I want to  briefly look at some established models and see how they could apply to developing skills in a bar environment. There can be doubt that we could do training better. It is such a high priority for the industry, that I am surprised it hasn’t been looked at more. A lot of the time we look to those who can do – those who have achieved some measure of success and have demonstrated skill to do our training. A typical example might be a barista champion. The concern is that just because they can make great coffee doesn’t mean a thing about their ability to teach others to do the same.

Like many other people who train others regularly I’ve mostly learned through trial and error. This involved, unfortunately, me being bad at it quite often. I needed to make mistakes to work out what worked and what didn’t. While I had an incredibly supportive employer I just didn’t know where to look or who to talk to on the subject.

The core ideas of what I teach haven’t really changed a lot, though have obviously become more nuanced. A lot of training I do is wholesale training that is a fairly short, and intense session. How to make these more effective is perhaps out of the scope of this post. Instead I want to look at training programs, perhaps as ones that exist in house for a cafe to get a new hire up to standard.

To start with I want to look at the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition. This is based on a paper submitted by brothers Hubert and Stewart Dreyfus in 1980 (and it available as a pdf here.). It documents the five stages of learning a particular skill. By looking at these, and how they might apply to coffee, we may be able to make our training more effective.

I’m going to look at the stages and briefly discuss them in relevance to coffee. I’ve used Michael Eraut’s summary for each level:

Beginner

- rigid adherence to taught rules or plans
- no exercise of “discretionary judgment”

I don’t think it is fair to think of rules and plans as brewing recipes, but more of the actions involved to prepare coffee in a basic way. This is where most baristas (globally) are – they can grind coffee, put some in a portafilter, put in it a machine and brew. This is repeated regardless of how the coffee brews. The result is, as we all know, consistently awful coffee.

Advanced Beginner

- limited “situational perception”
- all aspects of work treated separately with equal importance

This would probably apply to baristas who have been making terrible coffee for a while, but still lack training and development. Diagnosis of bad shots often flawed due to a lack of understanding of the process. (Example would be someone presuming a shot ran too slow because they tamped too hard) This could also be a barista who has been well trained, but has yet to get to grips with exactly how each of the brew parameters influence a shot.

Competent

- “coping with crowdedness” (multiple activities, accumulation of information)
- some perception of actions in relation to goals
- deliberate planning
- formulates routines

This reads very much like the description of a solid, well-trained barista. Good work flow, ability to deal with lots going on and working in a deliberate manner. This is the level I would want someone to achieve before they start working bar full-time. The challenge here is that learning to “cope with crowdedness” is difficult to do without being on a busy bar. Something to reflect on further down.

Proficient

- holistic view of situation
- prioritizes importance of aspects
- perceives deviations from the normal pattern
- employs maxims for guidance, with meanings that adapt to the situation at hand

At this point we have an effective barista, looking for deviations with brewing and understanding the necessary steps to correct issues (reducing dose when everything tasting sour/underextracted) – though not necessarily understanding why this works. Drinks produced would be consistently very good.

Expert

- transcends reliance on rules, guidelines, and maxims
- “intuitive grasp of situations based on deep, tacit understanding”
- has “vision of what is possible”
- uses “analytical approaches” in new situations or in case of problems

I don’t think this takes a great deal of explaining. Here we have someone who understands both coffee brewing, creating a menu of drinks and the ideas behind the recipes, and can build on their understanding to create new things and move us forward.

The uses for these kinds of models are varied. As a shop owner you could use it to assess your current staff against a fixed list of skills, to understand both their progress and your own success as a trainer. Knowing how far along someone is in their skill development means that you can train them to move to the next stage more effectively.

We tend to assess people based on their results rather than their methods. In situations where technology has moved on to help reduce inconsistency it may be possible for someone to serve good drinks without really understanding how they are doing it. The time we find out that their knowledge or understanding is limited is when the system breaks down – not an ideal way for a retail operation to discover this.

I’m not saying that I think this is the one way that we should assess baristas and their skill development. However, looking into the theory of learning was my introduction to the idea of tacit knowledge. The idea of tacit knowledge is, ironically, quite hard to explain. This is knowledge that is difficult to communicate by writing it down or verbalising. How to taste coffee is an obvious, and relevant, example of tacit knowledge. (Whereas knowing that Antigua is a growing region in Guatemala is knowledge that is easy to communicate).

I very rarely see much discussion about how we can train better. How do we take a barista to the point where they are capable and effective on a busy bar without going the sink or swim route of putting them there til they learn (or get fired, or quit)? How do we effectively communicate the necessary tacit knowledge in coffee – like effective tasting of espresso as a diagnostic skill?

By looking at education in a more structured way we can better share our own experiences and collectively get better at it.

