This course is designed for:

• Coffee Professionals: Including coffee roasters, baristas, coffee shop owners, and industry professionals who seek to enhance their technical knowledge and expertise in the area of coffee capsules.
• Product Developers and Technologists: Individuals working in the coffee industry focused on product development, technology integration, and innovation in single-serve coffee solutions.
• Quality Assurance and Control Professionals: Experts tasked with maintaining and improving the quality and consistency of coffee products, specifically in relation to coffee capsules.
• Educator and Trainers: Professionals who teach or train others about coffee, coffee brewing techniques, and coffee products, and wish to expand their curriculum to include capsule technology.
• Coffee Enthusiasts: Passionate hobbyists who are eager to deepen their understanding of the technology, research, and trends associated with coffee capsules.

After this course, you will be able to...

• Explain the history behind the coffee capsules, from their inception to modern-day innovations.
• Differentiate between “capsules” and “pods”, including their design, usage, and market positioning.
• Analyse and compare the benefits and drawbacks of coffee capsules, considering factors such as convenience, quality, environmental impact, and cost.
• Describe the capsule production process and the steps involved in the process.
• Adjust parameters for optimal production: recognize the complexity and importance of adjusting various parameters at each step of capsule production to ensure a high-quality product.
• Understand how process parameters in capsule production impact extraction and the extracted brew.
• Understand the importance of capsule packaging material and secondary packaging and how they impact the freshness, sustainability, and functionality of the product.
• Understand the value of quality control equipment, such as ground coffee particle size analysis, the importance of data collected by such measurements and how they can be used to optimise the product.
• Be on track with the latest trends in the single serve coffee products alternative to capsules/pods.

Lesson 1: Introduction to capsule coffee and its history

Discover how capsule systems became the peak of convenience through years of technological development and progress, prioritizing ease of use and, in the best-case scenario, a highly consistent quality. We will look at some of the technologies behind the capsule systems and how it has changed coffee consumption – particularly at home.

Lesson 2: Capsule Systems and Production  

Explore the defining physical and sensorial characteristics of coffee capsules and what gives them their unique taste. We will look at how the capsule production differs from other coffee systems and explore in details the steps of the capsule production process.

Lesson 3: Capsules, packaging and materials

This lesson with focus on the properties of the capsule itself. Apart from the coffee inside of capsule, the second most important is the packaging material of the capsule. The materials vary greatly in their properties and in the sustainability aspect. There are however, more interesting properties of the capsule to take consideration of, such as the internal pressure in a capsule.

Lesson 4: Capsule extraction and research  

In this lesson, we will explore two case studies: the first on Nespresso-compatible capsule extraction, and the second on K-Cup capsule extraction. The studies provide a variety of insights into capsule extraction and coffee extraction fundamentals. We delve into how single-serve products, such as capsules, are much more complex to develop technologically compared to other coffee products, as the parameters influencing extraction and cup quality must be determined in advance at the time of production and not at the moment of extraction, as seen in other brewing systems.

Lesson 5: Innovation and other single-serve products

Single-serve coffee is today more than just capsules and pods. With the growing at-home coffee trend, there are increasingly innovative single-serve coffee products found on the market. This lesson will look at some of the most popular and most innovative of these products.

Conclusion and Quiz

This course is delivered in a self-study format which includes: 

• Reading slides, including tutorial and learning videos.
• 45 minute-webinar with the expert and course instructor Dr. Samo Smrke.
• Sources and links for further reading material.
• Mini-Essay and reflective questions, hands-on assignments and session quiz to learn and test your knowledge.
• Personalized feedback and support.
• Online Learning Platform (Moodle) to interact with other participants.
• Interactive discussion forum for questions that will be answered by the expert.

Session Quiz (Online, Multiple Choice) 

Course dates and registration deadlines 2024/25

• 15 August – 12 September 2024 / Webinar: Wed 18 September, 2024 3 pm – 3.45 pm (Switzerland time)* / Registration deadline: 8 August, 2024
• 12 September – 10 October 2024 / Webinar: Wed 18 September, 2024 3 pm – 3.45 pm (Switzerland time)* / Registration deadline: 5 September, 2024
• 24 October – 24 November 2024 / Webinar: Wed 27 November, 2024 3 pm – 3.45 pm (Switzerland time)*/ Registration deadline: 21 October 2024
• 14 November – 15 December 2024 / Webinar: Wed 27 November, 2024 3 pm – 3.45 pm (Switzerland time)*/ Registration deadline: 7 November, 2024
• 16 January – 16 February 2025 / Webinar: Wed 22 January, 2025 3 pm – 3.45 pm (Switzerland time)*/ Registration deadline: 9 January, 2025 

*If you are unable to attend on the specified date, you may choose to attend on an alternative date from another course. Additionally, the webinar will be recorded and made available for later viewing.

Equipment required

• Nespresso-compatible capsule machine (or other capsule/pod machine)
• Scale with resolution of 0.1 g
• Stopwatch
• Optional equipment: Coffee TDS refractometer, water conductivity meter (also often called water TDS meter)

• Team of the Coffee Excellence Center ZHAW Wädenswil.