How can you learn more about coffee? Which coffee courses and coffee schools can we recommend as coffee makers? Many turn their coffee hobby into a profession. What opportunities are there for career changers? We cover these topics in this article and also give you tips on how to improve your own ability to taste – sensory skills.
Here we've summarized for you how a path through coffee training can look as an example.
Starting Your Coffee Training
How can you learn more about coffee? For example, in our blog, in unseren videos or in the very good blogs from Backyard Coffee or Coffeeness. Arne from Coffeeness focuses heavily on the world of fully automatic coffee machines, but also covers more in-depth topics in individual articles, such as Koffeingehalt in coffee drinks. Wolfram from Backyard Coffee writes in-depth background articles and some of his article series summarize coffee topics better than anyone else on the web in German or English.
With limited travel options, it's easier to attend courses in the digital space. With our Home Barista Online Course, we've created a course consisting of over 30 individual videos. In short modules, we explain in this course how to make good coffee at home with an espresso machine.
Coffee Schools in Switzerland
Of course, the best way to really learn a lot about coffee is to attend a course at a good coffee school. Of course, we'd love it if you visit us in our Akademie and take one or another course with us. Coffee courses and coffee schools are becoming more and more available, and we can heartily recommend some of them to you.
In Switzerland, courses by Philipp Henauer from Henauer Roastery are definitely worth recommending. Philipp is an experienced course instructor and very well trained himself. He is "the coffee master maker" in Switzerland. In recent years, Philipp has guided many championship participants to victories at barista, latte art, and brewers cup championships. In French-speaking Switzerland, Ennio Canterigani and Swiss Latte Art Master Grégory Raymond are a good contact at the Académie du Café.
Gloria Pedroza offers training and certification as an Q-Arabica and Robusta Grader. All of Gloria's sensory courses are worth visiting, as are the green coffee courses.
International Coffee Schools
In Austria, courses by Johanna Wechselberger and Goran Huber are really no secret. Both have been involved in training for many years, were Austrian barista state champions and have experience as roasters and Cup of Excellence judges. Johanna's books have probably been read by everyone at some point. Benjamin Graf is a coffee trainer of the "next generation." He is a Q-Grader, has taken some courses with us, and participated in coffee farm training at Santa Rita, among other things.
We like looking beyond our own horizon. This led us to John Thompson in Scotland for further education. John runs Coffee Nexus there, is a coffee consultant, Cup of Excellence Head Judge, and co-developed the SCA's sensory and green coffee modules.
In the sensory and roasting field, many course participants travel internationally to Copenhagen to Coffee Mind. The courses take a rather analytical and scientific approach and are therefore more suitable for some participants than others.
Gwilym Davies and Petra Veselá offer coffee courses in the Czech Republic. Gwilym was himself a world champion and runs a small but fine coffee school together with Petra.
Coffee Schools and Courses in Germany
When it comes to recommendations for coffee courses in Germany, we can really only burn our fingers. There are simply too many courses, schools, and trainers. And as we write this, we realize once again that we should definitely attend more courses from our colleagues, simply to be in better contact.
Without hesitation, we recommend courses at Backyard Coffee in Frankfurt. A complete renovation has just been done there to prepare the course facilities with HEPA filters for corona times.
Also in this area of Germany: Paul Bonna from and with the Kaffeekommune in Mainz. Paul is a pioneer of the German specialty coffee scene. With his café, he realizes his high standards every single day. The Kaffeekommune offers tastings, repairs espresso machines, roasts, and offers barista training.
The Roestbar Coffee School with Erna Tosberg in Münster is affiliated with the roestbar cafés. Erna is a two-time German barista champion and one of the most successful German baristas at world championships.
Marc Czogalla from the Bonner Coffee School we met in Benjamin's advanced brewing courses. Marc was also with us in roasting courses. Marc offers various trainings from the SCA Coffee Diploma.
We have never attended a course by Thomas Brinkmann from the Kaffeeschule Hannover. However, Thomas and his courses have a good reputation. In addition to SCA courses, Thomas also offers courses in cooperation with the Chamber of Industry and Commerce.
In Hamburg, Andrea Jacobsen is active as a coffee trainer. She trains private individuals and restaurateurs. Andrea completed the SCA Professional course with us.
