My Barista Training

It has been great experience spending the first three days of the holiday break completing the intensive Barista Course at CPIT. It was three jam packed days of grinding, tamping, extracting and milk texturing, as well as a great trip to C4 coffee roasters. All culminating in an 8 minutes, four coffee making assessment. Always good to remember what the students feel like when they have assessments! No preasure now!

 This was my machine for the 3 days. 

 We were very well taught by the lovely, and very witty, Katrina Fisher. We made so many coffees.... We had plenty of time to practice our extracting and milk stretching and texturing. As a decaf drinker I was terrified to try too much of the coffee for fear of a 3 day extended insomnia, so a little sip now and then was my lot.

Groupie with Barista and teacher super-woman Katrina.

This is the coffee roaster at C4. Rod the roaster told us this is $1000 worth of coffee in the cooling tray, and the margin for error for burning a batch is only 1 or 2 minutes. Pressure.


Assessment time on the last day. All the saucers and spoons are polished and ready, the test shots done and the 8 minute countdown about to start....















My finished coffee line up after marking: a mochaccino, latte, cappucino and macchiato. They had all settled by the time I got a chance to take the photo.

 
As Katrina pointed out to us early in the coarse, most of hospitality is cleaning. I love her saying: "If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean"
It was a great course that I would thoroughly recommend to anyone with an interest in coffee to take. Even if you're just making coffee at home on your domestic machine, this course will definitely improve you're skills, and you'll have a great time doing it.