The Coffee Academy - Professional Stylez

After my last entry, nearly a month ago, I've been soops busy wrapping up my day job. I will not return to full-time programmer work for at least three months. It's a scary move, especially since I know that from past experience that I am the type of person who will agonize about not working hard enough while sitting on my bed watching Star Trek episodes I've seen many times before.

Over the past two weeks, I took four days off so I could return to the UCC Coffee Academy to take the professional course. The first half was mostly review plus a more detailed exploration of the brew methods from the basic course. For example, in addition to the single hole ceramic Bonmac dripper used in the basic course I was also able to use a V60 dripper and a three-hole plastic Bonmac then compare the results. There was also a good chunk of time dedicated to siphon brewer practice, including a comparison of the tastes of properly brewed siphon and over/under brewed siphon coffee. I don't plan to use siphon in my cafe, but it is fun to use. This time, I was able to get a nice rounded mound of grounds a couple of times, but then I lost my feeling for the stiring technique and failed the rest of my attempts.

On the third day my patience was finally rewarded—an entire day doing espresso. It turns out that espresso is super fun and not really difficult at all, although some of the others seemed to have a lot of trouble. Usually, it was silly things, like pressing down on the butt of the tamper and not being able to make a flat bed of grounds. Steaming milk, on the other hand, was hit and miss and pouring was a disaster. Hearts end up looking like feeble carrots, leaves are wilted, and even a simple circle was FWAP.

Although using the commercial espresso machine was super fun, someone made the inexplicable decision to include in the program practice on an under-powered consumer machines as well—the kind not used by professionals. It was truely a terrible decision. There were only a couple of machines and they took their time getting warm or making steam. Some were leaky, and steaming milk was a true test of patience. Frankly, it was a waste of time that would have been better spent on milk pouring practice or just about anything else.

On the final day it was a return to cupping for the purpose of creating a custom blend. I was not very interested in this portion, especially since there was a team-based blend contest that I really did not want to participate in. At least there was tasty cake to eat.