Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center on New Stance Studios. Joined uh as usual, but not live. She's in uh the great state of Connecticut. Small state best date, right, John?
That's right. Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, how you doing? I'm good. How are you? Good, doing all right.
I mean, I'm I'll put you out a little bit. You had a birthday recently. How'd it go? Is it good? You feel happy, feel good?
Yeah, it was good. Thanks for coming, John, Dave. Thank you. Uh hey, listen, I was taking my kid to college. I did uh not college, like to visit colleges.
I'm sorry that my son has to like figure out where he's gonna go to college. I apologize that I couldn't go to your party so that my son could have a future. I deeply apologize. I don't actually. I don't.
Uh I deeply I deeply apologize for going your 40th birthday many years ago. Yeah, at the school, it was also two people's 40th birthday. And again, you weren't taking your son to c to visit colleges because you didn't have don't. Whatever. I don't want to get into it.
This is a dumb conversation. You know what? I also apologize for buying you all those fireworks for your party. Maybe I'll go back in time and not have bought you all those fireworks for the party. All right.
I'll go back in time and not have done that. Uh anyway. Uh by the way, the one thing I learned, I learned many things. I don't have time to talk about them because we have a jam-packed show today. But should you be driving in between like Albany, Saratoga, and Burlington, Vermont?
Should you find yourself on Route 22 there? There's a tiny town, tiny town, Orwell, Connecticut. Uh, sorry, Vermont. Tiny. As you're driving past 22, doing 75 and a 50, right?
You'll see a small handwritten sign on the side of the road that says, Maple syrup, $40 a gallon. It's like my car must have done three 360s when I hit the brakes when I saw that sign spun out. You can't find it. So, like, I had to go into a post office and be like, yo, the maple syrup sign on the highway. Where is it?
Come on. And the guy was like, I don't know. It's this family guy. I don't know. Misty Maples.
And so, like, uh you it's 61 Raymond Road. Write that down if you're gonna be at $40 the gallon. The gallon. Anyway. Uh also got uh John, customer service uh extraordinaire here in.
How are you doing? Doing great, thanks. How's the how's the customer service doing? It's going. Yeah.
I mean, you know, just peachy. Appreciate everyone being patient with the delay of the series all pro. Some people have been changing their addresses, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's gonna happen.
People move. That's what the that's what people do. Yep. Yeah. Uh in our, I guess, DC booth, Jackie Molecules.
How you doing? Back in LA. Ah. World Traveler, Jackie Molecules. He's just like in the ether, like uh moleculing it about.
Nice. How's uh is LA? How's that treating you? It's great. Stars.
I was in Stanford this weekend too. Thanks for the invite. Oh, oh, that hurts. I was gonna I was gonna leave that like the lead balloon that is. I didn't know.
I didn't know. I'm gonna go. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Okay. That's all right. Okay, okay. Uh someone's got some something in the radio in the background or something. And work in the panels, as usual.
We got Joe Hazen. How you doing? I'm doing very well. Thank you very much. Nice, nice.
But let's get right into it. Uh fewer fewer tangents, more stuff, just because uh he was supposed to be on the show before, and uh we had to cancel. Uh, and I apologize for that. But uh, we're very excited to have James Hoffman Coffee Coffee, what like how do you go by this uh m magnate, influencer, influencer magnate? Uh guru.
What do you like? What's it's all bad? Yeah, yeah. None of it. Uh I don't know, coffee guy.
Coffee guy. Weird, weird coffee person. Weird coffee person. All right. Uh yeah, you were supposed to um many people who um I guess aren't from the UK, because you're based in in the UK, are gonna know you from your YouTubes and uh what's your YouTube channel?
So that everyone knows, shout it out. Just my name, James Hoffman. Yeah, yeah. And uh World Atlas of Coffee, now in its second edition, right? Uh I guess most people are gonna know you who did you know, don't know you from the UK are gonna know you uh from those those two things.
We actually first met. I was doing a cocktail class when the first edition of your book came out in in 2015. So that's kind of how uh we met the one time and very happy to have you on the show. Sorry that uh we had uh a little bit of confusion beforehand. Um but before we get into the eight billion questions that uh people have for you and that I actually uh have for you, uh let's just go through like a quick rundown.
So you got into the coffee business in in 2003, right? So you must have like basically just been out of college a year or two at that point, right? Pretty much, yeah. Just trying to find something to do for money. Now in 2003, obviously on the west coast of the United States, in you know, north northwest, not in LA, Jack, uh, but like, you know, in the north of of California and uh specifically also Seattle, obviously, there was there was already great coffee at that point.
New York City, kind of a hellhole for coffee, and the rest of the country, pretty much a wasteland for for what you would think is is good coffee, right? What was the UK like back then? Oh, it's bad. It was really bad. It was much worse.
Really? It was like maybe some Starbucks, and that was kind of it. It was, it was just bad. Huh. So I think people should take note that like become interested in something that's not yet really good if you want to make a mark.
You know what I mean? Like, honestly, like if you're young and like it's great to get into something that, you know, uh someone like James has been working on for the for the past 20 years and try to get really good at it, or you could try to find something that you could pour a life into that's interesting that hasn't been covered and smothered by other folk. I'm just saying, as a piece of advice, what do you think about that, James? I think it's pretty good advice. I I think it was, you know, we started roasting coffee in London trying to sell fancy coffee when no one was drinking it.
And for me, that was the opportunity, but everyone else would kind of look at London and be like, well, no one drinks good coffee, so why would you why would you try and sell good coffee? You know what I mean? It's just uh it's just like a mindset thing. Right. And you, but you're you're you know, you're uh I guess your point is another interesting thing about your kind of style if people haven't, you know, read your book or or you know, watched your stuff is that you you very explicitly say, and I think maybe this is why you could be successful in an arena where people didn't already want the product, right?
Is you're like, listen, I'm not gonna tell you what the best of anything is. There's no best, like you don't want to pick your favorite child when it comes to styles of coffee or types of coffee. I mean you have certain things you don't like, you clearly don't like robusta in any form, but uh, or you say, you know, why would you do that when you could drink something else instead? But whatever, that's fine. But my my point is is that you you're very much about helping people enjoy the product on their own terms, which is I think a very kind of inviting way to get people to enjoy things, no.
Yeah, I think I probably went through the youthful arrogance phase of like this is the good stuff and you're drinking the bad stuff, and I've got the good stuff, but I I think I've got a little older, uh, a little bit calmer. And uh yeah, I just I feel like telling people they're doing it wrong doesn't help. So what's the it's like do you even have like a you are you even willing to admit that there's a go-to style that like is your comfort or not? Not even yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I would just drink, I I drink a lot of drip coffee like Paul River.
That's just it. Like espresso is just too too much. Uh so yeah, I drink a lot of drip coffee, and I'm very happy. Nice. All right.
