How to become an expert in the coffee industry?

In our opinion, a coffee expert is a person who has dedicated part of his life to studying coffee, loves this product and is interested in everything that happens around it. The highest point of expertise is Q-grader certification, which we have already talked about in one of our previous articles . But today we would like to talk about the path that awaits a person who wants to understand coffee or is related to the coffee business and wants to develop in this direction.

The first thing you need to do if you have set yourself such a goal is to improve your taste experience. Coffee is a multifaceted product, and the more different varieties you try, the more you will understand it. It seems obvious. At first, you may think that all coffee is the same, but over time you will understand that this is not so. First, you will begin to feel different taste notes in each cup, so-called taste descriptors. And each variety will have different ones. Then you will begin to be interested in the flavor wheel and then you will be unstoppable. After that, your life will never be the same, because these are your first steps in becoming an expert.

Improving your expertise is a constant learning process. You can learn in different ways: for example, you can adopt the experience of other people who are authorities in the coffee industry. You can communicate and meet such people at thematic coffee exhibitions. This networking is extremely useful, as it helps not only to improve your knowledge, but also to declare yourself as an expert. At these same events, you can take part in cupping tournaments. We had such an experience, and we can confidently say that such tournaments are a very cool opportunity to test yourself.

You can also enroll in professional barista courses and get a diploma or certificates confirming your expertise. Ideally, you should complete training and become a qualified Q-grader, but you can also choose more local training. By the way, we recently took part in such training. If you are interested, you can watch a fairly large but very useful video . This will give you great growth in professional terms, because you will be surrounded by the same “fire-eyed” people and communicate with experienced experts in the coffee industry.

The conclusions are obvious: if you have decided to seriously engage in the coffee business, you definitely need to improve your competencies. In this way, you will not only increase your level of knowledge, but will also be able to pass it on to your employees, broadcast it and monetize it in the future.