MY EXPERIENCE TRAINING AT THE COFFEE CONSULATE

How I got into the awesome world of coffee is easy to explain. It was the taste. The taste that I was not used to in connection with coffee.

But also the encounter with Jens, the owner and roaster of the coffee manufacturer Obenauf in Leipzig. As he was standing in front of the coffee bean shelf, what he was able to tell me in 5 minutes about his self-roasted coffee, why it tasted the way it did and what influenced that – simply blew my mind. The next thing I knew, I started an apprenticeship at his coffee roastery. Because if coffee is so complex, interesting and versatile, I really want to learn everything about it.

Both of my bosses, Anne and Jens are qualified Coffeologists. They learned at the Coffee Consulate. Before they opened up the Obenauf, Jens worked there as a head roaster for some years and also travelled to the partner farms.

The Coffee Consulate is a training and research centre located in Mannheim. It specialises in imparting scientific knowledge and training skills. It’s a beautiful, spacious and open building, with an impressive, huge picture of the partner farm in Brazil right in the lobby. On the first and second floors, there is a cupping room as well as the workshop and research rooms.

More than that, Coffee Consulate is also a production and roasting facility. Down in the cellar are the roasting machines and the storage for the green beans. These green beans are traded directly with partner farms in Brazil, El Salvador, Mexico and India. Both for the Coffee Consulate and for the farmers themselves, the quality of the beans is of utmost interest. Growing a very high-quality coffee comes back to education. The farmers have to know exactly what to keep an eye on, how the plants grow and how to treat them, what influences the taste of the bean, what to pick and how to process, store and ship. The intensive relationship between the farmers and the Coffee Consulate ensures that their knowledge is up to date, and thus the consistently high quality of the beans is a given. Since the Coffee Consulate is a major buyer, the farmers’ income is almost certain. It enables them to sell the beans at a reasonable price and focus on quality instead of participating in the global price war.

As I heard what the Coffee Consulate is and what they do, it became my big goal to experience that and participate in a course one day.

That day came sooner than I thought. I am really happy I got the opportunity to participate in the Coffee Connoisseur course, which consists of six different one-day workshops covering different topics. We talked about Production – what happens on the farms, and Taxonomy – having a look at the genetics and how cultivation conditions influence the taste. We did sensory training to find out what happens on the tongue when we taste bitter, sour, sweet and salty and how to identify different combinations and concentrations. We also did a Cup Tasting where we identified different types of defects and learned how to create a flavour profile. We learned how to create different associations with aroma and how to talk about them. In the end, we combined the theoretical knowledge and the new practical skills to identify where the coffee has grown from the taste alone and to get as much information as possible out of one cup.

Our course was facilitated by a great lecturer. Ute really educated us on different topics. She did not explain to us what happens to a coffee tree. She was the coffee tree: “What do I feel?”, she was a coffee bean: “What do I think?”. She was also a farmer, a picker, a roaster, pretty much every single part that happens on the way a bean goes into a cup. It was very important to her to talk “auf Augenhöhe “about everything. That’s a German saying that one meets as equals, being on the same eye level. Letting us feel into all the different perspectives gave us a better understanding of what was happening in the cup. Especially the idea of how a plant works shows how logical nature is. If you change perspectives and think about it logically, you can actually find conclusions and answers to many questions you have. And that – Ute told us – is one of the most important skills Dr Schwarz teaches.

Dr Schwarz is continuously looking at new ways to innovate with coffee. I was fortunate enough to try some of his latest innovations, which opened my eyes to the possibilities of coffee in a way I hadn’t considered before

What I learned from my time at the Coffee Consulate extended beyond a lot of knowledge and skill training.

Talking about the taste of coffee means choosing precisely the words you use. It’s similar to learning how to talk about emotions – they are there; you just need to learn how to put them into words. It’s not that you don’t have the words to describe them, but you need to learn how to associate them with certain emotions or the taste as accurately as possible.

It is important to reflect on what you say and choose the words you use as precisely as possible – not only in relation to coffee but in life in general. In learning about sensory, there is so much you can transfer to a lot of other spheres of life. It increases your quality of life. As you pay more attention to the quality of the coffee you consume, you will see that if quality becomes significant in one area of your life, it will also become so in other areas,

So for Nick – my course partner and new friend – and me, it first felt like we haven’t got the words to describe what we tasted. And that again led to the realisation that we could explain it with the appropriate training.

The course gave us a better understanding of how the plant grows, how cultivation conditions affect the bean, how the processing works, and all the steps needed before the bean ends up in the cup. Nick and I were able to utilise our knowledge of what affects flavour in various ways to determine the species and country of origin of the coffee we blind-tasted. We gained the confidence to trust our senses and continue our training after that experience, which allowed us to taste rather than guess where a coffee originates from. Our eyes were opened to the fact that, with more training, anyone can learn to taste any information, including what kind it is, where and with what other plants it was grown and even the type of soil it was produced in.

That sounds like magic, right? But with the right background knowledge, of course, a lot of sensory training and the ability to combine both, you can get any information from just one cup. As Ute used to say: “It all belongs to the cup”.

Practical training is very important because even if you have a lot of theoretical knowledge about the plant, that does not give you the ability to taste it. It is quite another thing when you actually taste it, experience it and feel what it means.

The Coffee Consulate is a great place to experience that. It teaches how to combine theoretical knowledge and practical training. It also puts the focus on logical thinking and finding the answers on your own by asking the right questions.

Personally, the course was very enriching in many ways. It gave me confirmation that the path I am taking right now is exactly the right one for me. It lit the fire for coffee and furthered the interest I already have. It also increased my passion for learning more about it. It inspired me to get more actively involved in the partnerships with our farms because that is really important. I also want to focus more on communicating the value of the plant and the whole process. I love to share my eagerness, learn a lot more and one day impart my knowledge. Thanks to my friend Nick, I got the chance to at least share my enthusiasm already. I am very excited and open to what comes next.