After Nick Cho posted a spy photo on coffeed, it seems to have pushed them into post pics of the machine themselves.

Really looking forward to hearing more about this one.  I am sure I am not the only one with high expectations!

Check out more of the pictures here.

This is probably of interest to anyone who has competed or watched competitions since 2005.

In some competitions the La Marzoccos used were GB5 and FB80 AV machines – meaning they have a line of buttons linked to volumetric controls.  More recently a lot of machines just had one big on/off button.

Anyway – I remember back in 2005 in Seattle and in other barista competitions that during a competitors set the machines just seemed to switch off.  Everyone was very confused how a barista could have done this as you have to push and hold an on/off button for at least 3 (or maybe 5) seconds.

A few months ago Matt Buckley at Milk Bar showed me this weird little thing (he didn’t want to be in the video).  Here is an explanation:

FB80 & GB5 software bug from James Hoffmann on Vimeo.

If anyone else can verify this bug I’d be interested/grateful and also I’d like to know if it affects 2 groups too.  Comment away!

The overseas delivery in Europe should all be right, any questions then let us know.

As for jimseven – our latest offerings, pricings, business stuff in general – this will not appear on here. As you’ve probably noticed we decided not to chart our progress online but to quietly work away until we had something so exciting we wanted to share. We do have a few fun events planned that I will probably post about on here but only because it is a nice way to spread the word and it is pretty non-commercial stuff.

I will still continue to post, though if the last few months are anything to go by, at a much reduced rate. This blog has been very good to me, and I enjoy the community and communication it brings as well as an excuse to bury my head in the books for an evening and write something cohesive.

However it would be rude of me not to give a little update on where we are. The first time we roasted coffee together was my coffee for the WBC in Tokyo. A lot has happened in the year since but it is a lot of fun to be roasting for the WBC again. Stephen will probably post more about his preparations on his blog in the future so I will leave that for now. We are also now roasting for our first few wholesale accounts and are enjoying the coffee we are roasting a lot, and looking forward to new crops arriving and becoming part of our espresso offering. Both Stephen and I are getting stuck into our customer training and support program, and a lot of credit for it should go to all the people and companies that have inspired us the last few years by setting that bar so high.

More and more people are coming by to hang out, have an espresso and just talk all things coffee and not coffee. It feels like London could have a real sense of community and we all hope that continues to develop. (If you are reading and do want to come by then shoot us an e-mail)

We are working on the website and once that is done there will probably be some sort of launch. As you can tell from the link we are pretty much done on the branding and that will be more fully revealed in time. Creating a brand has been less of a corporate exercise for us and more a development of an identity for the company that we will want to carry forward in the coming years.

I have also become a recent convert to the Jepy style Anfim mods – as seen on Baca and Drew’s grinders at the USBC. I’d like to thank John publicly for all the help he has given me in getting the thing wired in and working – the joys of owning and actually using a soldering iron! That coupled with the Synesso means I am really enjoying making coffee these days, actually taking pleasure from the equipment which I suppose is unusual for us grumbling baristas. (Though saying that does already feel a little commercial as we are distributors for Synesso!)

Jepy-style Anfim and some nice espresso

So in theory – life is ok! Still, like anyone else starting a business I’d like more sleep, more stuff and to find huge wads of cash lying around in the street. A man can dream…….

We are indeed a distributor for Synesso espresso machines in the UK. I’ve been a fan of them for some time, both as a piece of machinery as well as a company. We’ve known for a while we wanted to use them within Square Mile, but we were very happy with the opportunity to supply them here. This isn’t the place to go into the hows and whys, as I’d like to keep jimseven as a personal blog but on this occasion it seemed easier to post here.