Um, so we should oh coup a couple more things. So you have released I'm going back to espresso though. So you you you've uh you've released uh a couple of machines in kind of concert with uh Victoria Arduino, which for those of you who aren't like coffee style people, not related to Arduino, the microcontroller people. Victoria Arduino and Arduino the microcontroller people, two different sets of people. But uh very different things.
But I don't think they don't have a lot of penetration, I don't think, in in the US market. I think their sister brand um uh Nova Simonelli has kind of more penetration here in the US, but you want it how long have you been working with those guys? Oh like uh maybe maybe like 10 years. Like um, like the brand is really old. It's from like 1905, but it kind of it no one did anything with it for a really long time, and then maybe eight, nine years ago we started working on stuff, and that's kind of been the the kind of specialty coffee brand for that company.
Uh, and that's why I've worked with them on the kind of nerdier end of espresso of uh like commercial espresso machines. I mean, I think that I mean, like I think I've never owned one of their machines. I think they're fantastic though. I remember like so the two cups of espresso that changed my life, right? And re made me realize how little I knew about anything on Earth.
The first one was at uh in 2001 at Cafe Vivaci, which is Shomer's place, back when they were, you know, the the highest form of coffee in the US. And, you know, uh, I had, you know, I had a couple years earlier bought my first commercial machine at an auction, which I don't have time to tell that whole story where like, you know, I I got a drug dealer to drive me home for money. He only referred to me as White Boy. I accidentally left the pro con pump in his trunk and had to track him down and knock on his door. He was very curious why I was knocking on his door.
Anyway, long story. But um, so I thought I knew a lot about coffee. I had that cup of uh that espresso uh shot at Vivace and was like, oh, I don't know anything. I know nothing. And then the second was actually at McCormick Place, which is a nightmare freaking trade hall in Chicago, like just a crap show of a place to have to hang out, like just as bad as the Javits here in the United States.
Any trade show floor sucks. And I was at uh the National Restaurant Show, and Victoria Arduino had a booth, and in that booth they had a lever, a Victoria Arduino lever pull machine. Uh and whoever was working the floor that day, this was I don't know, maybe 2011, maybe 2008, 2009, 2010. Whoever was working the floor that day in Chicago pulled a lever shot, changed my life. I was like, oh my god, the lever.
Oh my god. It could have been as early as 2007 or eight. Anyway, uh, so I I'm a big fan of their stuff. Is their stuff still really good or no? I mean, I I I would say yes.
I'm still I'm still working with them. So yeah. Yeah. And wasn't um wasn't uh Simonelli one of the first companies to uh move to uh lever lever valves on the steam and water wands. Uh that's a good question.
I don't even know about that stuff. I feel like like um the kind of mechanical leather stuff I'm trying to get away from, actually, and just moved to like solenoids because they're just they they last longer. But uh I don't know the history of that stuff actually. So it was either them or was it Las and Marco? I thought it was Simonelli.
I love the the lever so much more than the knob. I hate the knob so much. The knob is the worst, am I right? I mean, I know you say you're moving away, but the knobs are worse. The knob is very stupid.
Yeah. The knob is the worst. Yeah, it's just pointless. Have you ever met one that didn't start leaking almost right away, like when you're using it? No, right?
No. Yeah. No, no. Yeah. And for those who are into measuring things, right?
Uh you the coffee machine you helped uh design for them was like the uh was like the first one to uh weigh the weigh the shot as it was going as opposed to just measuring the number of millimeter milliliters that was going through the uh through the unit, right? Right, right. Like if you if you get weird about coffee, then like flow meters are like okay, they're not bad, but like um we kind of worked out in the sort of preceding years that measuring liquid in the cup was the kind of answer to curing the weird inconsistency that you would experience with espresso, where like sometimes it's great, sometimes it's just not quite great, and that's very frustrating. And it turns out really paying attention to how much liquid you push through the coffee was the kind of game-changing piece of information and not just kind of eyeballing it or going by feel. So yeah, that was the that was the kind of idea behind that stuff.
Yeah, and so what what do you not like about what do you not like about the flow meter just because they don't integrate accurately enough? Or is it because you don't know how much is retained in the puck, or like what is it that you don't like about the flow meter? I mean, they're pretty good at working out how much water went to the coffee, but not how much actually went through. So yeah, kind of like a couple pieces. One, that there'll be some variation because really accurate flow meters just get really, really, really expensive.
And then yeah, puck absorption or other stuff. Like you'll you'll just you'll have a slight variation in the amount of liquid passing through. And it's depressingly true that like a gram of liquid variance in the cup is tastable to most people. Right. Right?
That's kind of how annoying espresso is. So the standard is that why you work this out. Is that why is it is it a fussiness that actually makes you prefer to just hang out with drip, or is it a lack of fuzziness, in other words, or is it really just that you prefer the drip as your just your comfort coffee? I think it I think it's all of it. I think my I can kind of switch my brain off more with drip and just be a normal person and drink the coffee and be happy to have had a cup of coffee.
Whereas espresso, I feel like I'm much more likely to just nitpick it or like try and work out why it's not completely perfect or whatever's kind of wrong with it, you know. Um it's just I think it's healthy to try and you know detach from the obsessive kind of diagnostic brain that you can easily get if you work in food. Uh and just remember that stuff is supposed to be fun to eat and drink. Yeah. And and by the way, if anyone wants to see James's uh like videos on how to do like you do tons of like long, nice, in-depth, like good to watch videos on like how to tech how you like why you choose the techniques you do and how to do them.
So we won't go too into depth to that here because what's the point? They could just watch the stuff you've produced on that, right? Wouldn't that be easier? Right. Uh I think I think it would be easier.
That would be easier. Yeah. Uh I had one other question. Wait, so the way so you're telling me the paddle wheel flow meter that I have in my in my La San Marco is kind of a trash can flow meter. They're kind of garbage in general.
I mean, they're okay. They'll just be a a reasonable amount of variance in the output. You can measure it pretty easily and and see. Oh God, don't send me down a rabbit hole. Uh all right.
Uh okay. So let me get to uh some of the oh, one more thing. So when you first came out with um uh with the World Atlas of Coffee, it was pretty interesting in that you you go through some of the stuff, you know, uh about coffee in general, the history of everything, and then it's mainly like by by region, right? And then when you came out with the the the uh new edition, right? You there was new regions.
I mean, it's kind of interesting, like you came up in coffee in such an interesting time, such that you could be in the business for over 10 years, write a book with over a decade behind, you know, under under your belt, and then six years later or whatever it was, have to come out with a new edition. You want to talk about that. Yeah, I mean, I feel like it it's definitely been an incredibly interesting, like 10, 20 years for coffee with the whole boom of the specialty thing. And then I guess as as suddenly there's roasters everywhere looking for something interesting. I think it's it's it's led them to be more interested in unusual origins and sort of invest and and go hunting there for interesting stuff.
