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I started working at Coffee Brothers over a year ago now while still an HSC student. My knowledge about coffee was pretty well rounded at the time – I knew that there were cappuccinos, lattes and I finally learnt that the weird mini coffees were called piccolos. Fantastic. I was ready. Bring on the hospitality lifestyle.

Turns out, as I completed shift after shift on weekends, and now working shifts day by day outside of school, what I thought I knew about coffee covered about 5% of everything. Or was it 0.5%? I actually don’t know how much there is to learn and what I know. But at the very least, I can say I have learnt these 10 things, just by being in the Coffee Brothers café. Here they are:

1. 1. I love people – the thing I love most about my job is the amazing people I get to see whenever I work, we are so lucky to attract such whole-hearted, kind and friendly people. Yes, we too get our share of odd nutters, but generally it is really fun just being around people.
2. 2. This being said however, sometimes it’s not so wise to ask people how their days is before their first coffee. It’s always best to start the conversation after their first sip.
3. 3. It’s ES-presso not EX-presso! Oh lord help me if I get that wrong.
4. 4. Seasonal blend is a blend of different types of coffee beans whereas single origin is only one single type of bean – a singular place of origin… It took me a while to wrap my head around this one…
5. 5. WHY SUGAR -  at the start of my coffee journey I was drowning my caffeinated beverage in sugar. I was not much of a coffee drinker, I would occasionally have a soy cappuccino with 1 every once and a while but only to be polite to a co-worker who would offer. But as the year went on and I watched the baristas drink sugarless I started to understand what makes a good coffee. So I went from a soy cappuccino, to cold drip. Then to almond piccolos, to espressos, to cold drip, to long blacks, to cold drip now am back at espressos because a gurl ain’t got no time for no 8 ounce drank! I have learnt to enjoy coffee stripped back of milk and sugar, especially cold drip – I think I have consumed over 1000 litres of this liquid heaven. But hey, if you like sugar in your coffee you keep doing your thang.
6. 6. TSK TSK – the magical sound of milk frothing away. I only recently learnt how to steam milk and golly-gosh is it a challenge. It’s all about learning how and when to stop letting the air into the milk, then, when it is at the right temperature, take it away from the steamer, and don’t forget to purge... don’t forget to purge. Claudia did you purge? Yes, judgemental barista watching over my shoulder, I was getting there…
7. 7. LATTE ART IS AN ACTUAL ART FORM AND WE MUST ALWAYS APPRICIATE THE SLIGHEST DESIGN!
8. 8. No barista makes the same coffee as another – I learnt this when we had a regular drink a coffee I had made. Meg watched everything I did, the weighed dosage was ok, the espresso pour was ok, milk temperature was fine and froth level was passable. But still: “its tastes… different…” Not the thing you want to hear when being compared to a nationally recognised barista. “Different… but good.” However, I was comforted by the statement “no barista makes the same coffee”. Not meaning one is better and the other worse, just different. Each coffee shows each baristas personality and style, and that’s a pretty cool thing.
9. 9. Everybody has an opinion (life lesson not just about coffee…). Recently I was summoned by Meg to the bench mid-shift where I saw two identical looking cups of flat white coffees. She asked (told) me to taste them. I pick up the left one to sip it... not my favourite. I pick up the right one… definitely not my favourite. I didn’t like either. But Meg was asking for my opinion on which I preferred. What do I say so I don’t sound like an idiot or disrespectful to our coffee? I ended stuttering out something like “I like that one worse”. I thought I was wrong. One cup was supposed to be right and the other wrong, right? Turns out, it ended up being both were made ‘wrong’ in two different ways, and she was showing me how a shot pulled outside of the desired specs can alter the flavour in a bad way. It’s these surprise little coffee quizzes by Meg that keeps me up at night… literally. Coffee is full of caffeine you know!
10. 10. And last but not least – WOW, people drink a lot of coffee. Like, wow!
11.  

So there you have it folks, a short list of some of my observations over the past year. Ultimately, Coffee Brothers is so much more than what meets the eye, there is so much work that goes on behind the scenes to make sure you get that amazing cup of coffee each and every day. It’s all thanks to the amazing staff that your coffee is as good as it gets.