We’ll get all the details like pricing and lead times up when the website at Square Mile gets its first update later this month, and in the mean time if anyone has any questions please drop us a line at synesso@squaremilecoffee.com

Pulling shots at the Synesso factory

The spread of the Clover

I am hoping this year sees people less obsessed with it as new technology and start to treat as a standard brewing device moving emphasis away from the machine back to the coffee. I could be really brave and predict that Starbucks will start using them, but I think the guys at Clover would curse me for jinxing them! I also predict I’ll buy a couple this year, but I am fairly sure that will come true…..

Clover puck

World Barista Championships

I am not going to be as bold/stupid as to try and pick a winner but I think the shift away from a Scandinavian-heavy final will continue. I am not saying that none of the Scandinavian countries will be there, or that a Scandinavian won’t win, just that the rest of the world has caught up (in competition terms) and that it really is incredible open. I can’t wait to see the performances in Copenhagen!

Coffee prices continue to rise

Whilst I am aware that Speciality pricing doesn’t have an absolute relationship to C-market pricing, but I think a lot of factors will help drive up pricing. Those of you who keep an eye on the coffee news feeds will see a lot of stories about reduced production in a lot of countries, plus the increasing demand for high quality coffees is (I’d guess) rising slightly faster than production is which will also push up pricing. I suppose, as someone about to start buying green, I ought to wish prices would stay low but I love the idea of what increasing spends could do for quality of the ripe cherries picked and the greens produced.

Pressure profiling in espresso

I know this isn’t a new idea, but I think 2008 and could be the year people are willing to experiment more with it and equipment mods/hacks get easier to implement. The open source nature of the internet could help contribute to a faster “dialling in” of profiles as people share their experimentation. I think that improvements could well be made outside of a flat line profile and if anyone wants to point me in the direction of how to install some sort of pressure profiling device onto my GS3 I’d be very grateful, or tell me if I should just do it on a one group Cyncra.

The continued rise of the micro-lot

Hopefully the term and the concept will spread further and further. I love the idea of one or two dozen bags of something special, something fleeting and interesting for consumers and another way to inject more money into farm level. Highlighting both seasonality as well as varietal, terroir and processing I think they are a great bridge to customer interaction.

Plus I need something different and tasty to drink from my growing range of mugs (which I hope become as collectible as espresso cups!)

A cup of Tim Wendelboe’s Guatemalan microlot

So – what are everyone else’s coffee predictions? Leave a comment, post a reply on your own blog – what do you see changing? What do you want to change? New products? New ideas?

So last time I posted it was about the evil Broca, which no one likes. The reason I had seen so much about them was that I had spent a few days at CICAFE in Costa Rica, where they have a research farm. I had been invited to Costa Rica by ICAFE and I was delighted to get the chance to go and see Herbazu as well as visit another producing country. CICAFE was an interesting place – though a lot of their work is on yield and pest prevention – some lots of their Villa Sarchi are producing 50 quintales per hectare when only two years old. This is a lot of coffee…..

The first couple of days I was there I was doing seminars. The first day was more competition based – a talk to judges in the morning and then one to competitors in the afternoon. Costa Rica has a relatively long running history of barista comeptition – 6 years now I think. Espresso also seems to be taking off in a big way in San Jose and beyond.

People asked lots of questions which was good, and I did my best through the fog of jetlag, and I think it was interesting for everyone to taste different coffees, different styles of espresso and also for us to argue around and discuss how espresso is “supposed” to taste.

The next day I was asked to give a broader spectrum lecture – covering all aspects of coffee consumption across Europe. People who attended were interested in the expectations of the ever growing number of tourists visiting Costa Rica. I have to say it was good for me to be challenged – to try and organise my thoughts and vague understanding of this huge topic into a couple of hours. Again – lots of questions and hopefully people enjoyed it. It is always fun to be translated though the delay between joke and laughter often makes you feel a bit silly!

Now some bad news – I somehow lost all my photos from Costa Rica. I have no idea how – one morning they were just gone from Aperture and my hard drive. I was most cross. Hopefully I can recover some after Christmas from the CF card but we shall see. If I do get some back I will duly update this post but sadly a few really great ones have definitely been lost forever. I do however have a bit of video that I shall crowbar in here for fun later on.