So um, I'm trying to think of a good example. I think like Uganda is a pretty good example, right? Huge coffee producer historically, but traditionally a lot of robuster or kind of commercial coffee. But in the last 10 years, out of nowhere there's been these kind of small amounts of these super interesting things starting to pop up. And I I think that means you should start to talk about a country in a book designed for people who are looking for some guidance in how to explore this big, confusing uh world of coffee where there's suddenly just just infinite choice.
You know, in the past, coffee was simple, you know what I mean? Like it wasn't complicated. Maybe you picked roast or something like that. But now there's like uh endless options for everything, and that's I think kind of confusing. So yeah, I'm trying to give some guidance, and that's why.
Right. Um I think that's a good thing. It's worthwhile including these kind of fringe places. That's the nice thing about the book, I guess, is that it's, you know, it's about trying to give people hooks into it rather than just throwing a wall of information in front of them and you know freaking them out. You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah. I I I think that I'm trying to do the opposite. Like um, you know, I've watched people try and buy coffee, try and order coffee in coffee shops and realize that it's like we're not we're we're really pumped on all the information we have. We want to tell you everything. And I think a lot of people kind of these days probably eye roll a little bit at the endless information that comes with a cup of coffee now.
But you know, to sort of make sense of that and try and answer the question of, okay, here's my money. Will I like this thing? That was the kind of bigger goal of the book and mostly what I do. Like I just want people to to buy and enjoy coffee and kind of see value in it in this thing that historically wasn't worth very much to people. It was like super cheap.
It was a lost leader in supermarkets. Um but it it has value, it needs to have value to be sustainable. So that's kind of the that's the idea behind most of what I do. I said I said I was gonna go right to the questions, but I'll ask one more of my own, sorry. Uh so do you think there's a big or do you see a big age difference in preference?
So like people, so like I'm, you know, 50, what am I, or 51 or whatever. Uh so people my age versus people who are younger in terms of acidity. I know a lot of people my age really don't like like a bright acidic cup. Not sour, I'm not saying sour, but like something with a lot of acidity. Uh whereas I feel like a lot of younger people kind of like like an acidic cup.
Do you see an age difference, or is it really just person to person? Yeah, I I think it's probably an age difference because it's kind of what you started drinking is your benchmark, right? And and I think it's rare that your preferences move too far from that initial benchmark without some effort, if that makes sense. So, you know, when you started drinking coffee, there wasn't a ton of super light-roasted, super acidic kind kind of coffees out there. Whereas if you started drinking coffee in the last five years, that's most of what you seem to have access to in the kind of nice coffee shop.
So yeah, I don't think it's age as much as the first coffee you drink and you kind of benchmark as coffee, good coffee. That's that's kind of gonna stay with you for a long time. All right, let me get to some people's questions so I don't get my. Oh, well, so I it's interesting. I grew up not liking coffee, even through college.
Uh to stay up, I would pound uh tea. And then um, I forget why I decided I was gonna make myself I was like, I I was 20 something, and I was like, I'm gonna make myself like this stuff, and if I'm gonna do it, it's going to be uh espresso black. That's it. You know what I mean? I'm and so like I just would go order a cup at Starbucks because people crap on them, but they brought a lot of people to coffee.
Let's give them the credit. They brought a lot of people to drinking milk, actually, right? They brought a lot of people to drinking milk, let's be honest. But like, so I would go to Starbucks and get the their incredibly over roasted, like incredibly bitter shots. They were still using real machines back then, I think though.
And uh, you know, this was in the late 90s or whatever. Uh and uh yeah, I would just drink one every day until I wanted it. Until I until I actually desired to have it. And now I can drink black drip as well, but I still am an espresso guy. You know what I mean?
Um that's how I I did it the same way. I started working in coffee and and and forced myself to like it. Wait, so why did you choose coffee if you had to force yourself to like it? Just because it was like kind of un uncharted or uh no, they paid weekly at the job that I got. I I needed the money.
Uh like it was that. Like I didn't want to work in coffee. It was just uh an opportunity. So, like uh one of the guys in my college band, one of my college bands, he the same way he took a job in coffee, wasn't a coffee guy, and he was also a heavy smoker, so he was already like a little bit kind of like twitchy, like a heavy smoker. And uh he he took to um drinking, he took to drinking coffee constantly on the job and eating because there was an ice cream shop next door.
They would trade him ice cream for coffee. So he would just set the machine on Turkish grind and grind coffee directly on his vanilla ice cream and eat it. The the man he was a jittery, jittery dude. A jittery, jittery dude. You know what I mean?
Nice guy. That's not that's not good. That's not healthy. That's not healthy. Uh all right, let's get to some questions so that I because people have been waiting for your questions for a long time.
All right, Jason Gray writes in. There's a question for you, James. Uh I'm working up a decent collection of manual coffee makers, uh less so espresso. So uh the Hario V60, is that the standard small one, or what is that one? Yeah, yeah, that's like the the most common little pour over cone.
Yeah. Uh the uh Yama Vacpot, the Aero Press, the Mocha Pot, the vintage atomic coffee maker, the double wall stainless steel French press, and a bripe. What's a bripe? Is it brick? Bripe is a coffee brew pipe.
It's bright, spripe. It's like uh it's like a copper pipe that you kind of cook coffee in and then drink a bit like a port sipper. Why would I want coffee to touch copper? In i for a long period of time. Uh is it tinned?
Right, right, right. Uh I assume it's coated. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
What's the word? Is it passivated? Is it something else? It's kind of fun. It's ridiculous, but it's it's really fun.
So I should try I should I should bripe one day. One day I should bripe. I'll get you a bripe. All right, all right. Oh, by the way, I noticed that uh on one I was on your one of your videos or was it in the book?
I can't remember, where you're actually like, listen, I don't drink mocha coffee, but if you're gonna do it, here's how I love it. That's what I love. You're like, let's look at this thing that people like and try to make it as good as we can, right? No? That was you, wasn't it?
I think it was. Right, right, right. Yeah, absolutely. That was probably yeah. People love their mocha pots.
People live their mocha pots. I don't really understand it. People love it. All right. So uh that was Jason Gray's list of oh, mocha pot's on the list.
There it is. Uh I read it. I didn't even see it. Uh the only item on my wish list is the Yama Slow Dripper Tower. What am I missing?
What is Jason missing with that list in terms of unique processes or fun brewing devices? I have room for one or two more before I run out of uh wife allocated shelf space. Stasia loves that. Uh P.S. She does not love that.
Uh uh if there's time for two questions, any idea on how to clean the atomic so it's safe to use. I got new seals, but should I be worried about the old aluminum or anything, or just run it a few times first? I don't know what that means. Is that the one with the like that looks like a juicer? Is the atomic the one that looks like a juicer where you pull the two handles down?
No, no, it's like uh it's like a moca pot but fancier. Like uh it's like a kind of weird, bulbous, pretty moca pot thing that kind of runs at slightly higher pressures, but not much. All right. So what what what we're doing is a mocha pot. What weirdo thing should Jason get?
