By Dr. Erika Koss
Jingbo Deng in Kenya for the first “Women in Coffee” tour, photo courtesy of Erika Koss.
Erika Koss and Jingbo Deng serve as judges for Canada’s 2025 National Barista Championships, July 2025
Bicerin Coffee Lab in Markham, Ontario, Canada, founded by Jingbo Deng.
Bicerin Coffee Lab
When I walk into Bicerin Coffee Lab in Markham, Ontario, I see an organized desk. Books and files may be a common feature of coffee-lab-desks, but this one has something else: several boxes of tarot and oracle cards are stacked on top.
Although this is the first time I’ve visited this lab, the public display of mystical cards doesn’t really surprise me since I’ve known Jingbo Deng for many years.
Coffee is the medium that brought us together. She was among my first Coffee Sustainability students when the original curriculum was brand new, and she was a member of my inaugural ‘Women in Coffee’ tour in Kenya. This time, today, I’m her student: I’ve flown to Toronto to take her two-day SCA Coffee Value Assessment for Cuppers course.
Although many people in coffee know her as a Q instructor, one of the creators of SCA’s Barista Skills curriculum, and a World Coffee Competition certified judge for Barista and Brewers Cup, Jingbo identifies – to use her words – as a “coffee trainer, tarot reader, and healer.”
To Jingbo, teaching is part of her healing work and her connection with the world. I ask her if she’s willing to share about this for this Urnex story.
She nods and replies, “Of course! What I mean is: without this coffee medium, I wouldn’t have the chance to meet my students. When my students come to my classroom, they have their own issues. There is a lot of hopelessness in the world.”
I nod in agreement, and she continues, “After the coffee knowledge skills have been delivered, many of my students stay after class and share about their lives. We talk. I can see they feel full of hope again. I feel like my light is a small light, yes, but it’s there. I try to do as much as I can, where I am.”
I witness this clearly after our class. One younger Asian female coffee professional lingers, talking with Jingbo for almost an hour about her life and a coffee-related challenge in her work.
“This is part of my responsibility that I take very seriously.” I ask Jingbo if this is a regular occurrence, as we leave her lab together. “Yes, because I think it’s meant to be for my students to find me. I don’t intentionally market my courses, but somehow people find me and join my classes. After the class, students will say, ‘I’m glad you were my coffee teacher, but I didn’t just learn about coffee skills.’ If someone needs it, I’ll offer to give them a tarot reading.”
Jingbo Deng: From China to Canada
Jingbo’s coffee story is inextricably linked to her life story.
Born and raised in China, Jingbo first left her homeland to pursue her education in Canada. She attended Acadia University in Nova Scotia, during which time she worked many different jobs to cover her tuition and living expenses as an international student. Through a winding pathway of events, she moved to Ontario and became a barista and manager at a floundering coffee café. After the original owner offered to sell his café to her, she accepted, renaming it “Bicerin,” named after an Italian drink. Later, in 2013, when she started her coffee lab and roastery, she kept the same name.
That name is important to Jingbo, not only because she chose it herself, but because of all the word represents to her. Bicerin is a small hot espresso drink that contains three important elements of coffee. It has three layers: first, a layer of espresso, then a layer of cream, the final layer of liquid chocolate.
Jingbo explained the connection: “The three parts made me think about a triangle, which is the most stable pattern. I want to have a steady business, and I want to think about myself as a steady person for the industry. A person that others can rely upon. With those links, I decided to name my coffee shop –and later my lab – Bicerin.”
The name has served her well, since it’s now been more than a decade since Jingbo began her career as an authorized global coffee trainer (AST). At that time, there were very few Asian women ASTs or Q graders, and none in Canada. She later became one of seven creators for SCA’s Barista Skills curriculum.
By that point, she sold her café to focus on building up her lab, roastery, and training school. She sacrificed and saved to earn her master’s degree program in Coffee Economics and Science from Illy in Italy. Now she’s training coffee professionals from her two labs across the globe: Canada and China, in both English and Mandarin.
The Importance of Cleaning in SCA’s Barista Curriculum
As one of seven co-creators for SCA’s barista curriculum, Jingbo was part of writing the section on “preventative maintenance.”
It’s a basic but vital aspect of cleaning. According to Jingbo, “this is the key task every barista needs to do at the end of every day. Usually at least 30-60 minutes depending on how many machines they have.”
The espresso machine contains a lot of metal and gaskets. “When we pull the shots every day, a lot of oil and grinds can get stuck. If we don’t clean in good time, those sticky things stick on the rubber can wear out. It also builds up disgusting sticky layers.
Jingbo uses Grindz in her lab both when she herself cleans the machines and in her courses.
Preventative maintenance is important, so that espresso machines and grinders “can be smooth to use all year long. Yes, sometimes you have to call someone to come change a gasket when it wears out, but if they don’t do the proper maintenance every day, the machine will not function properly.”
I asked Jingbo how she cleans the steam wand on her espresso machines.
“My procedure is to use the Urnex cleaning powder both for the group head and steam wand. I take a scoop of the powder and put cold water in the knock box. That’s a very convenient tool. I place the steam wand into the water and texture, as you would if it were milk. We clean to get out the milk residue from the steam wand and surface area for milk. Using the knock box like this, then you clean that at the same time!”
Jingbo appreciates that you only need a small amount of powder to do the job. “If you’re one café, you can use one bottle even for 2-3 months” and she also likes it because “I can use the same cleaning powder solution for both the group head for cleaning the coffee oils and the steam wand for the milk residue. Then I don’t have to buy extra products.”
Looking Back
Jingbo’s first experience at a café had several challenges since no one trained her about how to clean the espresso machine.
She reflects on the past: “Even when I first took over the shop, I didn’t know that much about preventative maintenance. I didn’t know yet that we must unscrew the dispersion screen on the group head every night and clean thoroughly. By the time I learned it later, it had such a thick layer of stickiness, it was disgusting. But no one taught me, so how would I know? I wish someone had told me earlier, I would have always cleaned it!”
That is one of many formative reasons why Jingbo is a dedicated and detailed coffee trainer. Since she did not experience proper training in her first barista job, she has vowed to make sure that every student of hers will have a smooth and healthy machine.
As we end our time together, I ask Jingbo for her parting reflections to all baristas: “As a barista, cleaning should be a habit that is carried in the genes. Cleaning is very important, because the barista position is one that very easily can make a mess at their workstation, and it can affect their workflow.”
We talked about scoring baristas as judges during competitions. There, cleaning is also important, since technical judges evaluate baristas on questions such as workflow and timing questions like, when does the barista flush, did they do so immediately when they take out the portafilter? Did they clean the portafilter surface area?
This is among the reasons why, as Jingbo says with a serious face as we part ways, “Cleaning is the most important part for a barista.”
Jingbo using Grindz to clean one of the grinders in her lab; photo by Erika Koss.
Erika Koss & Jingbo Deng on Kenya’s Lake Naivasha on the final day of the “Women in Coffee” tour, Feb 2025.