Not only for latte art courses is Christian Ullrich worth recommending. The 2014 Latte Art World Champion regularly teaches courses, consults, and is also available for private courses.
What Makes Good Barista Courses?
Good barista courses are characterized by solid groundwork in theory and practice. One might think that in coffee, everything has long since been researched and hardly any changes in the state of knowledge are being worked out. The opposite is true!
In recent years, progress in coffee has accelerated significantly. Universities and companies have increased research budgets and activities. New Aufbereitungsmethoden change the taste of coffee. The way coffee is roasted has diversified. The quality of green coffee has improved. Espressomaschinen can now run both pressure and temperature profiles, and grinders indicate particle size. Only those who stay on top of it, constantly work with new materials, and also look internationally can keep up as a barista trainer.
This is where the wheat is separated from the chaff and good barista courses differ in quality. Showpiece knowledge and techniques from 2010 are old hat today. When choosing barista courses and schools, we recommend you check the quality of the available content. Roestbar, for example, has written a book. The roastery Backyard Coffee, already mentioned twice, also has a YouTube channel.
We have a total of 4 Q-Graders working with us who ensure quality and teach sensory skills.
Coffee Sensory Skills: Practice Tasting Better
The ability to precisely assess coffee quality is the most important foundation of training for both the home coffee aficionado and ambitious baristas or café operators. Based on the assessment of an espresso, the tasting of a new roast, changes can be made.
In our courses, we repeatedly notice that particularly with espresso, participants confuse acidity and bitterness. If such confusion occurs, it's difficult to make the right decisions when adjusting the grinder.
Good coffee sensory skills provide confidence. It's your own feedback tool and helps you make corrections and leads to a much steeper learning curve.
We advise all coffee enthusiasts: attend sensory courses. Participate in public coffee tastings from roasteries. Seek out conversations with other coffee enthusiasts about coffees. Note down tasting notes and work your way piece by piece into the world of sensory skills. This is not only exciting with a view to coffee, but also opens up new worlds when tasting other products. Last but not least: attend Nadja's sensory courses. In her courses, she teaches you the language that enables you to put your sensory impressions into words.
Coffee as a Profession – Even for Career Changers
The coffee industry is a diverse field and offers numerous career perspectives from cultivation to the finished product. We know many hundreds of coffee professionals, and almost all of them came into coffee from other fields. Coffee makers have studied business administration, trained as chefs, are Islamic scholars, carpenters, or economists. Often the path into coffee leads through work as a barista in a café. Through courses and coffee championships, knowledge deepens. If you're successful at competitions or patient with repetition, the perception of the scene and industry follows automatically.
Of course, you can also enter the coffee industry through a degree in food technology, and in larger companies like coffee roasteries that are affiliated with supermarket chains, this happens regularly. But food science is not the same as coffee science. As a rule, graduates leave universities with only rudimentary specialized knowledge (which you can sometimes taste in the coffee). But good coffee skills require practical experience and constant practice – exactly what a barista from a café or an enthusiastic home barista brings with them.
With this practical knowledge supplemented by training from a good coffee school, the world is wide open at roasteries, in development, or in quality assurance at coffee merchants. Good baristas are also sought after everywhere. And last but not least, many successful café and roastery startups show that starting your own business in the coffee field is also an interesting and varied work area.
Why We Don't Support SCA Certificates
As coffee makers, we could take all SCA modules. However, for about two years now, we have discontinued all courses within the SCA Coffee Diploma. There are course areas in barista, roasting, sensory, green coffee, and filter coffee, each at the levels introduction, intermediate, and professional.
The SCA is the international Specialty Coffee Association. The European SCAE merged with the American SCA a few years ago. Since then, the organization has become increasingly distant from us. Because the headquarters is in America, American boycott regulations also applied to the course program, such as a course ban for people from Iran. For us, that's a no-go.
Course participants face enormous certification costs, while at the same time the SCA internationally does nothing to strengthen national recognition of certifications. And authorized course instructors also send a lot of money to SCA International for authorization, but create the course content, handouts, etc. themselves. We can no longer support this imbalance. Instead, we prefer to offer cheaper courses, save ourselves a lot of administrative effort, and design course content in a way that makes sense for the Swiss market and for the respective course participants.