He's got space one or two more before he runs into trouble with his uh spouse there. Uh I I would say I know he's not really sounding like he's into espresso, but I would probably throw like a lever espresso machine of some sort in there, like a little manual one that doesn't need power or anything like that. That would be fun. He has no cold brewing stuff, so yeah, uh uh like some sort of cold dripper, but I don't know. I'm personally not a huge fan of cold brewed coffee.
Um that's just me there. Some people like like it a lot more than I do. But yeah, I would say like a little fun manual lever espresso machine would be would be joyful and kind of beautiful. Something like a robot uh or like a flare or something like that would be fun. Oh, not like one of the older ones like a Pavoni or like uh what's the what's the actual spring small one?
I I actually own one of them. What the hell is it? It's uh I forget. Oh uh with the spring? Yeah, no, there was a small one made by a uh a spring fire um the Fire Mina?
No, it's made by a full-size company. It's it was like the lever pull version of like the Sylvia. Uh but it wasn't no it's older, much older. It's small, it's red, it's got like enamel and like a lot of chrome on it, like a small thing. Oh god, it has two separate Oh my god.
Uh I can't remember the name of it. I have one. It's still in parts. I I think I tried to sell it and I couldn't um whatever. Uh but I like lever.
I told you I like lever. Lever's great. But you don't I can the newer go with the new one, not with like a pavoni or something like Pavoni, that's the old one, right? Those ones don't work like a commercial lever. Like the Right.
Like they're direct pressure. So you you're you know, compressing a spring, you're compressing, you know, you're pushing down on the coffee with the lever. Um they're they're just kind of cheaper. They're kind of a little bit more fun. You can play with them a little bit more if you like to mess around with this stuff.
And you can get them that they don't need power, you just pour boiling water in them, and so they're a little bit cheaper and kind of fun to play with that way. Are you an enjoyer of the uh of the uh pressure gradient going down like a le like a spring would do, or no? Or do you not an enjoyer of that? Yeah, yeah, broadly, yes. I think that's you know, if you get into the whole pressure profiling thing, then yes, decreasing pressure toward the end of the shot, especially uh is broadly a good thing.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's why the old levers made such good shots. I mean, it's I think it's just a you know, that's the way they could produce pressure, and it just so happened it made something delicious, and that was lost in the era of pro cons. Procons are nice, they're easy, but whatever, okay. Uh and uh and on the atomic, you think he's good to go, safe to use? Yeah, it's just I mean, like uh people freak out about aluminium.
Um, and and I don't really think they should. Uh so I would just keep it clean, just scrub it clean. Uh people let mocker pots and things like that accumulate a kind of patina of dirt as if that's a good thing. And it's it's it's not a good thing. Yeah.
I I'm a big fan of just clean it properly, detergent, keep it clean, beautiful. Right. That's the answer. Don't dishwash aluminum. It's fine to use uh steel wool pads on um uh get rid of the calcium and uh salt deposits on the inside, they build up and that's nasty.
Okay. Uh pain MJ, uh to you, uh James. Uh do you have much interest in tea and will you ever produce content on it? I did search your YouTube channel for tea, but it seems to just bring up coffee videos, or perhaps he's interested in it, but there's not the same depth of technique, equipment, etc. when it comes to brewing tea, so it just doesn't fit your content.
So the question is do you feel a deep dive in your life on tea coming coming in any point? I I love tea, but it's I can't lose more of my life to stuff. Like I I can't I can't go down one more rabbit hole. I can't do it. I like tea, I want to drink good tea but I I kind of refuse to learn about it meaningfully so that's kind of my weird thing with tea and whiskey.
I like them both and I refuse to get weird about them because I just can't I can't do it. You know what? I think this is healthy. I think this is a healthy healthy attitude. Yeah.
Uh Koto writes saying good morning. I would love to hear uh James's thoughts on green coffee beans that are aged for an extended period of time. So um I guess like I guess there's other stuff happening besides just the old school monsooning uh that I I'm not aware of uh I never have had it but I've read about some roasters in Japan that use decades old aged green beans. Uh I would also love to hear uh your thoughts about Nell Drip brewers I which I don't know anything about so go go for it. Okay.
Uh I I think it's really just one cafe in uh Tokyo called Cafe Lambre. And uh I went there and um they they sort of age out these raw coffees and I chose the oldest coffee on the menu which was um from Columbia and picked in 1952 at the time which is like 2012 maybe so like it was old old and um I'm very you know that they're lovely people and they care deeply about what they do. It is the most terrifying and alarming cup of coffee I've ever consumed in my life. It was the moment where I took a sip and and you were reminded that your sense of taste is primarily there to stop you dying. And that was like every alarm going off in my body of like don't swallow this but it was really expensive and I'm there with like two hosts and I'm like oh wish it's it's it's pre-COVID so I can pass the cup around and be like no no you should try some you should definitely I I don't recommend it.
I I think I think coffee does not age well unless you're freezing it like really cold. Um it's kind of fun and interesting to taste, but I don't think coffee degrades quite notably in flavor, sweetness, complexity. It starts to taste like jute bags, even if you don't keep it in jute bags. So I'm not a big fan of of aging out green coffee. But I wouldn't it's not I wouldn't say it's good.
Uh it's interesting. It's not it's not necessarily good. You know, uh when I got into home roasting in like the early 2000s, uh, you know, back when everyone was using uh popcorn poppers, you know, um it was hard getting green beans. Most of the green beans you got were terrible, right? And back then, one of the selling points was that, oh, green beans, they last forever, right?
And I man, they don't. Oh my God. So like I at the very beginning of the pandemic, when I thought that maybe no one would ever deliver anything to New York again, I bought a bunch of green beans and got them shipped to me. And uh I found a pack that was two years old recently, and and it had been in in plastic, sealed. Oh my god, it was bad.
Oh my god. Just like you say, it tasted like a bag, it was flat, it tasted almost like baked, like a like a roast fault. You know what I mean? It was just a nightmare. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah. You can keep it in the freezer if your freezer runs really, really cold and it and it's okay. But um, yeah, it's it's just gonna age out and taste bad. Yeah. What do you think about the home roasting movement?
Do you like it or not like it? I mean, it's kind of broad question, but otherwise, like what do you think about home roasters? Uh as a people or uh equipment? Uh as a people. I think they're it's fun, right?
Anything that increases the uh anything. And it's super fun. Yeah, it's fun, right? It's not like they're gonna take your job away as a roast. As long as you're not No, no, no, no, no.
No, like it it it's it's enough of a pain that most people won't do it, you know. Like it's not it's fun, but it's it's kind of annoying at times as well. Um but yeah, I I I I think it's um as long as you're not trying to s like save money or something doing it, because that that just doesn't work out. But if you just want one more hobby and coffee is maybe not easy enough for you or you know, difficult enough already, then um then yeah, like level up your complexity and start roasting yourself. And um, it's a just a giant rabbit hole.
