Category Archives: Food Chemistry

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 [...]

Also posted in Announcement, News | 2 Comments

First London Gastronomy Seminar

By James Hoffmann | Published: November 14, 2009

This week the website went live for the London Gastronomy Seminars (The Facebook group is here).  The first seminar now has tickets for sale, and I for one am very excited to see Herve This talk.  There aren’t a huge number of tickets so if you are interested I recommend picking one up early.
The idea [...]

Also posted in News | 1 Comment

Extraction

By James Hoffmann | Published: October 5, 2009

I gave a short presentation at the first London Gastronomy Seminars event, which was a small forum on the topic of extraction.  I learned a great deal from the other presenters – Tony Conigliaro from 69 Colbroke Row, wine writer Jamie Goode and chemist John Forbes from Treatt.
I might upload the presentation slides I used [...]

Also posted in Coffee, News, Opinion | 1 Comment

A quick espresso survey

By James Hoffmann | Published: September 19, 2009

POLL NOW CLOSED
Brew recipes have been on my mind again recently, so I thought I’d post up this quick poll.  I’d love if it people could give me some data on this.  If enough people respond then I will post up the results, and any trends that occur.
A few quick things.  Please dial your espresso [...]

Also posted in Espresso, Opinion | Tagged , , , , | 12 Comments

More on density

By James Hoffmann | Published: May 15, 2009

I had a brief moment to dig into a couple of books and was pleased to come across the following passage in  Coffee: Recent Developments  that was very kindly sent to me by Jim Schulman.

Also posted in Green Coffee, Roasting | Tagged , , , , , | 12 Comments

A grand unified theory of espresso

By James Hoffmann | Published: May 7, 2009

Not too long ago I posted on Home Barista about trying to find a good way to measure the density of coffee beans. 1
As always the paricipants there were way smarter than me and offered several interesting options. I dropped into the thread that this was part of my idea of a grand unified theory [...]

Also posted in Coffee, Espresso, Green Coffee, Opinion, Roasting | Tagged , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Crema and the laws of physics

By James Hoffmann | Published: August 9, 2008

I am sure lots of us have noticed the way crema moves and settles as it pours, but something about it doesn’t make sense and this is just a short post with a video looking at how and why.

Also posted in Espresso | Tagged , , | 17 Comments

Introduction to the chemistry of the wet process (part 1)

By James Hoffmann | Published: December 6, 2007

This article is a simplified version of what was researched and written for the attempted coffeed study group. Sadly that project didn’t take off – however I am grateful to people like Andy Schecter and Jim Schulman for publishing the papers they wrote regardless. The article doesn’t focus much on cup quality and [...]

Also posted in Coffee, Green Coffee | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

An experiment to determine freshness

By James Hoffmann | Published: November 23, 2007

Freshness is one of those difficult terms in coffee because it is often considered quite subjective.
However I was thinking about brewing stale coffee as espresso, and then thinking about measuring filter brewed coffee and an idea cropped up.
To me, when I brew stale coffee as espresso it seems that there are a lot less solubles [...]

Also posted in Opinion | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

Food pairing website

By James Hoffmann | Published: November 22, 2007

Food pairing and coffee

This might be of interest to a few people, especially those looking for signature drink inspiration. Nice idea behind the site and open to ideas should you have any to throw in the pot.
FOODPAIRING

Posted in Food Chemistry | Tagged , , , , | 14 Comments