Category Archives: Opinion

A very, very quick poll

By James Hoffmann | Published: March 17, 2010

I’d really appreciate it if you could answer this poll, because it seems like something I ought to know/would be interesting know:
Even if you are just stopping by, or reading in your feed reader – I’d be very grateful of a quick click.
Thank you.

Posted in Opinion | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Questions

By James Hoffmann | Published: March 15, 2010

My brain is full of questions at the moment, and I thought I’d post (vent) some of them on the off chance that anyone reading them has any answers.

Posted in Opinion | 32 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 , , , , , , , , | 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 [...]

Also posted in Coffee | 28 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 , , , , , , , | 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 | 74 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 [...]

Also posted in Green Coffee | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 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 [...]

Also posted in coffee brewing | Tagged , , , , , , | 19 Comments

How much coffee do you drink?

By James Hoffmann | Published: January 31, 2010

As I mentioned in a previous post – I get asked this question quite a lot.  So for the month of January I logged every cup of coffee I drank, using a splendid website called Daytum.
So – how many coffees? In January I drank 126 cups, so on average a daily consumption of 4.1
Below is [...]

Also posted in Espresso, coffee brewing | Tagged , , , , | 17 Comments