I would say of pain, but that's because it's you know, I have a kind of commercial mindset for that stuff. But um yeah, yeah, home roasting is huge fun. It's very satisfying too. And the house smells good, even if it doesn't really smell of coffee. Yeah, well, except for like if you live in an apartment like me, the the the oil settles all over everything.
It's kind of an and if you have a son who's nervous that the fire alarms are gonna go off, he now I don't know, it's it's it's hard in my house. Anyway, uh James, we're gonna go to a commercial break and we'll be right back with uh more cooking issues. Today's episode brought to you by Aura King Salmon, everybody's favorite fish. And today we have Michael Fabro from Oura King Salmon to talk to us more about how it's raised and bred. So I haven't really thought about this, but when you're raising wheat, you're raising just like a kind of a like a bunch of clones, right?
Or you know, of a specific variety, not a lot of uh diversity. So how do you make sure that there's gonna be enough diversity when you're raising these salmon? I'm not a wheat farmer, but I think a lot of the farming in the United States, they're actually buying the seeds. So one thing that's different about us is we have our own hatchery. So we're not buying eggs.
Definitely a lot of the aquaculture industry sources eggs from hatcheries, but we have our own hatchery, and we have for many decades. In fact, we're on our tenth generation of salmon. And this is traditional husbandry. This is selective breeding. You know, some of the traits we look for are fat content or skin color, flesh color.
But there's a lot of science behind it. You know, we have well over 200,000 individual broodstock salmon in our database that they can go to and look at the characteristics of each one. But it's really critical. Like controlling your own breeding and hatchery really helps you develop a very unique salmon in the end. Awesome.
Orican salmon, everybody's favorite fish. And we're back. So we have a caller, but before we do, Jordan wants to know what's your guilty pleasure at a coffee shop, uh, James. There is no guilty pleasure. That's not a thing.
I like the cappuccino just fine. Oh my god, I love that. Why be guilty about what you're drinking, right? Oh, nice. Uh, there's no I have no kills.
I love it. That's the correct answer, everyone, for everything in life. Uh we're back with uh James Hoffman, uh talking coffee. And we have a caller. Caller, you're on the air.
Hi, James. Uh, my name is Ray in New York City. Uh immensely grateful for uh all the information on coffee that you put out there. I have a quick question about commercial roasting uh on a 15 or 20 kilo. How do you mitigate uh smoke and smell to keep your neighbors happy um without going full blast on a uh on a um afterburner?
I've seen vortex out there, but the internet has very mixed reviews on it. Um I just want to get your thoughts. Sure. Um okay. Treating smoke is one of the most frustrating and irritating parts of coffee roasting.
So like there's not there's no good answers to this question. There are some like um sort of hybrid systems that do like a ton of filtration, um, like a little bit of HEPA, some other particular stuff, and then uh like a little bit of I think catalytic uh oxidizers in there too. I think Probat makes a system that's relatively small for like up to 15 kilos. Um you've seen some people uh use like um misting systems and those kind of stuff to try and just like use water in the air to capture stuff and and sort of wash it away. None of it really works as well as afterburners do, and afterburners are the least elegant solution to a problem in history.
In that I have some smoke, the answer is just to burn the smoke and then it's gone. Um they're ultimately net beneficial to the environment, which is sort of depressing, uh compared to just letting the smoke go. But um, yeah, this there's honestly, sadly, it's just not that many options out there still. Um we did try electrostatic precipitators at one point, um, where you sort of pass the smoke through these charged plates. They they will take a little bit of the sort of particulate out, but you'll still get a lot of aroma that way.
So there's not a good answer to this question still. Until ultimately, if you want to fix the problem, it's an afterburner. At home I use a fake afterburner. Yeah. You do?
Well, when I'm I'm doing 400 grams, so it's nothing, right? So I just use one of my so many torches because of my torch business, and I just hold a torch in front of the thing uh while it's going and it eats all the smoke. Otherwise, all my alarms would go off because my ventilation's not as good as it was in my last apartment. Anyway. Uh as you say, not elegant.
Um T Dubs asks, uh, question Have you ever tried a staccato espresso shot where the fine, mid and coarse grounds are separated and then layered? Is there a way to get a similar extraction without all the sifting equipment? And is there a reason to do so? Um I have tried them. I I kind of I they're these kind of weird experimental espresso things that people do are really interesting as a kind of one-off thing, but part of my I'm just not that interested in them in a bigger way because they're just so wildly impractical because you you can't do it without the sifting equipment.
And, you know, sifting anything is miserable as an experience, even if you get the little machines that do it. So um if you have someone with a bunch of sieves, you should totally just try it as a one-off. But no, you can't really replicate it, I don't think any other way. And I and I don't think it's worth the effort of doing it outside of a single, huh, how interesting kind of moment. And also who makes a sieve stack that can accurately do like 18 grams and then get it all back.
There is one in coffee and they do like a put like like 10 sieve sizes and stuff. Um it it it it works okay, but obviously it's it's you know, sieving is hard. Sifting is hard. Yeah. Uh and doing it by hand is like not not super effective, but it's kind of okay.
Yeah, I'm with you on sifting in general. Not with coffee because I haven't tried it, but in general. Uh misplaced enthusiasm asks, uh uh you've tried many foods and drinks that contain coffee that should not have. Is there anything that you've thought, damn, this would be good with coffee in it? Uh also I've seen many applications of specialty coffee.
Uh have you seen many applications of specialty coffee in food? I imagine some interesting fermentations could be really good in something traditional like chocolate. I I'm kind of curious on your thoughts on this one too, Dave. But I I think coffee is is mostly a very difficult and ugly flavor to work with. And outside of, you know, it goes really well with dairy because that mitigates the bitterness.
Sugar is always friends with that, but it kind of limits the number of foods that it truly works well with. You know, sometimes we have a bunch of Maillard crossover that can be like a a nice flavor pairing, but again, that's you know, i i it's nothing new or that interesting. Um, you know, I think most applications of coffee and other stuff don't work. I think most coffee beers are terrible. I think most coffee, you know, uh things that aren't very obvious.
Uh, you know, it's fine in a dessert or whatever, but like most other applications, I just think it's a very ugly flavor when you put it up next to sort of more interesting things. Yeah, I don't have I don't I've never had good luck with it. I like coffee a lot. I don't like coffee flavored things very much. How did coffee or espresso rubbed steaks ever become a thing?
Coffee what? Rubbed steak. Oh coffee or espresso rub steak. I hate it. I think that's gross.
Well, you know, like you say, the traditional, like you throw a shot of a uh of espresso into a cake mix, it helps sometimes, you know what I mean? It's not even really present, it's just there to add a little bit of bitterness in the back of something or you know, some richness or in a in a chocolate situation. But yeah, I don't have anything good because I don't use it. I don't ever do that. Uh definitely don't dump Turkish grinds on your vanilla ice cream and and be like, you know, the lead singer of my band.
