Category Archives: Coffee Aroma

8 steps to develop your coffee palate

By James Hoffmann | Published: October 16, 2009

This post is really for coffee consumers who want to develop their palates, which leads to coffee becoming more enjoyable.
I had been in coffee well over a year before I really began to develop my vocabulary and descriptive skills, and that is probably more embarrassing as I had done some work in wine beforehand.
What does [...]

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CoE Colombia First Harver 2007 Top 10 Descriptor Cloud

By James Hoffmann | Published: May 27, 2007

I thought this might be more interesting than it turned out to be. I had to mash words together to get the generator to see them as one descriptor. This might be more interesting with a better generator and with easier data to work with – it would also be interesting to compare [...]

Also posted in Green Coffee, News | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

“…Coffee: The Chemistry behind its Magic” by Marino Petracco

By James Hoffmann | Published: September 23, 2006

I came across this 7 page article by one of the main guys behind the chemistry research at illycaffe whilst searching for new reading material and it is an interesting overview, though no doubt familiar to those who own “The Science of Quality”.
One section seemed relevent to discussions going on around these parts of late:
“To [...]

Also posted in Coffee, Espresso, Food Chemistry, Green Coffee, News | 1 Comment

Research into coffee – who is it for?

By James Hoffmann | Published: September 18, 2006

There is a huge amount of money spent on researching coffee.  This isn’t just the latest study telling you whether it is good or bad (nytimes.com article – you may need to use bugmenot.com) for you, but also the many papers published that are of interest to the industry – ASIC’s conference has just finished [...]

Also posted in Coffee, Espresso, Food Chemistry, Opinion | 5 Comments

Beyond the Taste Buds

By James Hoffmann | Published: August 16, 2006

Listening back to a rather good little show broadcast this week on BBC Radio 4
“Claudia Hammond tickles her taste buds and looks at the science of taste. Scientists are now discovering that our perception of taste and flavour does not just come from the tongue, but our eyes, nose and even our ears all play [...]

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Some thoughts on brew temperature

By James Hoffmann | Published: August 3, 2006

I am fully expecting to have this picked to pieces or just generally rubbished, but I thought I would jot down a few thoughts having read a post over at Coffee Aspirations
Let’s treat something going into solution as a chemical reaction (because it is), and let us also assume that this means that increased heat [...]

Also posted in Espresso, Food Chemistry, Opinion | 17 Comments

Maillard Reaction, Strecker Degredation and Caramelisation

By James Hoffmann | Published: June 20, 2006

In the next of my apparent series of articles on all things coffee and chemistry I am going to tackle in a pleasant (I hope) depth these three types of reactions as they appear all the time in coffee articles. Obviously we are going to need to get into a bit of chemistry but [...]

Also posted in Coffee, Espresso, Food Chemistry, Green Coffee, Roasting | 17 Comments

Lecture in Dublin

By James Hoffmann | Published: April 13, 2006

Got back yesterday from Dublin, having given a talk for the SCAE Irish chapter, and being hosted by Marco.
I hope the lecture went well (I get my feedback forms soon, so I will know for sure then!) I think I achieved what I set out to do, and that was to show people something [...]

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Writing the Espresso Presentation for Dublin

By James Hoffmann | Published: April 2, 2006

It has been a great experience writing this seminar I am giving in Dublin. I made the decision early on that everyone has seen the same old espresso presentation.
Instead I plan to discuss the variable in the process and giving some context for each “rule”.
What has been really great is going back though [...]

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