The Coffee Culture barista trainers were delighted to be invited to the London Coffee Festival by La Marzocco, to take over their Kitchen Stand for a day.  Providing Home Barista training to members of the public, proceeds of this stand were donated to Project Waterfall.  La Marzocco have been making hand crafted espresso machines in Florence since 1927.  It is one of the most important companies in the coffee industry.  It would be hard to throw a stick anywhere in the coffee world without hitting one of their machines!  In our barista training rooms, we use three different La Marzocco espresso machines.

Members of the public signed up to learn the steps to making espresso.  These are the same steps we use in our training rooms, and new people are always surprised that something as seemingly simple as making a cup of coffee has so much to it!  Steaming and pouring milk is not as easy as it looks either, however with guidance it’s possible to learn it quite quickly. We used the beautiful single group Linea Mini machines. Although designed for home use, they are just 14 inches wide with a built in 1l water reservoir, they have all the essential functions of a commercial cafe machine.

 In any training session it is always great to watch as people slide down the rabbit hole into coffee wonderland, and these sessions were no different.  The passion for making coffee was definitely all there, and that’s all it takes to get started.   People went from interested, to enthusiastic to downright excited as their drinks came together.  We had a blast meeting all these people who love good coffee as consumers.  It was also pleasure to take them to our side of the counter and give them a taste of what we do.