Definitely don't do that. Please don't do that to yourself. Um Matthew Solomon writes in, hey James, I'm an American transplant in Istanbul. I'm curious what, if any, your experience has been with Turkish coffee. Specifically, coffee is hugely popular here, uh, as is Turkish coffee, but they're mostly completely separate worlds.
I've seen a few special specialty shops offering uh specialty Turkish coffee, but it's very uncommon. Uh grinding a fresh to order is unheard of because there's that one store in Istanbul that everyone waits in that huge line to buy the stuff out of the grinders, right? It's kind of cool. You should go to that store if you're ever there. Uh, but it's very uncommon.
Grinding Turkish coffee, fresh to order uh in a coffee shop. It's unheard of, so it seems like there's a huge untapped world here to explore. I I'm surprised I don't see more people doing it. Uh as an side, Matthew likes it in in in cocktails. And we have another person who says hit all the Turkish stuff right away because we because we're gonna run out of time all the way.
This is from Michael J.K. My family's Lebanese and it always drank the uh Arabic Turkish style of coffee. The Greeks call it Greek coffee, by the way. Did you know that? After years of going down the rabbit hole of uh third wave coffee, I was wondering if anyone in the space has attempted a more modern take on this old brewing method.
And I will add for myself that uh I love that stuff and I'm terrible at making it. I even tried to do a sand uh thing once with my you know e brick, and I can't get a good, I can't make a real good cup of Turkish slash Greek coffee. So what are your thoughts, James? Uh I was um initially quite skeptical. I think I held that, you know, the the Turkish coffee that I'd had in the sort of first 15 years of working in coffee was mostly very traditional and not necessarily to my taste that much.
But then there's uh there's a shop in Berlin called Ben Rahim, and they do specialty Turkish coffee, and and uh they blew my mind. Like it was some of the best coffee I've uh I've had in like years. Like it was so good. Um and so I I kind of wrote down a bunch of notes of how they do stuff, and I was gonna, you know, go and learn a bit more, and then the pandemic happened, so it kind of got shelled for me. So uh it can be really good.
It's really simple. Um, you know, the the temperature piece is really, really, really important. Um kind of where you start and where you end up and all that kind of stuff. Um they were starting at like 60 Celsius as their kind of beginning point and heating from there quite gently. Uh but it can be really good.
And I and I it's definitely something I want to get into because I I had my mind blown by that shop. It was just so vibrant and kind of interesting and strong, but not like overwhelming. It was it was really good. So it's definitely got huge potential to be very delicious with kind of modern coffee. And also like the ritual of it's so amazing, you know, like uh the first rise, the second rise, the whole thing.
It's a kind of an amazing ritual. And then I and I've had it where I've loved it. I had it in Greece actually. I loved it. One of the well, like I think he was a world uh barista champion at one point.
I forget his name. I was we were Nastasi and I were at his coffee shop and he he made it for me. And I was like, the whole thing is lovely if it's great and it can be great. So like I look forward to you, you know, now that the pandemic is, you know, uh hopefully getting more manageable. I look forward to you producing some content on that.
Um I think it definitely is a it's high on the list. Yeah, good. Uh Devin Patel writes in coming from uh being a world barista champion, which uh uh faces the industry to a cafe roaster and now having a YouTube channel uh facing almost exclusively the home enthusiast slash user, uh we can see some of the struggle that manufacturers catering to the home enthusiast market have to deal with. Uh straggling uh the imaginary line uh between or was it st uh whatever straddling the imaginary line between equipment made for a professional and as a hobby hobbyist with the need to create distinction uh between the two. As a test and reviewer of both equipment made for the home and work markets, uh, why do you think equipment made for home enthusiasts is not made with the durability that the professional ones uh have and how or can how how can it or should it change?
This is I mean it it's just the the the nature of the market, right? Like a a domestic machine will be durable enough to last under normal usage to just past its warranty date and maybe a little bit longer, because that's what it needs to do to hit the lowest possible price to get as many people to buy it as possible. Whereas commercial stuff is just gonna have a rougher time, and so the build is is totally different. So I I think it's just the nature of the the beast in a way, and that's probably true of most equipment, be it kitchen equipment or coffee equipment or anything else. Except except refrigerators.
Commercial refrigerators break every day and home ones don't. That's the one thing that's flipped. Yeah, but they're open like 200 times a day, right? Like they're just constantly fighting. Listen, don't buy into their marketing.
Don't buy into those people telling you, listen, why is your commercial fridge so damn loud? It that they suck. Commercial refrigeration is by and large just blows and everyone's just used to paying, you know, thousands of dollars a year to have some Jocomo show up and fix it for you. I think it's what it is. I don't know.
Whatever. That's also true. Yeah. Yeah. Uh and Devin has a second question for you, quick one.
Uh, how many hand towels is appropriate to have behind the bar? I I don't know. Like uh that's a that's a very open question. Well, are you a miser? Are you a hand tell miser?
Are you are you a profligate? No, no, but I like you. But you're you've got to look like you're organized, not like you're drowning in hand towel chaos where everything is apparently a mess and leaking. Like you have enough that you're, you know, stuff is clean, like half a dozen is fine, but then you know a big stack behind you or whatever. Looks like you've got a places and there's just clothes everywhere, and that just that just gets a bit gets a bit much.
Well, this is this is what access to it, you know. This is funny. This is funny. Okay, okay. So most baristas consider themselves more front-of-house style people, right?
Back of house style people get so anal about hand towel usage. I mean, crazy, because like the chef is it's usually the chef who has to pay the linen bills. And so they know that if they let people on the line use hand towels, that all of a sudden they're gonna spend all of their money on hand towels. So, like the the amount of yelling that happens if you waste hand towels or like don't use your hand towels properly in a kitchen situation is like so like when you're like half a dozen, like half a dozen, um spendi spendi. You know what I mean?
It's like different attitude, you know? Well, I I'm kind of being open on the definition of towels. I can't believe that's a sentence I just said. But like, you know, like if we're talking about a towel for the steam wand, a towel for like the bench or towel for the grinder, each grinder, all that kind of stuff. Like there's a lot of towels necessary for good coffee, but not like an insane amount.
Yeah, I like how you went Bill Clinton on the def like what meaning of is is on paper towels. Strong. Um Josh Kuhn. What? Josh Kuhn writes in, uh I recently visited a large city in the southwestern United States.
Some of the supposedly good coffee places served me uh an Americano so acidic and astringent that it was undrinkable, and I dumped it. Uh I was off to also gifted some medium, in quotes, roasted beans from a local roaster. This kind of goes to what we were talking about before, that were so under roasted that I could barely grind them with a Lito. Oh my god, it's so hard to roast beans that have that are uh that are low roasted. Oh my God.
