Most coffee advice arrives as tips. The CoffeeHQ Academy is the other thing: ideas in the order they depend on each other, each with something to do before you move on.
There are two programmes. One is about making coffee and one is about understanding it. They overlap at the start and then go different ways, and you can follow either or both. Nothing here needs an account. Your progress, the answers you open and the notes you write stay in your browser and are not sent to CoffeeHQ.
You make espresso-based coffee at home, or are about to start work behind a machine, and want the skills in the order they build on each other.
1. Barista foundationsDose, water, ratio, grind and extraction — the five ideas everything else rests on.
2. Espresso foundationsWhat the machine does, what the puck does, and how to read a shot as it runs.
3. Dialling inA repeatable method for turning a bad shot into a good one, one variable at a time.
4. MilkWhat foam is, how a steam wand makes it, and why each milk behaves the way it does.
5. Drink constructionThe café menu as a small set of decisions about espresso, water, milk and foam.
6. WorkflowDoing the same things in the same order, so quality does not depend on having a good day.
7. Latte art foundationsWhy patterns form, the three phases of a pour, and the order in which to learn them.
8. MaintenanceCleaning and descaling are different jobs, and your manual outranks every schedule.
9. Advanced espressoPre-infusion, pressure, flow, baskets and measurement — and an honest view of what each buys you.
It is not a certificate and cannot be one. Nothing here was assessed by anyone, and hand skills such as steaming and pouring are learned at the machine. Use it beside practice, not instead of it.
You want to understand coffee as a subject — why it tastes as it does, where it comes from and how to weigh what you are told about it — whether or not you ever work with it.
1. Coffee foundationsWhat coffee is, the journey it makes, and the handful of decisions that shape a cup.
2. The coffee plantHow Coffea grows, flowers and fruits, and what climate, altitude and disease do to it.
3. Species and varietiesThe coffee family tree: four species worth knowing, two founding lineages, and the hybrids that followed.
4. World coffeeWhere coffee grows, how it is farmed, and how much an origin can really tell you.
5. ProcessingHow the fruit comes off the seed, what fermentation does, and why drying decides everything.
6. Green coffeeHow unroasted coffee is graded, described, stored and traced.
7. RoastingWhat heat does to a green seed, stage by stage, and what a roaster actually controls.
8. Brewing scienceSolubility, concentration and extraction yield — and how each brewing mechanism moves them.
9. WaterHardness, alkalinity and what the minerals in your water do to extraction and taste.
10. Sensory foundationsTaste, smell and touch are three senses. Coffee flavour is what the brain makes of all of them.
11. Cupping and tastingThe professional method for comparing coffees fairly, and the biases it exists to control.
12. The coffee industryWho handles coffee between the tree and the cup, how it is priced, and what certifications certify.
13. History and cultureFrom Ethiopian forests to the espresso bar: what is documented, what is legend, and what it explains.
14. Advanced expertiseTelling evidence from lore, and holding what you know about coffee with the right confidence.
It is not a professional qualification, and it does not replace the sensory calibration that formal courses give by tasting alongside trained people. Where the evidence is thin or disputed, the levels say so.
Which one, and where to start
You have an espresso machine, or are about to.
Become a Barista, from Level 1. If you already weigh your coffee and understand ratio, start at Level 2.
Your shots are inconsistent and you do not know why.
27 side-by-side comparisons to run in your own kitchen, each written as a protocol: what to hold constant, what to notice, and what the result cannot show.
A worksheet for your own tasting notes — one coffee, two side by side, or two blind — with the seven attributes tasters separate and a flavour vocabulary to choose from.
CoffeeHQ publishes no tasting notes of its own. Everything the Lab records is yours, and it stays in your browser.
Shorter reading paths
If you want one subject and not a programme, these are routes through the reference pages, in a sensible order. Each stage says what you will be able to do afterwards. Where CoffeeHQ does not yet cover a stage properly, the path says so.
Start making better coffee
You make coffee at home and want it to taste better, whatever you brew with.
Five ideas explain most of what happens in a cup. Taken in this order, each one makes the next easier to use.
1. Get your bearings
Know what the main choices are and which ones matter first.