How to be a better barista?

That’s something I think of every time I’m working behind the espresso machine at the bar. What would make my espresso taste better? How could I get more balanced cup of Aeropress and so on.

Written sources such as books and especially blogs seem to be quite popular within the coffee peers for acquiring knowledge and to learn about different brewing methods. Indeed, most of these blogs, at least the more mainstream ones, are written by hard-core coffee pros who come up with pretty interesting topics. They’ve been working with coffee a long time, they know their coffee and other great baristas. Don’t get me wrong, I follow several blogs and tweets to keep up to date of what’s going on.

The thing I’m trying to say here is that although Internet is full of, for example, Hario V60 brewing videos, they are all different. These videos are their makers’ opinions of how to brew best coffee with that renowned dripper cone.

Coffee is supposed to taste good. Barista’s job is to make it taste as good as possible. In his/her effort to do so many look for recipes and ideas in the Internet or books. They probably don’t question these recipes and just use them without experimenting other methods that might suit this particular hypothetical coffee better.

I’m afraid that someone else’s opinions and personal tastes are becoming more important than the most important quality of an accomplished barista, the ability to taste and identify the mistakes and alter the brewing parameters in order to make a perfect cup of coffee.

One of the reasons I love coffee so much is that you can vary the brewing parameters making the end product very variable. Every coffee needs its own parameters and the only way to find the right ones is by experimenting, by tasting. As always, I’d love to hear you thoughts on this matter. I know this is perhaps a little provocative post but I’d like to hear some discussion.