How can you learn more about coffee? Which coffee courses and coffee schools can we, as Kaffeemacher, recommend? Many people turn their hobby of coffee into a profession. What opportunities are there for career changers? We cover these topics in this article and also provide you with tips on how to improve your own ability to taste – your sensory skills.
Here, we have summarized what a path through coffee education might look like.
Starting your coffee education
How can you learn more about coffee? For example, in our blog, in our videos, or in the excellent blogs by Backyard Coffee or Coffeeness. Arne from Coffeeness focuses primarily on the world of fully automatic coffee machines, but also sheds light on broader topics in individual articles, such as the caffeine content 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 either German or English.
With limited travel options, it is easier to attend courses in the digital space. With our Home Barista Online Course, we have created a course that consists of over 30 individual videos. In this course, we explain in short units how you can make good coffee at home using 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. Naturally, we would be delighted if you visited us at our Academy to take a course or two with us. However, coffee courses and coffee schools are becoming increasingly common, and there are a few we can warmly recommend.
In Switzerland, courses by Philipp Henauer from the Henauer roastery are definitely worth a recommendation. Philipp is an experienced instructor and is himself very well-trained. He is “the coffee master maker” in Switzerland. Over the past few years, Philipp has accompanied many championship participants to victories in Barista, Latte Art, and Brewers Cup championships. In French-speaking Switzerland, Ennio Canterigani, with Swiss Latte Art champion Grégory Raymond by his side at the Académie du Café, is a good contact.
Gloria Pedroza offers training and exams for Q-Arabica and Robusta Graders. All of Gloria's sensory courses are worth attending, as are her green coffee courses.
International coffee schools
In Austria, courses by Johanna Wechselberger and Goran Huber are definitely no secret. Both have been active in education for many years, are former Austrian Barista champions, and have experience as roasters and Cup of Excellence judges. Everyone has likely read Johanna's books at least once. Benjamin Graf is a “next generation” coffee trainer. He is a Q-Grader, has attended several of our courses, and, among other things, participated in the Coffee Farm Training at Santa Rita.
We like to look beyond our own backyard. For further education, this led us to John Thompson in Scotland. John runs Coffee Nexus there, is a coffee consultant, a Cup of Excellence Head Judge, and helped develop the SCA sensory and green coffee modules.
In the field of sensory and roasting, many course participants travel internationally to Copenhagen to Coffee Mind. The courses have a more analytical and scientific approach, making them better suited for some participants than others.
Gwilym Davies and Petra Veselá provide coffee courses in the Czech Republic. Gwilym was a world champion himself and runs a small but excellent coffee school with Petra.
Coffee schools and courses in Germany
When it comes to recommendations for coffee courses in Germany, we can really only scratch the surface. There are simply too many courses, schools, and trainers. And as we write this, we realize once again that we should attend far more courses by our colleagues, simply to be more involved in the exchange.
Without hesitation, we recommend courses at Backyard Coffee in Frankfurt. They have just completed a complete redesign to prepare their course rooms with HEPA filters, even for Covid times.
Also in that corner 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 day after day. The Kaffeekommune offers tastings, repairs espresso machines, roasts coffee, and provides 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.
We met Marc Czogalla from the Bonn Coffee School in Benjamin's advanced brewing courses. Marc has also taken roasting courses with us. Marc offers various training courses from the SCA Coffee Diploma.
We have never personally attended a course by Thomas Brinkmann from the Hannover Coffee School. However, Thomas and his courses have a good reputation. In addition to SCA courses, Thomas also offers courses in cooperation with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
In Hamburg, Andrea Jacobsen is active as a coffee trainer. She trains private individuals and restaurateurs. Andrea completed the SCA Professional course with us.
It’s not just for Latte Art courses that Christian Ullrich is recommended. The 2014 Latte Art World Champion regularly gives courses, provides consulting, and is also available for private sessions.
What makes a good barista course?
