How to Become a Barista | Perfect Coffee

Watch more How to Make the Best Coffee videos: howcast.com/videos/494720-How-to-Become-a-Baris…



My name is Mike Jones, and I'm a barista at Third Rail Coffee right by Washington Square Park in New York City. I'm going to teach you some basic coffee-making skills.

How do you become a barista? I just started working at coffee shops, I did a lot of self-teaching where I was spending hours on the internet, buying books, trying to figure out all the different angles like latte art and then where coffee comes from. And then even more detailed scientific aspects. But a lot of cafés now have training programs in place so you can just start working somewhere and go through that. But still that's also assuming that you want to be working in food service, which you know, isn't exactly what everyone wants to do, nor is it necessarily lucrative. So what you could do is see if a coffee roaster in your city offers classes. For instance, there's 3 or 4 main coffee companies in New York where I am that will teach labs for a pretty good price. Like Intelligentsia, Counter Culture, Joe the Art of Coffee are three places in New York where you can go learn the basics of making coffee, latte art, espresso, brewing, milk chemistry and so, as far as being barista in a home setting, that's a really good way to do it.