With thousands of cafes spread across Sydney’s city and suburbs, Australians truly love their coffee. Australia even has its own barista certificate. You can earn one by taking a one-day barista training course.
The Barista course isn’t very difficult, but you need to pay close attention to pass. Every word in the class is important, so you must listen carefully. The course is divided into two parts: Barista Basics (3 hours) and Master Barista (2 hours).
The first part, which lasts 3 hours, mainly covers common types of coffee, how many millilitre of water to add for each, and basic operation of the coffee machine. There isn’t much lecture time; most of the time is spent on hands-on practice with the coffee machine. The schedule is quite packed.
There is an assessment in this part where you simulate taking orders. You need to know how to take orders, what the abbreviations for each type of coffee are, and how to make two cups of coffee after taking the order. After you finish making the coffee, the instructor will check it and ask some questions. If you answer everything correctly, you pass.
The second course focuses mainly on coffee art, including latte art and working with chocolate sauce and milk froth. The best part is that there’s no assessment for this course, but it’s still quite intense because everyone is speeding up at this point. There’s hardly any time to think, and even if you record the instructor’s demonstration, you won’t have time to watch it while working. So, you need to remember everything as you learn it.
Even though the course is only five hours long and not very expensive, you really learn a lot. Milk and coffee beans are provided in unlimited supply!
Although it’s still challenging to independently make a latte with beautiful latte art, and my results are inconsistent, I can at least produce decent milk froth now. In the end, we managed to make a latte that we were quite satisfied with.
Author: Sim K
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