About the course

As with many baristas, I became obsessed with trying to understand the links between the stories I read about individual coffees and the flavours I tasted when brewing and serving them. This led to a journey working with food scientists and chemists that took me all the way to becoming a World Barista Champion, presenting GCMS data as a way of exploring and understanding coffee flavour. Following that experience further led to greater research and conversation with botanists, sensory scientists, agronomists and cuppers that we explore through this course. Whilst separate to our daily discussion of coffee and flavour, understanding it's chemistry allows a different perspective and deeper appreciation of the links between fields in our industry, and how we can build deeper understanding of our taste experiences and those of our customers.

About me

With over 10 years experience as a trainer and barista, I approach this subject from a non-academic background, but have seen the value in reaching beyond our shared coffee training resources and looking at research papers and resource form across the sensory, agricultural and food chemistry worlds. I share these and other resources with my students to enable them to both understand the current level of research in these subjects, and feel comfortable in reading further and deeper. I believe the best days in coffee are ahead of us, but we'll only see them if we open our eyes to the wider world in which we work, and the small details that define our experiences.

Course structure

Spread across a series of self learning modules, group reviewed exercises, sensory activities supported with a tasting pack and live sessions with Dale where we unpick some of the more complex aspects, students will spend approximately 6 hours developing their knowledge and skills