Clive Coffee's Introduction to Espresso is a self-paced online course designed to teach home baristas the fundamentals of pulling exceptional espresso. Whether you've just unboxed your first machine or need to refine your technique, this course covers everything from espresso history to dialing in your grinder, distribution, tamping, and taste evaluation.
What You'll Learn
- The history of espresso and key brewing principles
- How to pull the perfect shot and evaluate extraction
- Dialing in your grinder for optimal results
- Distribution and tamping techniques for even extraction
- Espresso recipes and drink foundations
- Coffee storage and best practices for freshness
- What properly extracted espresso should taste like
Course Details
After enrollment, you'll receive an invitation to access the course on Teachable, our learning platform. The curriculum includes one hour of in-depth video instruction with optional captions, downloadable practice sheets, supplemental resources, and an exclusive offer for a one-on-one Zoom coaching session with a Clive barista trainer. The course is yours to keep forever—learn at your own pace, revisit lessons anytime, and build confidence behind the portafilter.
What You'll Need
- Espresso machine
- Burr grinder
- Tamper
- Scale
- Fresh whole bean coffee
- Optional: microfiber towels, knock box, tamping mat
Introduction to Espresso is part of Clive Coffee's commitment to education, equipment, and ongoing support—everything you need to master home espresso from Portland's espresso experts.
Clive Coffee's Introduction to Espresso is a self-paced online course designed to teach home baristas the fundamentals of pulling exceptional espresso. Whether you've just unboxed your first machine or need to refine your technique, this course covers everything from espresso history to dialing in your grinder, distribution, tamping, and taste evaluation.
What You'll Learn
- The history of espresso and key brewing principles
- How to pull the perfect shot and evaluate extraction
- Dialing in your grinder for optimal results
- Distribution and tamping techniques for even extraction
- Espresso recipes and drink foundations
- Coffee storage and best practices for freshness
- What properly extracted espresso should taste like
Course Details
After enrollment, you'll receive an invitation to access the course on Teachable, our learning platform. The curriculum includes one hour of in-depth video instruction with optional captions, downloadable practice sheets, supplemental resources, and an exclusive offer for a one-on-one Zoom coaching session with a Clive barista trainer. The course is yours to keep forever—learn at your own pace, revisit lessons anytime, and build confidence behind the portafilter.
What You'll Need
- Espresso machine
- Burr grinder
- Tamper
- Scale
- Fresh whole bean coffee
- Optional: microfiber towels, knock box, tamping mat
Introduction to Espresso is part of Clive Coffee's commitment to education, equipment, and ongoing support—everything you need to master home espresso from Portland's espresso experts.
The Clive Difference
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 9,000 5-star reviews
We don't just sell equipment, we are your partner in your espresso education.
Every machine is hand-selected by our team of coffee obsessives. If we wouldn't buy it - it's not on our site.
Backed by real-world testing and years of industry experience.
From your first question to your thousandth shot, we’re here.
Don't take our word for it.
Comprehensive espresso education course praised by customers as "very complete" and perfect for beginners. The instructor delivers clear, well-organized content covering techniques, recipes, and troubleshooting. Most valued the one-on-one coaching sessions. Some felt pricing was high given free YouTube alternatives, and a few wanted more in-depth content or hands-on demonstrations.
- Up-leveled my understanding one-thousand fold. Highly recommended!
- What a fun and tasty experience! Made me ready as soon as we had the machine!
- REALLY well done. Great videos and interesting topics. This really helped me!
The course is a really good resource for those of us new to all things espresso. I’m learning the dose changes with different roasts and that guidelines are good. If you stick to weight and time then all I need to so is concentrate on grind.
I’m seeing the bottomless portafilter may be in my future. I need to learn - and get good - at the basics first.
My wife is liking the latés I make. I’m appreciating good cappuccino 😉
very complete and nicely presented.
Very solid. I thought the content was good overall. I also liked reading the comments for each section. My only negative was thinking I could get a 1:1 15-minute session for $25 per the course materials only to find out the price had increased to $100 for a 30-minute session.
I learned my barista skills on the street. Taking Introduction to Espresso up-leveled my understanding of the skill one-thousand fold. Highly recommended!
it nice to get started
Doesn’t work i can’t access it
Amazing machine
Great for beginners trying to understand more about higher level coffee stuff
Wow! Can’t say enough about Clive School! What a fun and tasty experience! While we waited for our Ride to be delivered, having the school available kept me busy and made me ready as soon as we had the machine! I still have to take advantage of the live course, but I’m saving that for when I’ve perfected the basis and will be needing someone to show me just how far I can take it! Looking forward to seeing and tasting where that might be!
I am a beginner at making espresso on my own, and there were tons of different tips in here that helped me to curate my process. I really appreciated this course, and would suggest it to anyone struggling with elements of their espresso process!
Wonderfull
I wasn’t making espresso before. Thank you for getting me on track!
Clive provides great information and are trustworthy experts. Their teaching is easy to understand. Watching anything video Clive puts out there is very helpful. Love the Clive team.
Great introduction to espresso. It was all I needed to get my new machine up and going.
Great way to get started with my new machine!
View them all. Keep it up
I think it provides a great crash course for new espresso owners, who has gone through hundreds of hours of James Hoffman videos/books like myself.
REALLY well done. Great videos and interesting and helpful topics. This really helped me with my new espresso machine and grinder!
I found the Coffee School very helpful and found the information directly impacted the way I brew espresso.
Really Helped me with the basics
A great primer, and a necessary first step before taking the highly recommendable Advanced course.
I like going over to catch things I have missed. It helped me tremendously
Taught me some stuff I didn’t know.
Love Clive’s classes. The intro class cleaned up some bad habits for me and improved my game. But the advanced class was a game changer. Stick it out. It is worth it.
Fantastic course! It is my first 'manual' espresso machine and the course really help me with very clear instructions and step by step details on how to prepare my coffee. It was so helpful! Thank you so much Clive Coffee.
This was great! The instructor did a tremendous job. My espresso game had jumped up my espresso game. I’ll probably pick up the next in the series.
Nothing new
Great course!
It was very well put together and easy to follow. I have a couple of years of espresso experience at home yet I still picked up some good tips that I continue to use daily. Thanks!
A positively world-class experience. Every person pulling espresso shots at home should really take advantage of this class. Great work and highly recommended. Thank you!
I've been pulling shots for years and I learned A LOT through this class. It definitely improved my espresso.
Don’t bother. How do they even consider that an intro to espresso? And claim to offer it for free? Geez ….. you can find much more thorough and extensive info on YouTube for free.
Your instructor was knowledgeable and helpful She was easy to understand Wanted it to last longer Well done cafetareros