Category Archives: News

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, Food Chemistry | 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 [...]

Also posted in Coffee | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Great new coffee brewing website

By James Hoffmann | Published: January 20, 2010

A rather splendid new website launched today, and I think it is a great idea and potentially very, very useful for us all.
It is called Brew Methods and I strongly suggest you visit, bookmark and begin sending the link to everyone you know.

You can read more about it by its creators on cleanhotdry, but the [...]

Also posted in Announcement, coffee brewing | 8 Comments

Gwilym’s disloyalty card

By James Hoffmann | Published: December 17, 2009

Let me start by saying that this has to be one of the best ideas I’ve seen in ages.  I’m very pleased and very excited by this.
Gwilym Davies – you know, the current World Barista Champion – has come up with a rather splendid card: the disloyalty card.
The idea is simple:  If you go and [...]

Also posted in Opinion | Tagged , , , , | 56 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 Food Chemistry | 1 Comment

Milan – Host – Uber Boiler

By James Hoffmann | Published: October 24, 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 [...]

Posted in News | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Italian coffee stuff

By James Hoffmann | Published: October 21, 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 [...]

Posted in News | 12 Comments

Espresso Poll: Results and Analysis

By James Hoffmann | Published: October 17, 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 [...]

Also posted in Espresso, Opinion | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

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, Food Chemistry, Opinion | 1 Comment

A bit of (bad) news

By James Hoffmann | Published: April 14, 2009

When we started Square Mile our goals were fairly traditional for a startup roastery.  After the last Nordic Barista Cup that changed.  We had the chance to hang out with (the now newlywed) Chris and M’lissa Owens.  As anyone who has met them can attest – they are astoundingly wonderful people.
We had a new goal [...]

Posted in News | Tagged , , | 20 Comments