From Formulas to Freedom: My Farewell to Being an AST

How I became an Authorized SCA Trainer — and how I just stopped being one. From hungering for formulas, to shaping students with them, to finally walking away — leaving behind the badges and certificates that once adorned me.

Why You Should Read This — Even If You’re Not an AST

This is not just a trainer’s diary.

It’s a window into how global coffee education is built, sold, and policed — and what happens when belief meets disillusionment.

You don’t have to be an SCA trainer to recognize the questions here: Who controls access to knowledge? Who benefits? What do we do when the ideals we signed up for drift away from reality?This is about the structures we live in, not just the badges we wear.

The First Sip

I remember my first sip of specialty coffee.

Bosques De San Francisco from the Antigua region in Guatemala, roasted by The Barn.“Roasted in Berlin” — stamped in red ink on a grey paper bag.

The collision of a young man from a mid-sized Polish city with a living bouquet of fruits, chocolates, and florals in a cup I had clumsily, but independently, brewed… it woke in me a need to know more.

To know everything.

The first real information I heard about specialty coffee came during a lecture by the founder of a Berlin roastery — the same person who handed me that infectious bag of coffee.

The bag that started it all — my first taste of specialty coffee.

Finding the Path

In my country at the time, there wasn’t much to learn from. One mediocre blog. One YouTube channel. No trainers. You had to teach yourself.

I discovered the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe — and its older American twin. I joined. To my friends, it seemed insane: paying a pile of money to be a member of some English-speaking club of snobby coffee lovers?! Yes. Because they had the world’s first specialty coffee trainers. Expensive, but essential.

Opening the Café

I opened one of the first specialty cafés in Poland — the first, and probably the only, to brew only by hand, with pour-over methods, without owning an espresso machine.

Hario. Chemex. Later, the new thing — AeroPress.

At one point, we offered nearly twenty brewing methods.

We learned sensory analysis ourselves, as the small team of my café, Czerwony Atrament — Red Ink.

Yes, you’re now on the website of its younger sister.

We wrote our own brew recipes, pushed our skills forward. My fascination with specialty coffee, the SCAE, and foreign ASTs was turning into obsession.

And into a goal: I had to become an Authorized Trainer.

Becoming an AST

I’ve always had the teaching instinct.

Maybe I should have been a university lecturer.

I could have been — but as a young man, I didn’t want it.

Then came the merged Specialty Coffee Association. I even took part in the referendum to unify it. That’s also when I learned that “specialty coffee” didn’t start at 84 points on the SCA scale — but already at 80.

I took part — as a student — in the first trainings of today’s Coffee Skills Program in Poland. I wasn’t the first trainer in the country — but when I went for authorization, I did so alongside two others. The three of us became the “second” together. It was late winter 2019.

The Milan Days

I remember the warm March days in Milan, where I had to fly to attend the AST course. After a few days learning the system’s rules, I became a trainer in Brewing and Sensory Skills — and, of course, Introduction to Coffee.

Later I became the first in my country to teach Green Coffee and Roasting. I even served as education coordinator in my national SCA chapter.

Teaching with Purpose

Being a trainer became one of many roles I held — but in my heart, it was the most important.

Part of my identity.

Part of my blind faith in the educational system built by this now-American association.

At first, I ran many courses. Students came in numbers. Even the pandemic — which forced nearly six months of global shutdown for the Coffee Skills Program — I endured. And I came back immediately with more classes.

I always ran syllabus courses and exams properly. Most students passed well; those who stumbled could return for a successful retake. I don’t know how many certificates I issued — probably under a hundred. But the point was never the number. My satisfaction came from seeing students grow and succeed — in life, not just in the exam room.

Beyond the Syllabus

I often expanded my courses with extra content whenever time allowed.

At times, I even welcomed students for free, knowing they couldn’t afford to participate — or organized free trainings outside the syllabus system, from workshops to lectures at trade fairs.

Sometimes I absorbed financial losses to resolve student issues.

Because this is what happens when education is tied entirely to business.When education becomes a product.

When knowledge is sold, not shared.

The Competition

As ASTs, we paid SCA for each certificate issued. The fees used to be absurdly high; now they’re lower — but they always forced high course prices, especially for students from most countries. Exams were often seen as a formality, a little game at the end of the course.

And then came competition.

