The Coffee Academy

Starting a coffee business while knowing almost nothing about coffee is probably not a very good idea. So it’s time to learn up!

It turns out that coffee is a pretty popular thing to be into these days. And all of the internet is prepared to monetize the trend and take all of your money. Before shelling out all of my hard-earned cash I need to figure out what coffee knowledge and skills I need in order to successfully operate a business.

Let’s start with the stuff I know:

• General coffee knowledge, including common production and processing techniques.
• Basic coffee brewing techniques (pour over, french press, AeroPress, etc.). About fifty-percent of the time my coffee tastes good. The rest of the time it tastes like cardboard.

And now the stuff I don’t know:

• How to recognize and choose good coffee. Sometimes I’m like, “Wow! This is good coffee!” but most of the time I’m like, “Yup! This tastes like coffee.”
• How to consistently brew tasty coffee.
• How to use an espresso machine and make cool latte art. I used to try this sometimes at my office using an automatic espresso machine, but I failed a lot.
• Coffee culture and manners (is this even important in the 21st century?)
• Everything else that I don’t know that I don’t know.

So, obviously if I want to start a coffee shop. I need to know how to consistently brew tasty coffee. Even before I was interested in opening a shop, I had an interest in coffee roasting. In the long term, I might also be interesting to take the exam to become an arabica Q grader and get some experience as a roaster. But in the near term, developing sensory skills will help me to hone my other coffee skills.

Coffee instruction that will allow me to gain hands-on experience, which will be far more valuable than some random online course. While searching for coffee schools I remembered a book that I read years ago. It was written by the founder of Blue Bottle Coffee, who had, apparently, attended the UCC Coffee Academy in Kobe. For those who are not familiar with UCC, it is a giant in the Japanese coffee industry. They claim to have invented canned coffee, operate several large cafe chains in Japan, own coffee farms in Hawaii and Jamaica, and develop and sell coffee equipment of all sorts. And, of course, they operate coffee academies in Kobe and Tokyo. When I originally read about the UCC Coffee Academy I was extremely skeptical and dismissed it out of hand. In my mind, UCC was a big company dealing in low-quality coffee and catering to an indiscriminate customer base. Still, they provide affordable, well-rounded, hand-on educational programs, and it seemed like taking a chance on UCC was less risky than some random cafe at more than twice the price (there are many cafes or roasteries that provide coffee seminars or bartending training). So I signed up.

Yesterday, I completed the basic skills course, a two day course that is designed to provide basic coffee knowledge and introduce sensory skills, coffee etiquette, and basic brewing methods. The instructors seemed knowledgeable and one was a pour over championship winner (whatever that means). Although I am pleased with the breadth and quality of instruction, I felt that it did not go deep enough (for example, only one pour over brewing method was covered. Anyone with an interest in coffee, knows that pour over is one of the most versatile and variable brewing methods). This is not surprising, however. The basic course is intended only as an introduction, and is a prerequisite for the professional course, which includes much more, such as how to prepare espresso drinks and make custom blends. I will be taking the professional course next month with high expectations.

It should be mentioned that there is another option for skill-based learning: get a job as a barista. I have thought about this a lot. Starbucks and Blue Bottle are hiring and do not require experience. Blue Bottle is even explicitly looking for people who speak English. I haven’t ruled out this path, but it seems like a low-value way to get training. I would have to work for a relatively long time (months at least?) and all the while I would be making peanuts. From a cost perspective, it makes much more sense to pay for intensive instruction than it does to get an entry-level job. But who knows. It would be nice to learn on someone else’s dime.