The Crown’s Coffee Lab & Education Update

written by Isabella Vitaliano, Lab & Education Coordinator

What have we been up to? The Crown Education 2-year reflection 

We’ve been reflecting on the growth of The Crown’s Coffee Lab & Education department over the past two years. Opening in the spring of 2019, we experienced a brief period of growth and community connection that, like most everything else, was halted in 2020. As we have slowly expanded the education department, figuring out what works and what doesn’t, we became curious about our progress over the past two years.

Looking back, we found that our 2024 year-to-date attendee count is up 34% from 2023, with 425 attendees so far. Our event count is projected to be twice as high as in 2022.

Coffee Classes and Events 

A core curriculum in 2022 included Intro to Coffee, Calibrate Good times, Green Coffee Buying, Taste the Flavor Wheel, Intro to CQI Cupping with sprinkling of events like artists receptions, showcasing the artist for the month. 

By August 2024, we have expanded to from 2 to 6 core instructors that make up our team of educators. The new curriculum includes classes like: 

• Cata Latina – A free cupping calibration for Spanish speakers, held on the last Saturday or Friday of every month.
• Latte Art Workshops – Both beginner and advanced classes are available, giving you the chance to learn basic latte art skills like steaming milk and pouring hearts, tulips, rosettes, as well as more advanced pours like swans!
• Taste Coffees Like a Professional – An introductory cupping class designed for coffee enthusiasts and professionals to learn how to cup and compare coffees.
• Palate Development – A seasonally themed class that helps participants expand their palate through tasting locally curated produce and products, followed by a discussion.
• Profile Transferring – A nuanced class for experienced roasters who want to learn how to transfer a roast profile from one machine to another.
• Roasting for Beginners – A beginners’ roasting class where students learn roasting theory and get hands-on practice.
• Improve Your Home Brew – A class that combines both lecture and brewing experiments to help understand the variables that impact extraction.

Alisha Rajan, The Crown’s Barista

We couldn’t have achieved this without our amazing education team! This includes Doris Garrido, Taylor Brandon, MJ Smith, Alisha Rajan, and Isabella Vitaliano. Thanks to their support, we’ve also been able to expand and provide the community with free events such as:

• La Marzocco Innovation Tour – Hosted the La Marzocco team as they showcased their new technology to Bay Area coffee professionals.
• Coffee Break – A themed coffee tasting experience held on Fridays for people to drop by during lunch.
• Bouquet Improv Pop-Up – A “build your own bouquet” event for those curious about hyper-locally grown plants, led by The Crown’s in-house botanist, Sigrid Hubbel.
• Bay Area Happy Hour – A friendly cupping event designed to connect Bay Area roasters and sample locally roasted coffee.
• Community Cup – A cupping experience for Black coffee professionals to evaluate, taste, and practice cupping skills in a communal setting.

Private Training & Consultation

The Crown’s private training offerings have refined during this period with the inclusion of new trainers; Joshua Wismans, Doris Garrido, MJ Smith and Isabella Vitaliano. Our ‘Starting Your Coffee Business’ private training now includes both a Coffee Bar & Café Startup package and a Roastery Startup package.

The Coffee Bar & Café Startup package covers coffee basics, bar skills training, and a new addition to the curriculum—café design, ergonomics and workflow, equipment schedules, and staff hiring/management.

In the Roastery Startup package, students will dive deep into fundamental coffee knowledge like sourcing, move on to roast theory and profiling, and explore a new addition—production QC, blending practices, and intermediate roasting skills.

In both packages, students will have the opportunity to learn from multiple instructors and benefit from the collective expertise of the entire team.

Coffee Research 

Keep an eye out for new research published by the education team in the future. The team is currently exploring questions like ‘How do different storage methods impact green coffee?’ and ‘Should you freeze your roasted coffee?’. These are intensive projects, with both experiments currently in different phases of data collection and analysis.

Previous published research includes: 

• How Microbiome Activity During Post-Harvest Processing Affects Volatile Compounds in Coffee 
• A New World History and Geography of Arabica Coffee Cultivars 
• Freezing Green Coffee: An Evaluation of the Impact on Sensory Quality Over Time 

Since the start of 2022, The Crown has been able to expand and explore new classes, curriculum, research, private training offerings, and events that we are truly excited about. We want to thank you for being a part of our community and for joining our classes at The Crown! We hope to see you again soon.