How To Get Involved in the BGA

How to Get Involved with the BGA.

Whether you’re just starting out as a barista, looking to be connected to the barista community, or just want to learn more about the craft of being a barista, here’s how to get involved:

Get educated!

You can earn a Level One and Level Two certificate in our barista certification program. Our education is being sought by baristas around the world! Every year we teach classes and deliver testing at two BGA camps, the SCAA Exposition, and occasionally international venues. We also deliver tests at every Regional Barista Competition.

You can also be an instructor. First, you’ll want to take SCAA's Instructor Development Program class (IDP). Next, volunteer to station instruct at a SCAA/BGA event. From there, you can become a lead instructor, and even become a subject matter expert who has a role in refining and developing content.

Get an event going!

Host a BGA Member Driven Event (MDE). We can help promote your event and help coordinate a discussion of topic related to specialty coffee.

Get involved!

Run for office. Also, VOTE! Elections are coming up. Those who want to be involved in BGA leadership will have a chance to raise their hand and get elected. They will drive our choices in the next two years, and as a member you have vote.

Get to writing!

Blog for us. Shine light on your part of the barista community. List all the great shops and roasteries in your area, send us the material and we’d love to give them the national spotlight by blogging about them. Or, do you know a fellow barista who's doing great things in the industry? Interview them ala Five Questions and we’ll highlight their commitment on our blog.

Get to an event!

Attend, volunteer, or compete at a Regional Barista Competition. Home to the barista competitions, as well as the brewers cups, the RBC’s become hubs for baristas to network, make friends, and learn more about specialty coffee. Every competition needs people willing to spend a few hours working behind the scenes to help it run smoothly.

Attend a BGA Camp or SCAA show. We have so much happening at these events: education, competition, volunteer opportunities like the BGA Cafe, and ample time to network with some of the brightest minds in the specialty coffee industry.

Get in touch!

Get in touch with the BGA Leadership. Here’s where you can find the emails of everyone sitting on the Executive Council of the BGA. If you have more questions, more ideas about BGA community building, we would love to hear from you. Honestly we would. And we’re willing to listen, or connect you with others we know that share common goals, or point you in the right direction to find what you’re looking for.

You can see we have a lot going on, and new things are happening all the time (did you hear the BGA is serving coffee at TED? That could be you one day!) I truly hope you’ll connect with us.

Not a member? Join our growing community of coffee professionals.

Young, Wise, Undiscovered.

The theme of the TED conference this year is The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered. We're excited to be a part of this event for many reasons, but this theme resonates particularly well with our specialty coffee community. The youthful exuberance of the barista team here at TED is evident and exemplifies this aspect of the theme. The wisdom, knowledge and skill that this group brings to the coffee experience here is remarkable. Furthermore, although you could hardly say these folks are undiscovered within our industry, as many of them are well-known barista champions and active, engaged members of the Barista Guild, we recognize that specialty coffee itself is largely undiscovered. We're working to enhance the awareness of specialty coffee by providing a stellar coffee experience for each attendee that we serve here this week. This remarkable group of knowledgable coffee professionals has stepped up to volunteer their time, away from their jobs and daily lives, and we're humbled by the energy and effort this team of baristas has put forth this week.

Hario at TED

One of the challenges we give ourselves for TEDCoffee is to make 100% of the filter coffee brewed by hand. The purpose of this is threefold: we want to emphasize the nature of coffee as an artisan process (hand-picked, hand-roasted, hand-brewed), we love the theater of brewing on the front bar (and TED is all about theater), and - perhaps most importantly - we’re teaching people that brewing coffee is simple, and can easily be done in one’s kitchen with a minimum of inexpensive, well-designed equipment (and, you know, the D in TED stands for Design).

We’re grateful for Hario Japan’s support of their elegant, high-design equipment on the brew bar. And it’s not just the V60s on the front bar, it’s a complete Hario demonstration station at each bar (scales, brew stands, pouring kettles, filters), and it helps us underscore that beautiful union of great coffee, great baristas, and great tools. Thanks, Hario, for all you do for us.

TEDCoffee and Global Customized Water

So, coffee is 90+ percent water. This in itself makes water important, but of course it gets more important than that. It has to be perfect water, equal to the perfection of the coffee it will eventually be used to extract. It has to be delicious water, equal to the deliciousness of the coffee flavor compounds it suspends and dissolves. And it has to be present and available to be sucked into a boiler of a coffee machine, where it is heated.

At coffee bars, like the ones we run at the TED conference, this means crafting the water to precise tolerances, balancing soluble materials in it to make it perfect for coffee, putting it into 5 gallon bottles, and literally carrying it to us. David Beeman of Global Customized Water does this for us, and it is a monumental and nearly invisible task. Every morning, David strips water down to its essence and builds it up again, and then hand carries it to the tent where we store it before bringing it to the bars. In other words, he’s literally lifted every ounce of water we use to brew with at least 3 times by the time it gets here. It’s a monumentally generous act, especially considering that although we call it a coffee service, it’s actually a coffee-flavored water service. The water is delicious, and it makes what we do possible. Thank you, David, for being our Aquarius.

Day One at TED

Day one of TED is winding down and we're looking forward to another exciting day of coffee service tomorrow. 

Our team of baristas traveled from near and far to be a part of this event, volunteering their time and talent to make this remarkable coffee service a reality. 

Follow along with the TED coffee experience at #TEDcoffee on Twitter or tweet us @baristaguild!

Baratza at TED

Coffee service is underway at TED and we're serving some amazing coffees this year! All of this has been made possible by the support of our generous partners. For the crucial task of grinding these coffees to perfection, we are thrilled to partner with Baratza for the TED event this year. They have kindly provided the Vario-W for use by our baristas at all of the coffee bars for the manual brewing service.

From Baratza's blog, "With an event of this size, the need for accuracy, repeatability and reliability on a busy bar is critical. Grinding by weight eliminates the need for the baristas to pre-weigh the coffee, but instead allows the hoppers to be filled with the featured coffees of the hour or day, set the grind size and then grind the dose required, on demand. This allows the baristas to focus their time on the attendees they are serving." 

We agree! Thanks so much to Baratza for generously supporting this effort.

La Marzocco at TED

Shots are flowing and milk is steaming at the coffee bars on this first day of the TED conference in Long Beach, CA thanks to the generosity of our partner La Marzocco, who provided espresso machines and Mazzer grinders, as well as Marco precision hot water delivery systems for TED this year.

 

La Marzocco has also made possible a do-it-yourself bar where attendees may work hands-on with the espresso machines and with one-on-one guidance from a Barista Guild representative to prepare an espresso beverage. 

“TED is such a unique experiential learning opportunity. In our past participation we’ve found that attendees are curious and hungry to learn more about coffee and the equipment used to prepare coffee. We look forward to providing that experience,” says Kent Bakke, CEO of La Marzocco International.