- Claudia Krek

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Are you a newbie in the hopso world and have learnt some funky things too? Let us know!!

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The Q Arabica grader exam is one of the hardest exams I have ever had to do. It has also proved my greatest learning platform so far in the coffee industry.

Let me quickly try to explain as best I can what Q grading is all about and why this exam is so tough. The Q grader exam tests specialty coffee professionals on their knowledge and sensory skills to provide them with a Q Grader Certificate. The information as provided by the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI) online states that “a CGQ Q Arabica grader is a n individual who is credentialed by the CQI to grade and score coffees utilizing standards developed by the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA).” The scoring of Arabica coffees “provides a common language for discussing coffee quality throughout the coffee chain from producers to buyers” and can be very impactful for the lives of farmers and producers of coffee. A cupping score over 80 points classifies a coffee as being specialty. Perhaps think of a Q Arabica Grader in specialty coffee as being similar to that of a sommelier - we taste (but not drink, noone can handle that much caffeine!) and we write and score whatever is happening in the cup.

{ http://www.coffeeinstitute.org/our-work/q-coffee-system/what-is-a-q-grader/ }

Tony and I made a last minute decision that I should try sit the test 2 weeks before it was due to run. I rocked up to the Five Senses training centre in Stanmore keen to meet my fellow students and trainers. It was a comforting sight to see a friendly face in the group, Will Scholl from Seven Miles Roasters. The class consisted of 10 students; 7 men, 3 women, and a few extra students who swung in and out for retakes (I’ll explain this later). We proved to be a greatly diverse group of industry professionals, but I do admit I felt slightly underqualified as the youngest student present. My experience began and ended with “I’m a barista” while everyone else seemed to have clocked up 2, 3, 4, 5 different job roles. Clearly, I had the ability to learn the most!

The Q grader course and exam takes a total of 6 days; 3 days of training and practice and then 3 days of exams. There are 8 parts to be passed each with different sections. 22 exams altogether. The diagram below, also taken from CQI website (see link above), outlines each of these sections for you.

Some exams take longer than others, each cupping spanning one hour to grasp the full spectrum of what’s in each coffee, while the roast grading takes all of 30 seconds to identify the ‘odd’ looking roasted beans in a 100g sample.

We all had different strengths and weaknesses. My weakness proved to be triangulations – finding the odd cup out of 3 in a blind tasting. Don’t be fooled by the simplistic instructions of the task – it’s tough! By way of example, imagine drinking three cups of sugared water all at the same ratios, but two of those cups were CSR white sugar and the third cup was home-brand white sugar. Could you tell the difference in a blind taste?

Conversely, I was stronger in olfactory skills (identifying smells) and roast identification.

Within a week I learnt so much more about my palate than I have in my 6 years as a barista. I learnt that I am not overly sensitive to sour but I am to salt. I am likely to pick up flavours such as jasmine, peach and apple more than flavours like apricot or smoke. I even had the dubious pleasure of tasting my first mouldy coffee!

I am once again grateful for the incredible people I met and the bonds we made over our mutual examination feelings. The apprehensive bonding when we recorded the same answers so we could all pass or fail together, the quick yoga vinyasa to recalibrate our tastebuds mid-exam session, and the increasing desire to dab our nose into our armpits to recalibrate our olfactory senses! We conversed over dry crackers and butter in between exams while our sandpaper tongues screamed out for the bolder flavours of chili, garlic, onion and pepper which were denied to them for the week. 

This was not an exam I expected to pass first time. In fact, I would be concerned if I did. It is designed to be tough and gruelling on the tongue, on the mind, on the brain, and with the little experience I have in the coffee industry I have not had the exposure that should be necessary to pass this exam (that, by the way, does have a pass rate of about 25%!!!!!). The exciting thing about the future is that these skills can be learned. You don’t have to be born with an incredible tongue – you just need to open your mind and senses to a whole new world!

The Q grader exam allows students to retake sections they did not pass without needing to resit the entire course again – which is fantastic! In the end, I reached and even beat my goal to resit no more than four tests out of the 22, having to conquer only 2 pesky triangulations. Stay posted for when I do finally manage to land my Q!

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Photo credits go out to our mates at the Five Senses lab who hosted the Q course this time. Thanks gents.