Wikipedia is a pretty interesting place to get lost in all of this. The four stages of competence, or the Dunning-Kruger effect or many other topics within learning all feel compelling and important. (Read the Dunning-Kruger link, seriously…)

I often feel like I write these sorts of posts that ask lots of questions but don’t really suggest any sort of answer (all the while berating the industry for not offering answers or solutions).  Beyond looking outside our industry for help, I thought about a few suggestions that are quick and easy to implement:

- Get as much basic training as you can

I will never tire of seeing new people teaching familiar material. I’d happily go and watch many basic sessions because I’d be looking at what worked well, rather than to relearn the material. I’m constantly looking for better, more elegant and effective examples and explanations of coffee brewing. I’ll happily admit to stealing the best ones I use.

- Cross polinate your ideas

Talk to other barista trainers. Once the frustrations and moanings are out-of-the-way, talk about how you approach teaching. Obviously, much as different people learn in different ways, different people teach in different ways. However, there might be a structure in place or a narrative that you can refine. Chatting with Mike Phillips of the phone (though some of it didn’t make the final cut) was informative and useful for me.

I’d be interested if people have any recommended reading material on training – on skill development, learning process etc.  Link us up!

I’m interested to hear more about other people’s ideas on this one. Leave a comment, write a blog post and post a link, anything! I’d love to hear from you.

I’m still trying to work out cold brewing (i.e. brewing using cold water), and since I read Peter Giuliano talking about the Japanese iced coffee method that has been a method of choice.

The idea with this is to brew double strength coffee straight onto ice.  As the ice melts it chills and dilutes the coffee back to more normal strengths.

Often this is done with pourover or filter brewers.  The problem I had with this is that as you double the amount of coffee to your amount of water then it is going to be harder to properly extract it as you have less brewing liquid.  You can certainly grind finer but I found the window of tasty a bit too narrow.

So recently I’ve been starting with a french press brew.  I like the french press for this because it isn’t as sensitive to dose because it is an infusion rather than a percolation.  You have a better chance of hitting a 19% extraction (in my very limited experience) with less brew water available, when working at very high ratios (120g/l).

However, I don’t really like sludge in my iced coffee.  So I’ve chosen to filter it before it hits the ice.  So for now here is the recipe I used today to make coffee for all of us in a very hot roastery:

- 80g of coffee ground coarsely. (But not too coarsely)

- Add 660g of hot water (around 92-93C is good)  I’d recommend preheating the brewer as normal.

- A quick stir then a 4 minute steep.  You could steep for longer if your grind is coarser but the heat loss starts to bother me.

- At 4 minutes stir the crust on top, then scoop off the remaining foam.  It may seem pointless to go through this if the brew is going to be filtered anyway – but you want the least possible fines to block the cloth and let that part be as quick as possible.

- Plunge and leave for a moment.  Again – fines settle and are less likely to clog up the cloth.

- Find a large vessel, and add 660g of ice.

- Find a clean cloth, like those used in woodneck drip pots.

- Pour the press pot through the cloth directly onto the ice.

- Clean the cloth.  Clean the press pot.  Enjoy the coffee.

You could use a paper filter to clean up the brew – a V60 or Chemex filter maybe.  I love cloth though – I love a cloth pourover already.  I love the enhanced mouthfeel and intensity – had a lovely, juicy sweet cup today that I really enjoyed.

I quite fancy playing with the aeropress next, which I haven’t really done with cold/iced coffee.

Thoughts?

These tips probably apply more to a commercial environment than a domestic one, but hopefully there are some useful reminders for anyone in here.

We’ve all ended up chasing an espresso, somehow a delicious espresso remaining elusive.  These may seem obvious but all get overlooked from time to time.

1. Plan for palate fatigue

Palate fatigue is inevitable, and too much coffee doesn’t just change and dampen your ability to discern flavours – it also quickly affects your enjoyment of coffee too.  David Schomer made a very good point once – coffee never tastes better than when your body really wants it.  We can often be a lot more forgiving of flaws when drinking that first cup that we really want.  The opposite is true for me also.  After too much coffee nothing tastes good.  When my body has had enough caffeine an espresso may be technically correct but I won’t find it delicious.  At this point continued tasting is not particularly useful.

Scott Rao recommends not just spitting the espresso you taste, but also rinsing immediately afterwards with water.  This is pretty much the best way I’ve found.  Drinking less coffee slows my caffeine ingestion, and the rinsing slows general palate fatigue.

2. Don’t overreact

Frustration dialing in a grinder often leads people to react too quickly to a bad shot.  Making sure that you’ve isolated the problem before making a change is very important.   All too often a shot will run fast and a barista will immediately change the grind a little finer.  The next shot runs too slow.  Double check before making a change, because everyone makes mistakes – an accidental underdose for example.

3. Purge

Even the best grinder in the world retains quite a lot of ground coffee.  Most visibly in the throat between the burrs and the dosing chamber, but also in the dosing chamber as well.  Every grinder benefits from a decent purge – 10g to 15g is plenty.  Consider it an investment in the next shot, rather than a waste.  Ending up with a dose made up from a mixture of grind settings is not a good thing.