Good barista courses are characterized by sound foundational work in theory and practice. One might think that everything about coffee has long been researched and that there are hardly any changes in the state of knowledge. The opposite is the case!
In recent years, progress in coffee has accelerated significantly. Universities and companies have increased their research budgets and activities. New processing methods are changing the taste of coffee. The method of roasting has diversified. The quality of green coffee has improved. Espresso machines can now manage pressure and temperature profiles, and grinders indicate particle size. Only those who keep up, work with new materials, and maintain an international focus can keep up as a barista trainer.
This is where the wheat is separated from the chaff, and where the quality of good barista courses differs. Show-off knowledge and techniques from 2010 are old news today. When choosing barista courses and schools, we recommend checking the quality of the accessible content. The roestbar, for example, has written a book. The aforementioned roastery Backyard Coffee also has a YouTube channel.
In total, 4 Q-Graders work with us, ensuring quality and teaching sensory skills.
Coffee Sensory: Practicing better tasting
The ability to precisely assess coffee quality is the most important foundation of education for the home coffee aficionado as well as for ambitious baristas or café owners. Based on the assessment of an espresso or the tasting of a new roast, adjustments can be made.
In our courses, we repeatedly find that participants confuse acidity and bitterness, especially with espresso. If a mix-up occurs here, it is difficult to make the right decisions when adjusting the grinder.
Good coffee sensory skills provide confidence. They are your own feedback tool, help you make corrections, and lead to a much steeper learning curve.
We advise everyone interested in coffee: attend sensory courses. Participate in public coffee tastings at roasteries. Engage in conversations with other coffee enthusiasts about coffee. Write down flavor notes and work your way step by step into the world of sensory analysis. This is not only exciting regarding coffee, but also opens up new worlds when tasting other products. Last but not least: attend the sensory courses by Nadja. In her courses, she teaches the language that enables you to put your sensory impressions into words.
Coffee as a career – even for career changers
The coffee industry is a diverse field and offers numerous biographical perspectives from cultivation to the finished product. We know many hundreds of coffee professionals, and almost all of them entered the field “sideways.” Kaffeemacher have studied business administration, trained as chefs, or are Islamic scholars, carpenters, or economists. Often, the path into coffee begins with work as a barista in a café. Through courses and coffee championships, knowledge is deepened. If you are successful at championships or patient in your repetition, recognition from the scene and the industry follows automatically.
Of course, you can also enter the coffee industry via a degree in food technology, and this happens regularly, especially in larger companies like coffee roasteries that are attached to supermarket chains. But food science is not the same as coffee science. As a rule, graduates leave universities with only rudimentary expert knowledge (which you can sometimes taste in the coffee). However, good coffee skills require practical experience and constant practice – exactly what a barista from a coffee bar or an enthusiastic home barista brings to the table.
With this practical knowledge supplemented by accompanying training from a good coffee school, the world is open at roasteries, in development, or in quality control for coffee traders. Good baristas are also in demand everywhere. And last but not least, many successful start-ups of cafés and roasteries also show that starting your own business in the coffee sector represents an interesting and varied field of work.
Why we don’t believe in SCA certificates
As Kaffeemacher, we are authorized to administer all SCA modules. However, for about two years now, we have discontinued all courses within the framework of the SCA Coffee Diploma. There are the course areas of Barista, Roasting, Sensory, Green Coffee, and Brewing, each at the Foundation, Intermediate, and Professional levels.
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 more alienated for us. Since the headquarters are in America, American boycott regulations also applied to the course program, such as a course ban for people from Iran. A deal-breaker for us.
For course participants, enormous certification costs are incurred, while at the same time, the SCA does nothing internationally to strengthen the national recognition of the certifications. And the authorized trainers also send a lot of money to the SCA international for authorization, while creating the course content, handouts, etc., themselves. We no longer support this imbalance. Instead, we prefer to offer more affordable courses, save ourselves major administrative overhead, and design course content in a way that makes sense for the Swiss market and for the respective course participants.
