CoffeeHQ Academy · 14 levels
Become a Coffee Expert
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.
The levels follow the coffee itself, from the plant to the cup and then outward to the trade and its history. Each has its own teaching, an exercise you can run in a kitchen, a problem to reason through and questions to check yourself against. By the end you can read a bag critically, taste with a method, and tell a measured fact from a confident opinion.
How each level works
- It opens with what you will be able to do, not with a list of topics.
- The teaching is on the page, with each section labelled as sourced, convention, tendency or explanation.
- One tool, with a specific task to carry out on it.
- One exercise to run on your own equipment, written as a protocol with its limits stated.
- One fault or problem, reasoned through step by step.
- Questions to check yourself against. Nothing is scored or recorded.
What this is not. 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.
The coffee
What coffee is, how the plant grows, and how species, variety and place shape it.
Level 1. Coffee foundations
What coffee is, the journey it makes, and the handful of decisions that shape a cup.
After this level you can:
- Describe coffee as the roasted seed of a fruit and name the layers around it
- Name the two commercially dominant species and one difference between them
- List the stages between a coffee tree and a cup in order
- Assumes
- Nothing
- Tool
- Brewing method finder
- Exercise
- Your first side-by-side
Level 2. The coffee plant
How Coffea grows, flowers and fruits, and what climate, altitude and disease do to it.
After this level you can:
- Describe the yearly cycle from flowering to ripe cherry
- Explain why selective picking matters and why it is expensive
- Say what altitude changes about how coffee grows, and what it does not guarantee
- Assumes
- Level 1: Coffee foundations
- Tool
- The producers chart on the origins hub
- Exercise
- Sorting a handful of beans
Level 3. Species and varieties
The coffee family tree: four species worth knowing, two founding lineages, and the hybrids that followed.
After this level you can:
- Distinguish species, variety and cultivar
- Explain why arabica has so little genetic diversity
- Place Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, Catuai and Gesha in relation to each other
- Assumes
- Level 2: The coffee plant
- Tool
- The species pages and their world-production chart
- Exercise
- Arabica beside robusta
Level 4. World coffee
Where coffee grows, how it is farmed, and how much an origin can really tell you.
After this level you can:
- Name the major producing regions and what each is mainly known for
- Explain why the largest producers are not always the most talked about
- Describe the difference between estate, smallholder and cooperative production
- Assumes
- Level 3: Species and varieties
- Tool
- The origins hub and its producers chart
- Exercise
- A three-origin flight
From fruit to roast
Processing, green coffee and roasting: the transformations before brewing.
Level 5. Processing
How the fruit comes off the seed, what fermentation does, and why drying decides everything.
After this level you can:
- Describe the washed, natural, honey and wet-hulled processes step by step
- Explain what fermentation is doing and why it must be controlled
- Explain why drying is the riskiest stage
- Assumes
- Level 4: World coffee
- Tool
- Tasting Lab worksheet
- Exercise
- Washed beside natural
Level 6. Green coffee
How unroasted coffee is graded, described, stored and traced.
After this level you can:
- Explain what physical grading counts and what it cannot tell you
- Read a screen size and a national grade term correctly
- Explain why moisture and storage decide how long green coffee lasts
- Assumes
- Level 5: Processing
- Tool
- Coffee supply planner
- Exercise
- Reading a bag as a buyer would
Level 7. Roasting
What heat does to a green seed, stage by stage, and what a roaster actually controls.
After this level you can:
- Describe the stages of a roast in order and what marks each
- Explain what first crack and second crack are physically
- Explain the trade between a coffee's own character and roast character
- Assumes
- Level 6: Green coffee
- Tool
- Brewing variable explorer
- Exercise
- Light beside dark
In the cup
The science of extraction, the water it is made with, and how to taste the result.
Level 8. Brewing science
Solubility, concentration and extraction yield — and how each brewing mechanism moves them.
After this level you can:
- Define concentration (TDS) and extraction yield and calculate one from the other
- Explain why the order in which compounds dissolve matters to taste
- Contrast immersion and percolation as extraction mechanisms
- Assumes
- Level 7: Roasting
- Tool
- Extraction yield calculator
- Exercise
- Weak is not the same as under-extracted
Level 9. Water
Hardness, alkalinity and what the minerals in your water do to extraction and taste.
After this level you can:
- Distinguish hardness from alkalinity and say what each does to coffee
- Read a water report or bottle label for the figures that matter
- Explain why high bicarbonate flattens a cup
- Assumes
- Level 8: Brewing science
- Tool
- Water suitability helper
- Exercise
- Same coffee, different water
Level 10. Sensory foundations
Taste, smell and touch are three senses. Coffee flavour is what the brain makes of all of them.
After this level you can:
- Separate what the tongue tastes from what the nose smells and what the mouth feels
- Describe acidity, sweetness, bitterness, body and finish as distinct attributes
- Tell sourness from bitterness from astringency
- Assumes
- Level 1: Coffee foundations
- Tool
- Tasting Lab worksheet
- Exercise
- Calibrating the basic tastes
Level 11. Cupping and tasting
The professional method for comparing coffees fairly, and the biases it exists to control.
After this level you can:
- Set up and run a simple cupping at home
- Explain why cupping uses such a plain brewing method
- Use a triangle test to check whether a difference is detectable
- Assumes
- Level 10: Sensory foundations
- Tool
- Tasting Lab worksheet
- Exercise
- A first triangle test
The wider world
The trade, the history, and how to judge a claim.
Level 12. The coffee industry
Who handles coffee between the tree and the cup, how it is priced, and what certifications certify.
After this level you can:
- Name the actors in the supply chain and what each adds
- Explain how the commodity price relates to what a farmer is paid
- Define specialty coffee in at least two of the ways the term is used
- Assumes
- Level 6: Green coffee
- Tool
- Cost-per-cup calculator
- Exercise
- What does that logo actually require?
Level 13. History and culture
From Ethiopian forests to the espresso bar: what is documented, what is legend, and what it explains.
After this level you can:
- Separate the documented history of coffee from its legends
- Trace coffee's spread from Yemen to Europe, Asia and the Americas
- Explain what coffeehouses changed socially
- Assumes
- Level 1: Coffee foundations
- Tool
- How brewing methods change the taste
- Exercise
- The old way and the filtered way
Level 14. Advanced expertise
Telling evidence from lore, and holding what you know about coffee with the right confidence.
After this level you can:
- Classify a coffee claim by the kind of evidence behind it
- Design a fair comparison for a claim you care about
- Read a production statistic with its source, date and unit
- Assumes
- Level 11: Cupping and tasting
- Tool
- Do I need this accessory?
- Exercise
- Auditing a coffee claim
Alongside the levels
- Practical exercisesEvery exercise from both programmes in one place, each as a full protocol.
- Tasting LabA worksheet for your own tasting notes: one coffee, two side by side, or blind.
- LearnThe other programme, and shorter reading paths on single subjects.