You know the brevel grinders won't even work. The clutches won't work. They'll they'll think that they've hit a rock if you do like a lighter roast. Uh I don't know if you've had that experience. Anyway, these beans produced a similarly undrinkable coffee.
Were these just terrible coffee producers? Or do people actually like coffee like this, which I can't believe. Thanks, uh Joshua from North Dakota. Uh by the way, you should be nice to him. He's a hunter.
If you get in good with him, maybe someday you'll send you some uh some you know, some meat. It's been very good. Yeah. Some meat. Uh um, so I I would say people do like coffee like this.
People do like very light roasted coffee. Um, but uh but I think it's just it's it's the problem is uh historically the you know, the last 10 years that's been presented as somehow like better or superior. Whereas I feel like these different schools of coffee can totally live side by side. And I think it's it's just trying to work out before you order does this coffee shop serve a style of coffee that I like or not? You know what I mean?
And that way, you know, have a look at the beans. If they don't look how you expect coffee beans to look, you're just gonna have a bad time. And and you know, uh other people will have a great time. So yeah, I I I get the frustration in that you know, this this new style of coffee seems to be more common suddenly, especially amongst independent businesses if you don't want to go to like a a corporate chain or whatever. But um, yeah, I uh you know, uh I I think coffee can definitely be too light and it tastes of like grass and straw and it's not it's not good.
Yeah, that's it. But um and and that definitely was a thing for a while where there was just super light roasts kind of everywhere and they were just I I thought kind of not fun. Uh but no, I think people do prefer some people definitely prefer lighter roasted coffee, uh which is, you know, if you if you didn't have acidity in your coffee for most of your life, then you know, these kind of light roasts have so much that it's weird, you know what I mean? It's like something is wrong that there's this much acid in this drink, right? That never usually has any acidity.
So I think that's just the moment of like, what is this? This is not coffee. Well, are people typically doing it with beans that have some of the fruitier notes to try to make it more like you're drinking a cup of fruit instead of a coffee, like some of the more blueberry things, or people more doing these light roasts on on beans that are kind of classically high in acid, like uh like uh African and and and high you know high altitude uh you know beans from I think places like Africa, Ethiopia, and what is that mainly what they're doing it to? Are they doing it to places that typically would be on kind of a more of a dark, more of a sweet, more of a full bodied place? I would say that they're doing it to kind of everything because the the sort of the the idea, the philosophy behind it is the the darker you roast something, the more you'll kind of roast out the origin characteristics, the kind of taste of place and replace them with kind of the more generic, kind of roasty flavors, right?
And um that's broadly that's broadly true, but uh I think that gets taken to extremes sometimes as well, where people are roasting so light to try and preserve these flavors that they never really develop them in the first place either. So um, but you know, that's the kind of idea. It's it's all about kind of taste of place in a way, or or kind of preserving the unique characteristics of that farm's coffee or that co-op's coffee. That's the kind of that's the the philosophy. Right.
And uh well, let's say I I'm there's so many questions I want to ask, but I got to get through the ones that uh the people asked because like I'm curious, like so much has changed in the in the world of pr of producers now, where you get a lot of producers who are taking much finer control over the processing, fermenting, you know, washing or not, however they they're doing it, dry or not, of their coffee. And has that just been a hundred percent net positive for the industry? It has to be, right? That that the producers are taking so much care. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's it's good for the consumer.
There's way more variety and choice, and coffee's flavor has a much broader spectrum than ever now. Um and yeah, I think broadly speaking, as well, coffee as a whole is kind of getting better. Like more producers are kind of focusing on ripeness and evenness in the fruit, and people are willing to spend the money necessary to to you know incur the additional costs of of growing and harvesting ripe fruit. Like it's it's just you know, fruit harvesting is miserable, especially when it's done by hand on the side of a steep hill, you know, uh a few thousand feet up. Um so yeah, it it's definitely net positive.
Uh I think there's some weird and wacky stuff going on too, but that's that's inevitable. Um but yeah, it's it's a it's a very good thing. I mean, what do you think there's still a place for the like the huge like countrywide cooperatives like uh like what Columbia did, where like it obviously helped a lot of people for a long time, but then really held back a lot of Colombian farmers from getting to that next level and specialty. Is there still a place for that? Is it still necessary?
Does it need to move the way that stuff's done or no? I I don't think so. I think um, you know, we we have a kind of bleak future in terms of supply and demand uh with kind of climate change and stuff coming in. Um so you know, that's sort of that's gonna impact prices in a whole other way. And ultimately money is the big root of all of this, like what would get the producer the most money for the work that they're gonna do.
Uh and and these days keeping it traceable, keeping it separate i i is typically a way to earn more money than kind of lumping it into like a national sort of buying program that Columbia used to have. Yeah. Uh well, interesting you say about climate change, because I don't think we have any questions on that. So I'll I'll I'll hit it to you is that you've done a bunch of interesting videos on non uh Arabica uh coffees that uh taste like some of them which taste like Arabica and grow in like lower, hotter climes. You wanna do you really see a future in that?
I mean, you were you were very hesitant. You didn't want to say, hey, this is a solution, don't worry about climate change, let's just grow this stuff. But you you said that it might make an interesting cup of coffee, right? You want to talk about that? Yeah, yeah.
There's this old species of coffee called stenophila um that they wrote about in like the 1930s as being more delicious than arabica. A Eucharce wrote about it in all about coffee. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, he would have heard it from someone else.
Like his whole book is like secondhand information. Um, an anti-Uchers pool. Oh, snap. Okay. I mean, it's fine.
It's a fine book. Oh my god. That was a lot of received information on his part. I mean, he lived mainly in New York, right? I mean, he he he was in New York at the coffee thing, and he also did tea.
So he, you know, he went down two rabbit holes, but you say because he was an aggregator. I've never heard anyone go down on euchers like that, so I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Uh it's I mean, it's a fun book. It's a fun book.
But I mean, like, he's so desperate for coffee to be an American thing that he's trying to like cram it on the first boats from England and stuff. Anyway, um off topic. So Stenophila uh grows at much lower altitudes, can tolerate like six, seven degrees Celsius higher temperatures than Arabica, which is like a lot. Um, but it it's a lower yielding, which is why everyone stopped growing it in the 1940s. But they found some, they thought it was extinct and they found some again.
And yeah, it it it sort of has the genetic potential to create a more climate resilient coffee where you don't necessarily have to breed away in a kind of breeding program the negative flavors. So like Robusta is is more climate resilient, but most people prefer the taste of Arabica. And you've got to work really hard to kind of reduce the bitterness or the kind of rubbery harshness of Robusta uh to to kind of have it be more palatable. Well, and to your point, even when you get rid of that, it's not interesting, right? Though that's the other thing about Rob Robusta is that even when you get rid of that kind of burnt rubber action that it it can have, you're like it's just neutral.