After years of scarcity, suddenly there were over ten ASTs in Poland. Even more when I began teaching abroad — in Italy, the Czech Republic, even Colombia.

The role of trainer was turning into:

“competitor,”

“knowledge salesman,”

“education rep for the SCA.”

The Awakening

Yes, I was a model AST.

Five modules.

Growing into the Coffee Sustainability Program.

A Q Grader, with plans to become an instructor once my three-year waiting period ended.

A national judge in multiple World Coffee Championship disciplines.

I was a trainer of formulas.

Expensive formulas — and yet all freely available for self-study if you looked.

Calibrated to the system, passing on skills with ease.

Married to the ideals the SCA described.

Described — that’s the key. The more I knew, saw, and experienced, the more it became clear: they were slogans on a website.

Sharing my way of seeing coffee — where curves tell the story of flavor.

The Breaking Point

Even as an active AST, I began analyzing the system I was part of.

I felt an inner clash of ideas.

My worldview simply didn’t fit specialty coffee.

I woke up from the dream. Like in a breaking relationship, the initial fascination faded — and I was left wondering: does this partnership even have a future?

Nearly two years ago, I informally gave up teaching the Coffee Skills Program — though I still held my AST status.

I was disgusted — and felt spat out by a system I had long supported, sometimes even against myself.

But I didn’t stop teaching about coffee.

One Example

There were critical moments.

Most I’ll skip — those people deserve only my silence. Ironically, they helped me, even though it seemed they wanted to destroy me.

Black competition.

Ugly.

One such moment I’ll mention, because it matters for understanding.

If you follow The Better Coffee, you already know: the specialty coffee paradigm is tied to the philosophy of profit. Actions within it are bound to maximizing profit — even at the expense of individuals or communities. That profit isn’t always material; it can be reputation, ego, connections. Sometimes one equals the other.

Some people decided to make my work in Poland more difficult — I guess to “punish” me for ambition and nonconformity. One “punishment” was removing my AST profile from the local SCA site — erasing me from the trainer list, so potential students would forget me.

I reported it to the SCA’s main education office. At first, they ordered my reinstatement. Later, quietly, it happened again. This time, no reply ever came from the main office. Of course, I was never shown again on the local chapter’s page — though I remained on the global list, which hardly mattered, as no one really used it.

Curious, a little funny: people who represent the organization locally have targeted those who support it — trainers, competitors, and others — not just me, but especially the inconvenient ones. And the central office turns a blind eye.

It worked — my courses dropped. Not because I was unseen, but because I no longer wanted to be seen.

I’d had enough.

Once again, I felt like a cog not worth attention to the giant I had served for a decade.

Guiding others through the roast — a craft I taught myself, bean by bean.

Walking Away

Out of respect for the SCA and its local chapters, I won’t list the remaining cases. I still know many good people there who truly believed — and maybe still believe — in the ideals the organization claimed to carry. To all of you, I extend an invitation to a new movement — one built on values.

But I no longer believe in the uniqueness of specialty coffee. I’m alarmed by how easily it has adapted to the harsh logic of the open market.

My AST license was set to expire this summer — and since early August, I am no longer an AST.

The marriage of convenience is over.

I know the ex — the SCA — won’t miss me.

One less formula trainer, easily replaced.

You can hear how upset I am.

It comes from disappointment with an organization that speaks slogans like:

Make Coffee Better

Partnership

Advocacy

Thriving, equitable, sustainable coffee

The Future

I prefer to focus on coffee people.

To move forward, true to my social and political principles.

My coffee expertise doesn’t depend on any organization’s diploma.

I don’t need to be let through a gate to teach coffee.

I don’t want to be let through a gate that guards coffee for profit.

The paradigm is shifting.

We cannot cling to old positions, falling with them.

That’s moral collapse.

It’s a lack of representation and voice for the majority.

It’s the coyote chasing the roadrunner — running off the cliff, not noticing until he looks down.

We’ve looked down.

And we’re drawing our own parachute.

We created The Standard and, within it, The Better Coffee Curriculum — the educational cycle coffee was missing.

It works on principles absent in the system I left.

It redefines access.

Restores values.

Gives meaning to the rituals of coffee community.

Chooses cooperation over competition.

Opens gates.

Teaches thinking over memorizing formulas.

For me, it’s a new, exciting journey. Without blind infatuation — with the full weight of responsibility for what I offer you.