Anyway – the next morning was an early one as I was on live tv – the Costa Rican equivalent of Richard and Judy (UK injoke I am afraid). They asked me to make a couple of fun drinks people could try at home and I was relieved my latte art didn’t suck too badly. It is interesting only having 3 minutes to set a grinder – divided into 3 one minute bursts whilst they cut from live to VT.

After the tv show Francois from the ACFCR picked me up and we headed out towards Herbazu. This, for me, was the most important part of the trip and it was a pleasure to sit in Antonio’s kitchen drinking his coffee and chatting about using his coffee in competition and beyond. I was surprised at how good the coffee was – not just because it was from past crop but also because it was brewed in a traditional cloth filter which to those embracing espresso is almost an embarrassing way to make coffee. I disagree, I love a little tradition and the cup (beyond the wonderful situation itself) was really good.

After coffee we toured the farm seeing different varietals they have and meeting a few of the pickers there who had started on part of the farm. It wasn’t yet into full production – about 40% of the total pickers were active. Like many Costa Rican farms Herbazu are tentatively looking at Geisha – they had some plants in the nursery as well as out in the fields likely to yield in ’08/’09. For the most part they are sticking with Villa Sarchi as it has been pretty good to them so far!

We had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the farm and its mill and then Francois and I headed out from Naranjo to Heredia to see another farm whose coffee I know a little – Las Brumas.

The owner was a great guy – totally excited about coffee, about experimenting with varietal and processing and creating boutique lots of coffee to people who want it. The process slightly differently to many farms in Costa Rica – they produce what they call “Honey Coffee”. This is mostly to do with the pulping – they pulp with almost no water and their equipment lets them decide how much mucilege (honey) is left behind – 20%, 40%, 60% or 100%. The coffee is dried straight after pulping on patios – though the last couple of days are spent in suspended screen beds.

After a couple of tasty tomales (it being Christmas time after all) Francois took me back to the hotel where I was collected by a group of baristas to go to a house party. It was a pleasant evening of good food, drink and good opportunity to listen to a lot of spanish and learn a few Costa Rican phrases (pura vida etc!) At the end of the night suddenly they presented me with a few thank you gifts which took me by surprise and was incredibly generous.

What I found quite inspirational was that the gifts came from the Bombillo Club – an informal group set up to allow baristas and other coffee professionals to get together and socialise out of work hours and to chat about coffee, to have lectures, to cup and to learn. I was impressed and I’d love to see more groups like this forming.

I realise I’ve written quite a lot so I shall move quickly through the rest of the trip – I did a few magazine interviews, I filmed 4 different drinks stood out in a coffee field for a tv show called La Cocina Alternativa which was crazy and on my final night in San Jose the town went crazy with the Festival of Lights – a huge parade through the main street lasting several hours full of floats, funky-ass marching bands, cheerleaders and all sorts of everything else.

Jugglers at the Festival of Lights

Also whilst out in the fields with a pan, a gas heater and some water I did the obvious thing and grabbed a load of ripe cherries and tried cooking them down with some water to see what I would get. It was not as expected – part sweet cherry taste, part cooked lettuce. Next time I will cook down pulped seeds without the skins.

A little video:

Online Videos by Veoh.com

I arrived home from Costa Rica just in time to rent a car and to drive to Belgium. Anette was teaching a course there and it was also an opportunity to pick up our sample roaster. This will require a post of its own in the future but it is beautiful. It is a five barrel Gothot that is the same model as this one:

Gothot sample roaster at the Probat Museum

It will be both restored and modded a little – I have big plans to make it extra beautiful and extra functional.

I arrived home, caught a few hours sleep and then back in the car to drive up to Edinburgh, via Bunn (thanks for the TDS meters Mike!) to install a Synesso. Stephen Morrissey had already flown in and it was 7pm by the time I got there and I didn’t leave Kilimanjaro coffee til 1 (espresso is too much fun) and like a fool I drove straight back down to London to crash out at 7am (850 mile roundtrips are not fun in a day) and then get up to fly to Trondheim.