And why would you want just neutral, right? I mean, you know, the the answer to that sadly is that so we still have some sort of coffee to drink. Um but you know, stenophila represents this interesting opportunity. The the problem is that just not enough people are freaking out yet, and so not enough people are funding it. So research is a little slow.
And what was that other variety, like parent variety that you tried that someone gathered like enough beans that you were able to like roast like a little like a handful of it and make a cup of coffee and your thing was like that was that was it. Oh, that was a stenophyllla? That was stenophila. Wasn't there another variety of things? Yeah.
There was a kind of uh like a parent family of um Arabica, but like a weird uh cluster of varieties in Yemen that they're called Yemenia that was kind of halfway between the two, so it was you know growing in a much more difficult environment, tasting very good, um, but just interesting as a kind of fresh pool of genetic material. Because most Arabica coffee really stems from one or two varieties, and so we're not quite as, you know, uh screwed as bananas, but we're we're not in a great place in terms of like uh genetic diversity. So, you know, if if a disease comes for coffee, it's just gonna take all of coffee out because there's just a lack of that that sort of diversity. Um so this was interesting in that it was kind of a fresh injection of genetics potentially into what we're typically consuming or or growing, sorry, all around the world. All right.
Um because the problem, right, with climate change, we all know the problems, but with coffee specifically, there's only so far you can go up the mountain, right? Before you can't anymore, no? Right. And there's a lot less mountain the further up you go. So yeah.
Uh Miguel Kunz writes, uh I'm a barista working on a semi-auto two-group Linnea classic espresso machine. Thus I have no ability for controlling pre-infusion, pressure profiles, etc. What tips do you have for getting the best out of this machine? Uh I believe uh uh I believe this plus uh a Maser Jolly is a super common setup for cafes in the United States. Thanks for the consistently high quality coffee info and entertainment.
It's not it's not a bad setup at all. Um, you know, I would obsess a little bit on the whole weighing the the shots piece, like uh, you know, pay real attention to the recipe. Espresso is just such a fussy thing when it comes to recipes. Aside from that, I wouldn't freak out about the pressure stuff or or pressure profiling or pre-infusion too much. Um and and probably not that the Maz is a bad grinder, but you know, upgrading the grinder would be the next kind of thing I would look at to to kind of getting better espresso.
But in terms of squeezing the most out of this, a lot of measurement is kind of the answer. What about how fidgety are you with uh distribution and tamping? Different if I'm making it for just me versus making it for hundreds of people a day. If it's just me, I'm going the whole hog. Like a little paper filter disc at the bottom of the basket makes a massive improvement.
I definitely recommend that. Uh and then I have like the little needle distribution tool, which I've kind of become a big fan of, where you kind of um the kind of acupuncture needles stuck into something and you kind of stir the clumps out of the coffee before you tamp it. Uh that I think is very helpful for most people at home. It's not super practical in a kind of cafe environment. What do you think?
So that's the kind of the line I would draw there. Right. What do you think of the weird for fast cafe stuff, like the weird triangular distribution thing on the flip side of the tamper where you like do that one side distributes and the other side tamps? Uh I'm not I'm not a huge fan of it. I think I don't think they're necessarily detrimental, but I don't think they're a particularly big improvement on on not doing them.
So um I'm not I'm not a huge lover of them. They're fine. I'm not gonna say they're bad, but they're just not a huge improvement. I still have my Reg Barber that I bought 25 years ago, so that's me. Okay.
Uh Prashan Kanesh writes in uh do you have any recommendations for a first electric coffee bean grinder? Do you re of the problem? Okay, uh Prashan has not said what kind of coffee he's interested in, so we're gonna have to you're gonna have to do a couple of things here, right? So uh first electric coffee bean grinder, do you recommend burr versus blade? I currently own a Hario manual grinder, so Prashant's used to that style of grinder, right?
Uh but it takes too long to grind coffee in the morning. So for someone who likes the Hario, but it takes too long to grind in the morning. What would you say? And I guess give me two price points. Give me a crazy one and give me a like uh, you know.
And not. Okay. The easy one is like the the the lower price point, it's still high because it's you know, it's still a hundred and something dollars. But like uh the entry-level Barazzo Encore, I think is a good starting point. Like that's a great grinder.
They seem like a good company. It's good value for money. They seem like a good company. They're a good company. And they're good people, good support.
I think I think they're great value for money. There's loads of secondhand ones, and I think the burrs are gonna be fine. And as long as it sort of works fine, you know, cleaning one up and and using that is not a bad thing to do at all. Uh and that's at like 150, 160 bucks, I think, brand new. Is it which now which model is that?
Is that one of their low retention ones or no? That's just uh the I think it's the Encore, which is their kind of entry-level burr grinder. It'll go down to like um nearly mock a pot fine, uh, but not espresso. Um so yeah, that would be that I think that's that's uh no one else is really super competitive in that section of the market. Uh so that's why I think it's just an easier recommendation.
Yeah, my brother-in-law Wiley uses their stuff, but he has one of their you know much nicer zero retention things. Anyway, okay. Mark uh Stegelman rights. Uh I have a Gogia classic US model from 2017 with no PID control. I'm wondering if there's any pre uh if any of the pre-infusion hacks like opening up the steam valve for a few seconds at the start or turning off the brew button and flipping it off for a few seconds uh actually work.
Thanks. What are your thoughts on these uh hacks on the uh on the Gagia? Yeah, don't turn the pump on and off and on again. That's not good for the puck. The the Steam Wand hack isn't a bad one though, so that's worth doing.
And the one mod I would recommend is changing out the over pressure valve spring on the gadget to something a little lower, like a six-bar spring, that will definitely improve the coffee. Nice. Uh do people still buy the way we get the last question from Sean Mayo. Any brewing method has a number of dimensions that affect the final product grind, temperature, time, water ratio. For the home brewer, do you have a priority order for which variables to play around with first?
Uh or uh versus just setting to a default and ignoring. What's your priority on here? Yeah, I try and keep my ratio. Yeah, yeah. I I I would keep as many things fixed as possible.
So like dose in like how much water I'm using, all of that stuff I keep fixed, and just really adjust with grind. Like that's my primary thing to mess around with flavor and extraction with. So that's that's the number one thing to change the flavor of the coffee and to improve or or kind of fix any issues. Alright, sorry, one more last. Jacob P wants to know is uh there any point in centrifugion coffee or is it too fussy?
From my perspective, I think it can be fun with cold brew applications to force stuff through, but I don't know what else people are using centrifuges for. Too fussy, anything interesting with centrifuges? Uh if you spin it fast enough, you can spin the oil fraction out, and it's truly disgusting. Don't don't eat that or drink it, or whatever it would be. No, it's not that useful.
I I would say like uh it's interesting to kind of clarify it a little bit, but um yeah, it it's not it's not that useful. All right, well, James, thanks so much for coming on. We really had a good time, and uh, you know, maybe someday you'll come back on again. Uh I appreciate it. I hope so.
Thanks for having me. Thank you. Cooking issues.
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