October 2009 Archives « jimseven jimseven

Archive for October, 2009

UBF IV

Saturday, October 31st, 2009

Much fun was had at the UBF last night. I was pulling shots all night, but had my camera with me so shot a bit of video as we went along which I’ve cut into a fun little thing:

UBF IV from James Hoffmann on Vimeo.

The challenge was head to head pour again, in UBF Branded¹ 2oz espresso cups, with 16 entrants battling down to one winner (congrats Brett!). There will be a post on the UBF blog very soon, detailing the results from the night as well as photos too I hope.

Footnotes:

I should add a massive thanks to Gwilym here. ACF offered him some custom cups as a prize for winning the WBC, so he sent them the UBF logo so now we have UBF espresso and capp cups. The man is awesome!! [↩]

Tags: fun, ubf, Video
Posted in Barista Competition | 5 Comments »

Brew temperature

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

This, shockingly enough, isn’t about espresso. It is about brewed coffee, and the fact that brew temperature is completely wrecking my head. We talk a lot about brew temperature but what we are really talking about is water delivery temperature.

I love my Uber boiler, I love the control and the delivery temp stability. With this, however, has come the painful and embarrassing realisation that it doesn’t matter. Alright, that is perhaps an overstatement – temperature has massive influence on the quality of the brew, that is undeniable. I may love the control of the Uber, but having a consistent and controllable temperature really just shifts the problem from the exit spout to the vessel underneath.

(more…)

Tags: brew temperature, filter brewing, french press, scace, uber
Posted in coffee brewing, Opinion | 23 Comments »

Milan – Host – Uber Boiler

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

It has been a busy and long day. I’ve learned a lot today and I will try and post a big round up of a bunch of things. I am in Milan with Marco, working the Uber and I thought I’d make a little video for those who might be interested:

New Uber Boiler from James Hoffmann on Vimeo.

A short video about the new Uber Boiler launched at HOST in Milan this week

Tags: host, marco, uber boiler
Posted in News | 9 Comments »

Italian coffee stuff

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

No, don’t worry – this isn’t yet another post on the tired subject of how good or bad coffee in Italy is. It is two other things.

First off I plan on drinking some coffee in Italy in the next few days as tomorrow I fly to Milan, for the ridiculously large HOST show. For those who don’t know HOST is a biennial coffee show in which lots of coffee companies, especially the Italian machine manufacturers produce enormous booths and people come in from all over the world for it. It will be interesting to see how the recession affects things. I shall have camera (and wide angle lens!) in tow. (more…)

Posted in News | 12 Comments »

WBC Website

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

You are all doubtless going to get sick of me posting about the WBC in London in the coming months. For now I shall just post the link to the new WBC website with the London 2010 design.

http://worldbaristachampionship.org/

See you there?

Tags: london 2010, wbc
Posted in Barista Competition | 6 Comments »

The Fair Trade Finish Line

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

A little while ago my frustration with Cadburys advertising led me to try and sum up my frustrations with Fair Trade in 140 characters. The best I could do was,

Fair Trade – the absolute minimum necessary to get people to stop questioning how you source, or pushing you to do better. Not enough.

The advert that had sparked it off was one I had seen on the underground, and it was the language more than anything that frustrated me: (more…)

Tags: black gold movie, costa, fair trade, marketing, pricing, starbucks
Posted in Opinion | 18 Comments »

Espresso Poll: Results and Analysis

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

First off a big thank you to everyone who contributed to the espresso poll. It closed out at just under 100 people giving their data. Out of this some data had to be ignored as it was clearly entered in error, leaving just over 90 espressos worth of information.

I am not a massive statistics expert – and I am grateful to Vince Fedele for taking the data and cleaning it up and doing some analysis on it.

To start with the easy stuff:

(more…)

Tags: brew ratios, Espresso, extraction, poll. survey, tds
Posted in Espresso, News, Opinion | 10 Comments »