Your brand-new grinder just arrived ,and it’s ready to join your brand-new espresso machine. Your setup looks great, and all your friends will be impressed and probably a little jealous.
The first thing that you’ll probably do, if you’re like me, is try to dial in and pull a shot of espresso at a 2:1 water to coffee ratio within 25-30 seconds. Achieving this might take you a few days or a week. If you’re gifted probably less.
Consistently pulled shots may very well take much longer especially if you are using a variety of coffee beans. Now that that you know how to pull incredible shots, are you now a home barista?
Nope!
Well, we can call ourselves whatever we want in the comfort of our own home. And at this point we’re coffee hobbyist, more or less. But a home barista is basically a barista and should do some or all the things that a professional barista does.
Let’s scrutinize our favorite barista, the one who always makes us consistently great drinks and often with lovely latte art. That person has probably been practicing making coffee drinks for some time. S/he also probably took a few courses to improve their trade.
That’s probably what we’ll have to do but at our own pace as there won’t be pressure to serve drinks for a living. We don’t need certificates to impress potential employers at job interviews. But we have to improve our skills or knowhow to actually be home baristas.
We’ll look at one possible scenario. Your friends come over, and you’re eager to show off your new setup and skills. Will all of them order an espresso, a recipe that you mastered? Or might one of them ask for a cappuccino, and if they want to mess with you might ask for some nice latte art too.
That drink, cappuccino with latte art, in itself will take time and effort to learn. And as the saying goes you have to crawl before you walk applies here. Before even attempting latte art, one has to know how to froth milk correctly.
It’s not as simple as it seems and requires us to use our arm in ways we’ve never done before. I’m alluding to the gentle wiggle action. What’s good about this, is that there are tons of free videos that help people learn such techniques on a step-by-step basis.
Aside from DIY coffee making technique videos another necessity is recipes. The best way is to begin – is how most of have begun – with an expresso. Then perhaps an Americano, afterwards a cortado, a flat white, macchiato and so on.
These are just some of the hot beverages, but cold drinks should also be part of a barista’s repertoire. A cold iced brew, frappe, Vietnamese iced coffee and the list goes on.
It’s a worthy challenge to learn making a variety of hot and cold coffee drinks. The results will make us proud, and friends and family will be in awe at how great your drinks are.
So, what is needed to become a home-barista? A whole lot of patience and practice. That’s how the pros became baristas, and that’s what we’ll have to do too.