Setting a standard in coffee.
Ezar Braves, seen here at his cafe in Portugal Village, has set up The Espresso Institute of North America, a training ground for coffee makers which he hopes will raise the standard of coffee.
Staff photo/ERIN HATFIELD
Ezra Braves said he has always been enamoured with coffee - the smell of the beans, the technique of making a perfect cup, even the buzzy feeling.
"I have made probably 100,000 espresso," Braves said, while sitting in the window of his Portugal Village cafe. "That much time with it and you develop a relationship with it on almost a molecular level."
Even before he could drink it himself, Braves, the owner of the two popular cafes Ezra's Pound, said he can remember being smitten with coffee and those retro coffee vending machines.
The plastic cup would drop, then fill with powdered coffee and finally water. Most likely it produced below average coffee, but that process inspired the man who is now trying to change Toronto's approach to java.
Braves has opened a full service coffee training school in Toronto called The Espresso Institute of North America Inc.
The coffee training school is geared at anyone from an already experienced baristi, novice home brewers or people interested in opening a café of their own.
There are three modules, which cost about $300 dollars and run from three to five hours in length, as well as a home barista course with customized classes for the home brewer. There are custom roasting classes, group, and home roaster workshops available.
Run out of the location of Ezra's Pound at the corner of Dundas Street and Bellwoods Avenue in the west end of Toronto, The Espresso Institute is about more than just good coffee. It's about the practices that will raise the standard of cafes everywhere.
"The Espresso Institute represents the utmost in environmental consciousness and a great cup of coffee," said Braves, who lives in the Annex, near his first cafe.
He said he doesn't want to be overly dogmatic about it, but thinks the entire industry needs to look at the big picture when it comes to its practices. Braves, thinks there should be a standard in the coffee business and figured someone needed to step up and set it.
"The Institute has an agenda of aligning with other cafes that take the same approach and raising the level of coffee making," Braves said.
He set a certification for "affiliate cafes" which will have to follow a few guidelines. The manager or owner must have been trained at the Institute; they must use beans roasted locally and packaging has to be fully compostable or biodegradable. The cafes will need to use organic sugar and milk and, of course, offer a great cup of coffee.
"I am pretty obsessed with a good cup of coffee," Braves said.
That connection with coffee is clear when he rubs the grinds between his fingers explaining the subtlest difference in the texture of the grind. Or by the way he tamps the espresso down in an almost ritualistic espresso dance.
"I am not just a lover of the technique," he said. "I have always been extremely curious of the mechanics of the equipment."
There are weights and measures to the process as well as the art of coffee making. Then there are the environmental aspects of a business that, considering all the cups and lids, milk and sugar, can be very wasteful.
Most cafes are primarily a take-out business, which can mean thousands of polystyrene cups a month, hundreds of litres of milk every week. What and where they purchase coffee beans, milk, sugar and cups truly does make a difference, Braves said.
At the two locations of Ezra's Pound, fresh roasted coffee, organic milk and organic sugar are served and Braves said they only put out about one bag of garbage a week.
The classes are taught out of the Dundas Street location of Ezra's Pound on Mondays when the café is closed.
The Espresso Institute of North America has just been open for a few weeks and already, Braves said, there has been a great deal on interest in the training and the ideas behind the Institute.