Learning 

Another quite common question: where did you learn everything? It is also not unambiguous. The first source of knowledge for me, as I have already mentioned, was the book by David S. Schomer “Espresso Coffee. A guide for professionals”.

That was it. Then – myself. There was little Internet back then. Nobody knew much about coffee. So I started going to coffee shops, watching, observing, asking questions. Someone told me something, someone said nothing at all.

As you already understood, I got the most inspiration in the Pirates coffee shop. Yes, I went there most often and even once took a two-day workshop “Barista”. He finally introduced me to the basics of coffee making. However, such workshops have only an introductory value. They practically do not affect “working” or professional skills.

It was also interesting that such a workshop cost me a significant amount of money. Even in those times when we tried to save on everything. Then, having paid the money, I decided – I will definitely return this investment and multiply it as much as possible. Actually, that’s exactly what happened. This fact greatly influenced the final decision to create my own coffee shop. I did not want the money to be wasted  

Actually, that’s all. I just saw which buttons to press and where to put the coffee. But no one told me how to do it to get the best coffee in the world with every cup. And I know why. Because they did not know it themselves. At least at that time.  

Nevertheless, at that time all those who made coffee in Vienna: Evelyn Priesch, Werner Savernik, CoffeePirates, Robert, People On Caffeine, Otto Bauer, Balthasar Kaffee Bar, ZÅMM and CaffèCouture, of course Valentin and Boris from Kaffeemodul – they were all coffee gods for me. And I looked at their work with admiration.

At that time, when I had already decided to make my first coffee shop and was in the phase of searching for premises and ordering coffee equipment, I tried to get a job in some of the above coffee shops. But… To my great regret, none of them agreed. Yes, I was offended and to this day I do not understand such decisions. Because if my fans came to me every day, drank coffee, asked about everything and one day asked for a job. Once, twice, three times. I would take it from the first one. Because there are so few such people that they must be attracted to your orbit. We will talk about that later.

There was another episode. I took a two-day course of the level “knowledgeable barista” from the World Barista Champion 2009 Gwilym Davies, near Prague. It happened in a year and a half since the first coffee shop was opened. Actually, I did not learn much new then. Mostly, this course helped me to systematize and better understand my small coffee experience and get very professional answers to the questions that interested me. I really enjoyed it. Gwilym is a great teacher and a very nice person. Those were good days and useful communication.

When I was just starting my acquaintance with coffee, and my thoughts about the coffee shop were still vague, I read that Vadim Granovsky, a Ukrainian, became the champion in making coffee in a jezve in London. I immediately found him on the Internet and in a conversation he shared with me the secrets of making delicious coffee in a Turk. Since then, I have become an ardent supporter of this method of making such coffee.

My passion for Turkish coffee was the reason why I met and became friends with a man who twice won silver medals at the Cezve/Ibrik Championships – Reinhard Grebien. We became real friends and I am very grateful to him for many ideas and tips that helped me. He actually led me to the world of professional coffee, introducing me to the world championships and many important and interesting people from it.

Of course, I had and have a lot of friends, acquaintances, colleagues from the coffee sphere, in conversations and discussions with whom I add and understand something every time.

My training is my visitors. They told me where to go and what to do. And I just tried and tried.

In the first months, there were dozens of recycled cups of coffee in the presence of customers who had already begun to fall asleep, and kilograms of wasted coffee, in search of the right grind, endless searches for temperature, pressure, amount of water and so on and so forth. But there were less and less defects every time. And the coffee was getting tastier. And so I learned.