Beginner → Intermediate · 6 chapters
The Coffee Atlas — From Seed to Cup
A field guide to specialty coffee for curious home baristas
Follow one coffee cherry from a hillside in Huila to your cup. Learn origin, processing, roasting, brewing and tasting — and leave with your own signature recipe.
- Level
- Beginner → Intermediate
- Length
- ~9 h · 6 lessons
- Topics
- 19
- Language
- EN
Inés Duarte
Tomasz Wierzba
Program
What you will do
6 lessons · 19 topics · about 6 h of material
Origins
Where coffee grows, which plants it comes from, and why the mountain matters.
The farm
A producer's voice, the anatomy of a cherry and the processing methods that shape flavour.
Roasting
Read a roast curve, keep a logbook and roast your first virtual batch.
Brewing
The maths of a good cup and the technique to pour it.
Tasting
Describe what you taste, cup like a professional and check what you learned.
Your signature cup
Design, test and write down a recipe that is yours.
At five in the morning on a hillside in Huila, Colombia, 1,750 metres above the sea, a picker reaches for a cherry the colour of a ripe plum. Six weeks and nine thousand kilometres later, its seed ends up in your grinder. This course follows that one cherry all the way, and teaches you what happens at every step and why it changes what you taste.
The Coffee Atlas is a slow course. There are no streaks, no leaderboards and no timers you have to beat. There are six chapters you read, watch and listen to at your own pace, a roast simulator, a guided cupping session, and at the end a recipe that is yours.
What you will learn
- Where coffee grows and why altitude, variety and species shape the cup
- How washed, natural, honey and anaerobic processing work, and how to recognise them by taste
- How to read a roast curve: turning point, first crack, development time
- The maths of brewing: ratios, TDS and extraction yield, and how to fix a sour or bitter cup
- How to cup like a Q-grader and describe coffee with the SCA flavour wheel
- How to design, test and write down your own signature recipe
How it works
| Chapter | You will |
|---|---|
| I. Origins | watch the harvest, explore the coffee belt, compare Arabica and Robusta |
| II. The farm | hear from a producer, dissect a cherry, learn the processing methods |
| III. Roasting | read a roast curve, roast a virtual batch, start your roaster's logbook |
| IV. Brewing | master ratios and extraction, follow a pour-over masterclass |
| V. Tasting | learn the flavour wheel, cup at home, take the tasting check |
| VI. Your signature cup | brew three variations and send your recipe card to the tutors |
What you need
A scale that reads 0.1 g, a burr grinder (or a roaster who grinds to order), a kettle, a pour-over dripper such as a V60, and two bags of freshly roasted coffee. About nine hours spread over a few weeks.
Your tutors
Inés Duarte is a licensed Q-grader who grew up on a coffee farm near Pitalito in Huila. She has judged national cupping competitions in Colombia, Peru and Rwanda.
Tomasz Wierzba has roasted specialty coffee in Kraków for twelve years. He teaches the roasting chapter and reviews every recipe card himself.
Finish all six chapters and the final project to receive the certificate Certified Home Barista — The Coffee Atlas.