4. Taste tells you everything

It won’t always point to the problem, but the balance of the espresso will give you a pretty good idea of what is wrong.  Unbalanced, dominant acidity coupled with astringency points towards underextraction.  It could be a number of reasons – pour too fast, temp too low, shot volume too short – but you can be pretty confident that you haven’t taken enough from the coffee.  An excessive, dominant bitterness and an unpleasant finish will usually point to overextraction.

5.  Take a broad sampling

When you are dialling in things like brew temperature this is incredibly difficult to do from only a few espressos.  Tasting more will allow you to get a better idea of what is wrong.  Little mistakes made from shot to shot can easily obscure bigger problems.  I don’t feel confident about saying a brew temperature is wrong until I’ve experimented with a number of other things first.

6. Have a strategy

Be methodical when working with an espresso blend.  Keep in mind that there are a number of different variables that we can change and work through.  Brew time, dose, grind size, brew temperature and shot length are the ones we would typically play with – though pressure is steadily gaining more attention (though I’ve yet to see any conclusive advice on using pressure to improve a shot.)

That said – feel free to abandon dead ends.  If you start with a 20g dose and no matter what you do it tastes underextracted/sour then increasing the dose is unlikely to fix that particular problem, so pulling shots at 22g or 24g may just be mean to your palate, rather than being a good way to use the coffee that you have.

7. Keep it clean

A dirty machine isn’t going to make good coffee.  It seems obvious but dirt builds up incredibly quickly in any espresso machine and it doesn’t take much build up before everything starts to taste disappointing.  Portafitlers, screens and blocks should be cleaned regularly and don’t be afraid of using chemical to clean often.  A coffee machine can’t be too clean!

I had been in coffee well over a year before I really began to develop my vocabulary and descriptive skills, and that is probably more embarrassing as I had done some work in wine beforehand.

What does the coffee professional have access to, that the consumer doesn’t, that allows them to progress so fast?  It isn’t cupping bowls, or spoons.  It isn’t scoresheets, or large amounts of data about where the coffee is from.  It is regular opportunities for comparative tasting.

I know I just said that it wasn’t about cupping bowls and spoons, though most industry tasting is through the cupping process.  I strongly believe that the rituals and practices of cupping and were not created with the primary goal of tasting the coffee better.  Most of cupping’s routine is about searching for potential defect, looking for consistency, and trying to discern as much about the raw material as possible before purchase.  It isn’t a better way to develop your palate.  Where the cupper gains a quiet advantage is by going through a process of focused, conscious tasting.  You can do this at home very easily, though before you begin I’d advise you to watch Tom Owens’ video on Drinking Vs Tasting.  After that it is pretty simple:

1).  Buy two very different coffees. It doesn’t hurt to ask your local roaster/shop for guidance on this.

2).  Buy two small french presses. As small as you can get really.

3).  Brew two small cups of each coffee.  You could obviously do this with bigger presses and bigger cups, but I hate the idea of wasting good coffee or promoting overconsumption.

4).  Let them cool a little bit. It is much easier to discern the flavours when coffee has cooled a little bit.

5).  Start to taste them alternately. Take a couple of sips of one coffee before moving on.  Start to think about how the coffee tastes compared to the other.  Without a point of reference this is incredibly difficult.

6).  Focus on textures first.  To start with focus on things like the mouthfeel of the two coffees.  Does one feel heavier than the other?  Is one sweeter than the other?  Does one have a cleaner acidity than the other?

7).  Don’t read the labels as you taste.  Instead note down a handful of words about each coffee.  When you are done compare what you have to the roaster’s descriptions.  Can you see now what they are trying to communicate about the coffee?

8).  Don’t worry about flavours. ‘Worry’ is the key word here.  Flavours are the most intimidating part of tasting, as well as the most frustrating.  Roasters use flavours not only to describe particular notes – such as “nutty” or “floral” – but also to convey a wide range of sensations.  Describing a coffee as having “ripe apple” notes also communicates expectations of sweetness and acidity. If you do identify individual flavours – great!  Note it down!  If not then don’t worry.  Any words or phrases that describe what you are tasting qualify as being useful – random words or flavours.

Often upon reading the label you’ll have your frustration relieved as you find the word to describe what you tasted that you just couldn’t pull out from the back of your brain.  It suddenly seems so obvious!  This is part of building a coffee specific vocabulary of flavours – aromas and tastes that you initially find out of context in coffee become what I describe as “coffee versions of…”.

I can’t stress enough how important the comparative part of this is.  Tasting one coffee at a time means that you can focus all you want, but without something to compare it too you are working based on your memory of previous coffee which is unfortunately patchy, flawed and innaccurate.

How often should you do this?  Whenever you get the chance and have some time to relax and enjoy coffee.  Soon you’ll find describing coffees gets easier and easier, though this is something even industry veterans still work on.

One final note on comparative tasting:  The context, unfortunately, remains everything.  Even the best coffee tasters in the world – let’s take Cup of Excellence judges as an example – cannot score coffees accurately outside of context.  A jury member might score a coffee in El Salvador 92, then score a coffee in Guatemala 93.  These are not comparable scores, because the context of those scores has changed so much.  Within the individual competitions those scores matter, but outside they don’t.