Author Archives: James Hoffmann

James Hoffmann

My name is James Hoffmann, and I am a founder of Square Mile Coffee Roasters and was the World Barista Champion in 2007. I continue to write, give talks and consult on many aspects of coffee.

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London Gastronomy – Cheese

By James Hoffmann | Published: March 11, 2010

I love cheese. Everyone loves cheese. I don’t really, despite trying, really understand cheese.
Before I type cheese too many times I want to let people know that the next London Gastronomy Seminar is coming up and I am really quite excited about it. There are more details here.
On a side note – Neal’s Yard Dairy [...]

Posted in Announcement, Food Chemistry, News | 3 Comments

Return of the Uber

By James Hoffmann | Published: March 9, 2010

For a while all has been quiet on the Uber front. We shuffled some stuff around at the roastery, and as part of it we chose not to cut the old Uber into the new worktops as we planned to upgrade – the new Uber having a different (smaller) cutout.

The new Uber arrived today and [...]

Posted in Coffee, News | Tagged cupping, gadgets, marco, toys, uber boiler | 6 Comments

Cappuccino as conflict

By James Hoffmann | Published: March 7, 2010

Competition season often leaves me with an uneasy relationship with a drink I usually find very enjoyable. I should add that my own view is in no way representative of competition judges, or competitions or anything like that – just a thought rolling around my head.
Generally, it seems, we treat milk as an enemy. People [...]

Posted in Opinion | Tagged brewing, cappuccino, Espresso, ethiopia, flavours, indonesia, kenya, milk, png | 23 Comments

Who is to blame?

By James Hoffmann | Published: February 24, 2010

You drink a nice brewed cup of coffee from a hypothetical farm in El Salvador. It is incredibly delicious. The cup is light and juicy, but still very sweet. There are notes of cherry and caramel and acidity is reminiscent of a crisp apple. We celebrate this coffee, perhaps we bid a lot money for [...]

Posted in Opinion | 38 Comments

Thresholds of deliciousness

By James Hoffmann | Published: February 23, 2010

I’ve been thinking more and more about the tiers of tastiness when it comes to not only coffee, but any food or drink. I think this was probably triggered by the whole aerating thing.
Having tasted coffee that had been aerated, as well as coffee brewed with aerated water, against a standard brew there had been [...]

Posted in Coffee, Opinion | 28 Comments

Aida’s Grand Reserve

By James Hoffmann | Published: February 18, 2010

I am very much aware that promoting my own products or business on a personal blog very quickly spends any currency of goodwill that I might have built up.
There are, however, rare instances where I think it is entirely worth it and this is one of them. There is more information about the coffee [...]

Posted in Announcement, Coffee, square mile coffee roasters | Tagged charity, Coffee, el salvador, grand reserve, square mile coffee roasters | 2 Comments

An experiment with grind size

By James Hoffmann | Published: February 12, 2010

My experience with the ExtractMojo has so far resulted in one recurring realisation: I often wasn’t grinding finely enough. The purpose of this isn’t to rehash the whole underextracted thing. More a simple experiment in terms of people’s preferences.
Accurately communicating grind size remains near impossible. We can say coarse, very coarse or fine or whatever, [...]

Posted in Opinion | Tagged brewing, extraction, extractmojo, grinders, grinding, overextraction, taste, underextraction | 20 Comments

The naturals debate

By James Hoffmann | Published: February 10, 2010

You could say this debate is old news, but somehow it still seems to be rumbling on.
In the english speaking online coffee community it often seems a bit like Intelligentsia Vs. Naturals-Lovers, and Geoff Watts great post on the Intelli website kicked off the debate again recently.1 To quote the relevant part:
Things I hope become [...]

Posted in Opinion | 73 Comments

Tick, tick, tick….. boom.

By James Hoffmann | Published: February 7, 2010

The internet is quite talkative at the moment. The coffee sliver of the internet anyway. Lots of talk about seasonality, which is a good thing.
This does beg the question – how long is coffee good for? Green coffee I mean – we’re still arguing about roasted coffee’s shelf life and a great deal more time [...]

Posted in Green Coffee, Opinion | Tagged aging, Green Coffee, jute, new crop, packaging, past crop, seasonality, storage, vacpacking | 22 Comments

Aerated coffee

By James Hoffmann | Published: February 5, 2010

I’ve another post coming on why I blog, but this reason deserved a post in its own right. A few days ago Shaun dropped me an e-mail about the Vinturi. He’d played with it a little bit and thought it was interesting, and thought it might be something that would interest me. I admit [...]