Learning to
be a Barista
A companion to the SCA Barista Skills Foundation course. Read it before class to arrive ready, and after class to revise. Everything here serves one goal: make a drink you can defend, and repeat it on the next order.
Seven sections, five practice tools.
It starts
as a seed.
Before any technique matters, there is a bean, and it has a species, an age, and a roast degree. Change any of the three and the same grinder setting gives you a different drink.
A barista who cannot describe the coffee in the hopper is guessing at everything downstream.
Arabica: oval, with an S-shaped center cut. Robusta: rounder, with a straight cut.
The bar is
a machine too.
Twenty percent of the written exam sits in this section, more than any other. Not because the equipment is complicated, but because a barista who cannot name a part cannot ask for help, follow a manual, or clean anything properly.
Name the parts
Grinder: hopper, bean gate, adjustment collar or dial, burrs or blades, chute, fork, on and off switch. Doser grinders hold ground coffee in a dosing chamber; on-demand grinders run on a timer; gravimetric grinders grind to a programmed mass.
Espresso machine: group head, shower screen, group seal, portafilter, filter basket, brew button or lever or paddle, steam wand and tip, gauges, hot water tap, drip tray, on and off switch.
The portafilter locks into the group head. The steam wand belongs to the steam boiler, not the pump.
Preparation, service, cleaning. Three zones, and every tool belongs to one of them.
Clean as you go
Wipe the steam wand after every drink, knock out and rinse the portafilter between shots, and keep the counter dry. A tidy bar is a fast bar: you never hunt for a pitcher or a cloth in the middle of a rush.
Three numbers
and a routine.
An espresso recipe is a dose in, a yield out, and a shot time. Fix those three and the drink becomes repeatable. Everything a barista does at the grinder is in service of hitting them.
Espresso recipe calculator
Set the dose and slide the brew ratio. The yield is calculated for you, and every number is checked against the SCA suggested ranges.
Every number sits inside the SCA suggested brew parameters for espresso.
The espresso routine, nine steps
Dose, yield, time. The scale under the cup is not fussiness; it is the only way the next shot matches this one.
The clock tells you
which way to turn.
Calibration is a loop, not a talent. Pull a shot, read the clock, move the grind one small step, purge, pull again. Change one thing at a time and write down what you did.
Dial-in helper
Enter the shot you just pulled and how it tasted. The helper reads the clock first, then the cup, and tells you which way to move the grinder.
Too coarseThe grounds will not hold together.
About rightIt holds the shape of your fingertip.
Too fineIt pastes and clumps.
Channeling
Channeling is water flowing unevenly through and around the coffee bed. Water takes the path of least resistance: part of the puck is stripped, part is barely touched, and the cup arrives bitter and sour at once.
The usual cause is poor distribution: voids, lumps, or a bed that is higher on one side. The usual symptoms are pale jets, spurting, and a soupy puck afterwards.
A dry, compact puck that lifts out in one piece is the sign you want.
Air first,
then texture.
Steaming has two phases and they do not overlap. Stretching introduces air while the milk is still cold. Rolling breaks the big bubbles down into microfoam. Add air late and you get bubbles you can never remove.
Feel the pitcher
Five milk rules
Refrigerate at all times. Fresh milk for every drink. Never re-steam. Rotate stock first in, first out, and discard anything expired. Empty and clean the pitcher after use.
SCA Barista Foam Standards
Level 1 · ExcellentSmooth, shiny, and moist. No visible bubbles.
Level 2 · Very goodVery few bubbles, under 0.5 mm.
Level 3 · AcceptableMany small bubbles. The Foundation pass mark.
Level 4 · UnacceptableLarge bubbles, uneven, dull, and dry.
Level 5, very poor: many large bubbles, very dry and uneven, as if the foam had been spooned on rather than poured. Levels 4 and 5 fail at Foundation.
Cappuccino builder
The SCA cappuccino is built on a 1:3:2 ratio of espresso, milk, and foam, with 10 to 20 mm of foam in the cup. Enter your cup and shot to see the build.
The parts nobody
photographs.
Backflush, brush, dry
Backflush the group with a blank basket, brush the group head and shower screen, rinse the portafilter and basket in hot water and dry them, then return the portafilter to the group.
Detergent, soak, empty
Backflush with detergent, then with water until it runs clean. Soak screens, baskets, and spouts (metal only). Clean the steam wand and check the tip holes. Empty and wipe the hopper and grind out the last beans.
The barista vocabulary,
defined.
A brewing method: finely ground coffee is compacted into a portafilter and hot water is forced through it under pressure, producing a concentrated beverage. Not a roast level, a grind size, or a blend.
The mass of dry coffee against the mass of espresso in the cup. The SCA suggested range for espresso is 1:1.5 to 1:2.5.
The mass of ground coffee in the basket. 7 to 10 g for a single, 14 to 20 g for a double.
The mass of espresso that reaches the cup. 10.5 to 25 g for a single, 21 to 50 g for a double.
Water flowing unevenly through and around the coffee bed. Usually caused by poor distribution, and it makes a shot bitter and sour at the same time.
Grinding and discarding a little coffee after a grind adjustment, so the next dose is not a mixture of the old setting and the new one.
Opening the steam valve briefly before and after steaming, to clear condensed water first and milk residue after.
Running water back through the group head against a blank basket, with detergent at least once a day, to clear coffee oils. It has the biggest single effect on espresso flavor of any cleaning step.
Milk foam with a consistently dense texture, no visible bubbles, and a shiny, moist surface. Levels 1 to 3 on the SCA Barista Foam Standards pass at Foundation.
The two phases of steaming. Stretching introduces air into cold milk. Rolling spins the milk to break large bubbles into microfoam.
The layer of emulsified oils, proteins, and carbon dioxide on top of an espresso. On a well-extracted shot it covers the whole surface.
Calcium and magnesium deposits left by hard water. Scale damages an espresso machine and restricts flow, which is the main reason a filter is fitted.
Knowledge check.
Ten questions in the spirit of the written exam. The real one is twenty questions in twenty-two minutes, and you need sixty percent to pass.
Test yourself
Multiple choice, single correct answer, like the SCA written exam.