How does a coffee master learn to be a barista from scratch?

How to learn to be a barista from scratch? Is this skill difficult? How long will it take to learn? Most people are half-tuned and know everything, but they don't really know anything. In fact, it is not difficult to learn to be a barista at all. Just have hands and love to drink. Then how to learn? For how long? There are three options:

1. Go to work in a coffee shop

The advantage is that you will have a better understanding of the coffee consumption market. You can learn something about coffee drink production, marketing, decoration and so on. Of course, it also depends on personal understanding, and you can make money at the same time without paying tuition fees.

The downside is that it takes a long time, and you may not be able to meet a reliable teacher to teach you, but now most of the cafes that survive in the market are basically sustained by food and wine. Starbucks, carved time, Cat's Sky City. It is a good choice, but there is a certain threshold. In an ordinary coffee shop, if you can't do anything, you can only start with a waiter, and at first you can only brush the cup and clean, so it takes time.

2. Rely on self-study to become talents

The advantage is that you don't have to spend money, and you want to make your own decisions if you want to learn. The downside is that you have to spend time collecting and sorting out learning materials and have strong self-control.

You can first buy a few coffee-related books, search for a lot of books on so-and-so, and choose a few books that readers like and like, and then look for some coffee utensils, such as bean grinder, mocha pot, hand pot, French filter pot, siphon pot, flower jar, milking machine. The initial estimate is about 1000 yuan. It is recommended to buy something of better quality. After all, you can still use it later.

The rest on their own according to the books, auxiliary online video step by step to explore, a big bowl of drink. If you encounter anything you don't understand, you can go to the forum and post it for help.

3. Pay for a coffee training course

The advantage is that you can systematically learn some "superficial", spend a short time and have flexibility, you can choose nothing to learn, mostly a month can; the downside is to pay tuition fees! There are coffee training courses everywhere, with a fee of about 2,000 in two weeks. the better ones are Krima Coffee training in Guangzhou, carving time Coffee College in Beijing, Wuhan staggered Coffee Dream School, Pulan Coffee College in Beijing, and Beresta Coffee training in Chongqing. In fact, it will teach you about the history of coffee, coffee tasting methods, the operation of various coffee utensils, or some simple coffee roasting techniques.

But I never believe in crash courses. I don't believe in crash courses in all industries. But then again, it's good to start with that. After all, a very short period of time will give you a general understanding of the way you want to go in the future. If you plan to continue to be "half-fooled", what you have learned in the crash course can already be used to fool a lot of people.

If you want to change the half-goofy style to really understand a field, it happens to be coffee, then it is said that the water is very deep. As mentioned earlier, what the crash course will teach you is actually worth understanding longitudinally.

For example, in terms of tasting, there is a profession that specializes in cup testing. Smelling the fragrance and drinking coffee can tell the origin of coffee. For them, it is a piece of cake. Although I am not a professional cup test, I have used a "coffee nose" perfume bottle to exercise my ability in this area. The coffee nose has dozens of small bottles with stored flavors, which are taken out and sniffed every day and compared with the smell of coffee.

For example, coffee roasting, which is well studied in this field, can be a roaster. To what extent each kind of coffee bean is suitable for roasting in order to balance the acidity and bitterness in coffee to give full play to its best nature. How to control the temperature change curve in the roasting process in order to achieve the purpose of removing odor and retaining mellow flavor? If you want to keep improving, you should control the baking temperature for every second in the baking process.

Is it difficult? How long will it take to learn? I don't have to say that.

In fact, many people have miscellaneous but not good problems, I also have, but find a field you like to push yourself forward. When you find the fun of "keep moving forward", the problem is easily solved.

Source of the article: Zhihu