Mugshot: Home barista how-to

• Story and video: How to make the perfect home espresso

While the new Australian Barista Champion Craig Simon prepares for the World Barista Championships in Italy this June, Sydney baristas will battle for best home barista in contests around Sydney in August.

Paul Jackson from Danes Specialty Coffee, who runs the competition, has urged home baristas to focus on using fresh, high-quality beans.

''Specialty grade coffees are the highest grade - SCAA ( Specialty Coffee Association of America) rates coffee out of 100; anything above 84 is rated as specialty, 75 to 84 is high commercial and lower than that is just commercial,'' advises Jackson, a home barista trainer for nearly 20 years.

Jackson recommends buying beans from a local specialty roaster rather than the supermarket, and grinding them fresh as you need them.

He also advises to check the roast date when buying beans, avoiding any past six weeks away. A roast date within one to four weeks is ideal.

Clean your equipment regularly, too: coffee oils get trapped in the machine or the plunger filter, go rancid and affect the flavour of the drink.

Grinding too coarse or too fine is also a common home barista mistake: too coarse and the coffee will be under-extracted, too fine and it will be over-extracted.

How about making caffe latte and cappuccino at home? ''Learn the correct milk texturing technique at a course, or get some tips from your local barista. Then practise. Start with fridge temperature milk and learn how to reach 60 degrees every time,'' Jackson says.

''And never reheat milk, because you've broken the proteins already; by reheating you lose the sweetness, and will produce milk with a flat, watery flavour.''

With cafes using grinders and machines that cost tens of thousands of dollars, is there any chance of making great coffee at home?

''You can make a good coffee at home, but the working mechanics are not sophisticated enough compared to commercial machines. Good-quality cafes have their machines and grinders calibrated to ensure the grind is perfect and the machines run at their best, which is why they deliver not just good coffee, but great coffee, consistently,'' Jackson says.

''And if your cafe is not providing this, you aren't going to a good quality cafe.''