but the cost will not necessarily be low, and it depends on the quality of the individual.

Among them, reading and self-study and buying their own equipment practice, books have a weakness is timeliness, for the frequently changing coffee market, the past coffee knowledge is not necessarily applicable now. Today's developed network can make people know what is going on in the world without going out, but the network information is true or false, how many people can be as clear as a mirror? Another point is that self-study is easy to take detours, it is likely to walk all the way to the dark, in the end, you have to walk again when you find that it is an hutong.

It seems very good to go to the coffee shop to accumulate experience. It is nice to be able to enjoy the coffee atmosphere and learn coffee knowledge. In some coffee shops that pay attention to production and operation, you can learn a lot about coffee brewing and store operation, but it is difficult to learn coffee knowledge other than this. This is still in a good state, and some coffee shops can only let you learn full etiquette.

Go to the coffee shop to learn from the experience, Qianjie believes that the vast majority of coffee shops are very hospitable, but also very willing to share coffee knowledge. Partners with knowledge of system framework will benefit a lot, but for rookies without coffee framework, if he is unable to distinguish between right and wrong, it is easy to produce knowledge contradictions and turn a corner.

Frame diagram of SCA Coffee system, from SCA official website

After talking about so many ways to get started, I don't know if you have noticed that the goal of getting started with coffee is to establish a solid framework of coffee knowledge. Only when you build a larger and stronger framework, the more knowledge will be accommodated and the less likely it will collapse. Whether you are looking for a teacher, hard self-study, or work to accumulate experience, it is the process of building your own cognitive framework of coffee, as you increase your knowledge, you will also find how small you are.