A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to take a specialized all day individualized course at Davide Cobelli's Coffee Training Academy in Verona Italy. The locale, essentially a coffee laboratory with an area for group instruction, is small but alive with flare, a real passion for coffee beaming in from every angle.


Hiding around the lab are a couple vintage levers, like this old Gaggia and an Elektra Microcasa a Leva


One of the instructors, Simone, competes at an international level in Ibrik championships.


He also took home the second place trophy in the 2014 Italian Aeropress championships (signed by Alan Adler)


Some light reading between pulling shots..


In the bathroom, where the mirror should be is instead an empty frame surrounding the following scrawled on the wall with marker "You don't need, you are beautiful as you are." I thought it a rather nice message to convey, but unfortunately it didn't much help me determine if I had some pieces of octopus risotto stuck in my teeth or not.

Cobelli, the academy founder, has quite the coffee resume himself, being an SCAE trainer for over 4 years, participating in numerous barista championships, and an SCAE International Judge since last year.
The academy offers a variety of courses, many with the option for an SCA certification, as well as independent study lab sessions as well as individualized courses. Since Davide was running training courses in Iran that week I worked with one of the academy's instructors, Simone Cattani, who has been a barista for many years, and also competes, having taken home some prestigious awards himself. We broke the day into two modules (which wound up being three, more on that below): Sensory Analysis before lunch and Latte Art after lunch..

Sensory Analysis Module:
We started off the day with a presentation on coffee and flavor, how the brain interprets flavor from the input it receives from many different senses other than taste, including vision, and how our personal experiences can affect how we perceive flavor. The presentation finished itself off with a description of the cupping process, and some sample coffee beans shown at different grades.


Simone then had me do some exercises related to sensory analysis: six cups of water were placed in front of me, each with an infusion of one of the basic tastes that a tastebud can sense, and my task was to go through the line and identify which one was which. The exercise was fun, even if it did require me to drink a fair amount of salt water and umami water (yum!)
We then did some aroma identification, starting broad (sweet, flowery, earthy, etc) and working more specific (stone fruit, apricot) if able.

Now to actually taste some coffee! We prepared a cupping table including coffees from various Italian specialty coffee roasters as well as a medium grade robusta (you know, for fun) and a coffee that had the Rio defect. While most coffees of course we tasted various times as they cooled, those last two we only hit up once strangely enough

There were some great coffees on the table, including three from various regions in Ethiopia.


Latte Art Module:
After a lunch of said octopus risotto, we launched into some latte art training. I will admit that latte art has been a glaring weakness in my "game" mainly because I almost never make milk drinks, so my practice up until this point has been mainly reserved for guests, so I was keen on upping my game a bit. I knew that I wasn't going to go from zero to hero in only a few hours, but I was more than happy to achieve some fleeting form of competence in concocting creative crema designs. We started with steaming for traditional caps, and then worked through hearts and tulips, to the point where I could make a halfway recognizable tulip. I still wouldn't call myself a competent latte artist, but I did make a lot of progress and probably threw away 5 gallons of milk or so in the process.



Impromptu Module 3: Dialing in delicate coffees as espresso
Toward mid afternoon I started really getting the itch to drink some shots, and after cupping some pretty good coffees earlier in the day I was pretty curious to see if we could get those same notes to shine as an espresso, so once I got to the point in latte art where it seemed that I had gotten the basics down enough to be able to improve my designs on my own time, we decided to switch gears and pull some shots with the various coffees on hand. I enjoyed getting to know the La Cimbali M100. Having an integrated timer right on the group was rather useful when dialing in and trying to keep our pour times consistent.

After the first couple shots of Nero Scuro Sidamo Guji came out a bit fast and on the acidic side, I learned that the machine has a programmable pressure profiling capability, and then we were off to the races. I punched in the following profile (look vaguely familiar? )


One coffee that we really wanted to try as an espresso based on how it cupped was the Ditta Artigianale Microlot El Diamante. An "anaerobic" processed coffee - designed to ferment the bean in such a way to bring out more mature fruits - on the cupping table it was rather sweet and appley with a hint a cinnamon. We wanted to see if we could pull off liquid apple strudel from the espresso machine. We dialed it in to an 18g dose, 36g yield in a 35 second pour that was very close: good body, well balanced; we just wanted to bring out a bit more sweetness to really get that "strudelly effect". We dropped the peak pressure from 9 bar to 8 bar and tapered off the declining pressure profile to drop in a slightly steeper fashion, and pulled another shot. It was divine.

After pulling a few more shots and doing some general lab cleanup Simone surprised me with a few parting gifts: first, a certificate of accomplishment for my individualized training course, my own cupping spoon, a couple buttons for the Coffee Training Academy (which I will wear with pride at coffee events from now on!) and a polaroid of myself holding my certificate to be pinned onto their wall of students. All very cool stuff, some great swag.

I really enjoyed my experience and interacting with my instructor Simone. The next time I find myself in that part of the world I plan on a return visit, perhaps to get a SCA certification as well.

Great write up! I'm digging that Cimbali.

Be right back, gotta go run out and get an ibrik sand heater for home. I guess we're not coffee-baller status at home until we have a flaming pile of sand on the bar

TomC wrote:I guess we're not coffee-baller status at home until we have a flaming pile of sand on the bar

Yeah, I saw that thing and instantly wanted one myself. I even spent a few minutes coming up with other uses for it to justify buying one since I never make Ibrik coffee. Good thing having another week or so before returning home kept me from the impulse buy. Apparently you can use different sand mixes with it to produce different heat transfer properties from the sand to the ibrik. Neat stuff but another rabbit-hole I'm not ready to jump into yet.

Great write-up - Thanks!

Now to plan an Italian vacation...

What a great experience, Dominick!

I want one of those "stop bad coffee" buttons!

Seem familiar this place ! I can confirm https://www.davidecobelli.coffee/en/cof ... g-academy/ its the best place in Verona ( and maybe in all Veneto region ) to speak and learn a lot of things about coffee . And ,why not, to take your SCA certifications . I know Davide and Simone and I'm very proud for this . They don't sell coffee but I know for sure...they offer a good cup of coffe to everyone visit them

tito75 wrote:I can confirm https://www.davidecobelli.coffee/en/cof ... g-academy/ its the best place in Verona ( and maybe in all Veneto region ) to speak and learn a lot of things about coffee . And ,why not, to take your SCA certifications . I know Davide and Simone and I'm very proud for this.

I was tempted to take an SCA certification there, but with the chaos of August I couldn't find a day where SCA certification was offered in one of the courses I wanted to take. Either way I had a great day experimenting with all things coffee with Simone.

Maybe I'll see you there the next time I find myself near Verona

PS: Are you playing with a Huky there in that photo?

TomC wrote:Great write up! I'm digging that Cimbali.

Be right back, gotta go run out and get an ibrik sand heater for home. I guess we're not coffee-baller status at home until we have a flaming pile of sand on the bar

LOL ... guess not!