Coffee Culture

Off to town on the train again this morning, again to William Angliss, but this time something a bit more fun – ABC of Espresso at the Coffee Academy. Yup, Melbourne’s clearly the home of coffee culture – because there’s a training institute (well, a part of a building at William Angliss).

Our trainer Melissa clearly has plenty of years making coffee. And it shows, starting from when we walked in and she offered us a cup of coffee. Problem is, it was perfectly made, which meant our, I suspect desultory efforts later paled into insignificance. But it set the tone – it showed she really CAN make a seriously good coffee, and gave us a benchmark we need to try and match. Melissa’s also a judge for the Australian Barista Championships.

Just a morning’s course, but full one, racing through how to prepare the machine, make a coffee, texture the milk – then clean up your machine and equipment afterwards.

Believe it or not William Angliss runs an entire full on coffee course – Prepare and Serve Espresso Coffee is a nationally accredited unit of competency, with theory and practical. There’s even a course on Milk Texturing and Coffee Art – all those pretty squiggles on the top of your latte!

It was my first time working an espresso machine in anger. And now I understand why so many people call coffee an art. It ain’t as easy as it looks. The other problem is, thanks to Melissa, I know a bunch of things many coffee makers do wrong.

There’s a whole world of coffee out there. Check out coffeesnobs.com.au for example. That’s where I discovered you can download software to your computer to monitor your coffee roasting process (you DO roast your own beans at home don’t you). You hook a thermometer to your PC, and stick it into the coffee roaster. It then monitors and reports the roasting process. Cool. Coffee Geeks, my type of people.