Working Group member Larry Eister shares his experience representing the Coffee Technicians Guild at World of Coffee Budapest.

Are you a coffee technician attending World of Coffee Budapest 2017? Join the Coffee Technicians Guild meeting and mixer at HungExpo on Wednesday 14 June from 15:30 to 16:30 in Hall 25 Room 118. 

This year at the Global Specialty Coffee Expo we offered a raffle for a one-year membership to the Coffee Technicians Guild. Congratulations to our winner: Ben Brown of Nuova Simonelli!

Kaleb Leach of Texas Coffee Techs shares his personal experience working at the Coffee Technicians Guild booth at the Global Specialty Coffee Expo.

Nominations for leadership positions on the first-ever CTG Executive Council are now open! This is a great opportunity to help guide the direction of the guild and to suggest someone who you think would make a great leader. We are looking for a CTG leadership that will be highly representative of a diverse and global membership.

I was 17 years old when I got my first job in the coffee industry, sweeping the floors for Corsair Coffee, a wholesale coffee roastery in Wichita, KS. I built the foundation of my coffee knowledge there; I learned to roast and cup, how to source green coffee, sales, and how to fix specialty coffee equipment.

Troubleshooting is crucial to what we do as coffee technicians. Over the years, I’ve collected manuals and books about the best way to troubleshoot systems. This entry is a combination of several articles, training manuals, and other sources on troubleshooting that I’ve edited for training purposes.

I began my career in espresso and coffee equipment in 1999, thanks to my brother-in-law Don Pighetti. He had worked for Bunn-O-Matic from the 1970 to 1999, where he did everything from sales, building and adding knowledge, to the development of a coffee brewer. Bunn decided to get into the espresso equipment business and he was chosen to play a large part in the development of that venture.

By Hylan Joseph

I blame Shad 100%. Normally these conversations happen over beers after the SCAA events and we lay out our grand plans on stained napkins then forget about them in the morning. The next morning, our grand plans are swept up off of some bar floor. That was really where we made our first mistake. We should have had a beer first.

By Jill Fountain, Macchinisti, LLC

I can’t tell you how many times I have been leaning over a machine with a wrench in my hand when one of the baristas from the cafe comes up to me and asks, “How did you learn how to do that?”, often followed by “where can I learn?”.

By Dave Merkin, CTG Working Group

November 3, 2016 was an amazing day. It was on this day that 52 coffee technicians descended on a small business in Kansas City, Missouri to make history. For the first time, a guild was created by and for coffee technicians, and the first event—The Coffee Technicians Guild Inaugural Planning Summit—kicked off. The Coffee Technicians Guild (CTG) is a newly formed guild of the SCAA with the mission of promoting excellence in equipment service and developing qualified technicians through advocacy, education, and networking.

Dear Coffee Community,

The profession of Coffee Technician is an established and growing one. However, up until now, there hasn’t been an industry wide way to organize, transfer knowledge or establish a peer network. The coffee industry, as well as the professional coffee technician, are facing challenges in the market today.