Synesso at Kilimanjaro coffee

Life, it seems has been conspiring against us because when we finally got to Oslo to connect to Trondheim we discovered an airport in chaos and at 1am that night they finally cancelled our flight meaning no sleep and queueing for 9 hours along with the hundreds and hundreds of others for new flights.

Now in Trondheim I’ve done little else than sleep and wander about in the snow. It is lovely here, plenty of snow but not too cold and a pleasant break from the coffee world. I get to help Anette hack down a Christmas tree and enjoy not being in a city.

If you have read this far then thank you for reading, I hope you have a great Christmas and thanks to everyone who has contributed here or via e-mail – it makes writing for the blog a real pleasure. I will post something before NYE rounding up the year but for now – drink, eat and sleep and have a splendid Christmas.

This sort of thing makes me childishly pleased, and it was pretty easy to setup. The autofill takes care of most of it, and after bleeding the group (not too difficult) and correcting the expansion valve (mine appeared to have been set at 5 bars instead of 12 bars, which was quite interesting when you hit brew all the water just went into the drip tray with nothing coming out of the group!) it was ready to go.

I haven’t Scace’d it yet – Anette was teaching all day and had mine with her – but I will play tonight, though I don’t expect to discover much. Instead it was time to pull some shots and see if I still enjoy espresso. It turns out I do – I had some coffee given to me by Peter James and having messed around with the manual pre-infusion I pulled one of the best shots I’ve had in ages! A wonderful creamy texture and yet light, clean and sweet. Splendid.

I’ll be messing about with it a lot more over the next few weeks and I have to say it is a great tool for espresso which I’ve only just scratched the surface of (anyone got any PID settings they want to pass on?)

I had read people had had issues with steaming – I have to say I had no problem though it will take a while before the placement of the lever becomes normal. My only real complaint at the moment is that there seems to be a bug in the software which means I can’t change the first letter of the name to anything but L, which is really quite odd. (Anyone had similar issues?) This isn’t really a complaint – I am having a lot of fun with this machine. Expect lots of silly espresso pics on my flickr!

A little espresso porn

This year I am afraid I can’t offer the same coverage.

One reason is that I am now involved in judging and I don’t think it is fair to comment, even on competitions I am not judging. Also I am not going to get to all the heats this year sadly – a shame as I really enjoyed it last year.

Hopefully various other people will step up to the plate and blog away.

For the South West you have Tristan’s Blog
For the Midlands you have Steve Leighton’s Blog

I will try and post up links as and when they come in. If you are blogging do please drop me a line or leave a link somewhere!

After the Caffe Culture trade show at the end of May I will be leaving La Spaziale UK. I hope to spend some time travelling in North America, and finally getting to see and taste the coffee I’ve read about for so long. Then back to the UK to pursue future projects.

I am aware people may seem the timing to be linked to winning the UKBC again, but in truth it is more to do with the timing of Jon Skinner taking over my role, and taking it forward. Jon is one of the most experienced trainers in the industry, and was the first person to train me and field my endless questions when I first got into coffee three or four years ago.

I have enjoyed my time at La Spaziale immensely, and closer to my final days I will post the highlights of my time there. I can’t think of another company in the UK that are as forward thinking, as involved in trying to push quality forwards and who have had such a profoundly positive effect on the industry as well as on me. I hope to stay firm friends with them in the years to come. For me the product was important, but the company even more so and I count myself as being lucky to have had this opportunity.

If anyone wants to get in touch about training or that sort of thing then please use the contact page, though if you are a La Spaziale customer it does make sense to try and sort something before the end of May whilst it is still free…

As for the future plans – for now I remain tight lipped, partially because I don’t want to announce anything before I have it set in stone and a very clear idea of what it is, so forgive me for being cryptic.