2024 the best way to make coffee review

Price: $19.99 - $11.99
(as of Nov 19, 2024 14:07:17 UTC - Details)

World-leading coffee expert and best-selling author of The World Atlas of Coffee shows you how to make barista-level coffee at home

We all expect to be able to buy an excellent cup of coffee from the many brilliant coffee shops available. But what about the coffee we make at home? Shouldn't that be just as good?

James Hoffmann is an entrepreneur and the international name in coffee, combining expert-level knowledge with a wonderful ability to communicate it. James runs Square Mile Coffee, as well as creating extremely informative, and popular, coffee and equipment reviews for his YouTube and Instagram channels. In his latest book he demonstrates everything you need to know to make consistently excellent coffee at home, including: what equipment is worth buying, and what isn't; how to grind coffee; the basics of brewing for all major equipment (cafetiere, aeropress, stovetop etc); understanding coffee drinks, from the cortado to latte and the perfect espresso.

From the Publisher

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mitchell Beazley (October 4, 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1784727245
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1784727246
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.28 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.2 x 1 x 8.6 inches
Reviewer: Noe
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great gift!
Review: Great book! beautiful illustrations, photography and didactic content. Comprehensive coffee book for coffee aficionados. I gifted to my sister and she loves it.

Reviewer: Ellyn S.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Very worthwhile/Update
Review: Thinking of giving these as gifts. I knew most of what's included here, but big fan of James Hoffman. (His numerous videos & have his other book on Kindle). So I'm prejudiced in his favor. Good for friends that buy espresso machines, and think they can use a blade grinder..Ouch!! The grinder quality is sooo much more important than the espresso machine. I'm tempted to tell them to get a super automatic if they can afford one, but then worried they'll ruin it with oily or flavored beans. So great for those caught up in the espresso "mania", without much knowledge. Comprehensive. Update: I'm totally not doing justice to this book as it encompasses a lot more than espresso. How to buy, how to use a French press, iced coffee and cold brew, much more. Very useful, even for those of us that think we know most about making coffee at home.

Reviewer: MarkM007
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Author is an expert on the subject
Review: If you don’t know James Hoffman, you owe it to yourself to visit YouTube and check out his videos. I consider him “Mr. Coffee.” The man lives and breathes coffee, especially espresso. I have at least a dozen books about coffee. Never-the-less when I learned Hoffmann wrote this book I immediately bought it. It is an easy read and covers everything someone needs to know about brewing a decent cup of Joe no matter what method you use. It is loaded with details, facts, and photos that give you a good understanding and appreciation for the beverage we all love. I also believe it would be a wonderful gift for loved ones and friends.

Reviewer: wideopenseas
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Just what I needed to make great coffee!
Review: I love when books give you the information you want without lots of fluff and filler. This is one of those great books! How much coffee, how to grind, what kind, what temperature, best water to use, etc... everything you need to know. Bam!

Reviewer: James Carter
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A coffee geek gives you his thoughts on how to buy and brew good coffee
Review: Coffee has moved beyond being a luxury to being an essential part of daily life for many of us, but we often settle for lackluster sometimes downright unpleasant cups of coffee at home…just whatever comes out of the machine is what we get. This book promises to provide you insights that will up your coffee skills to have you brewing better coffees, espressos and iced coffees. There is information on buying the best beans, how to grind the coffee, how to brew pour overs, automatic coffees, espressos, iced coffees and cold brews as well as how to buy and maintain the equipment for each. What I find most useful about the book is the concepts rather than the details, because at times his details are inconsistent or conflicting. But the big ideas help you understand what is going on in the brew, which will allow you to experiment and adjust your coffee in an informed way that should have you enjoying better coffee at home consistently. He even includes a section on how to taste coffee. Overall its a worthwhile read, but at times it is pretentious or overly precious about things and even contradicts itself on occasion. So part of what you learn will be coffee fact and part might fall in the realm of coffee mythology, and it will be up to you to do a little testing to see what works and what doesn’t.Here are some things I learned:* Coffee generates a lot of CO2 gas when roasted (10L/kg beans), and the residual CO2 carried by the roasted bean affects the brew with newly roasted coffee having too much CO2 to make a good espresso (gas coming out of the grounds will make water extraction less efficient).* Fresh roasted coffee should be aged for 1 week prior to brewing, to allow CO2 gas to escape.* The staler coffee is the easier it is to brew or extract, but the worse the flavor profile is* Blooming coffee is not only about getting volatile oils to the surface of the grounds, but also to allow CO2 gas to escape so that the water extraction can be more efficient.* Crema is formed from trapped CO2 in the grounds* Apparently its unfashionable for coffee companies to advertise the roast level of their coffee?* Longer roasts (darker) will increase solubility which in general increases strength of flavor. The bitterness increases but the acidity decreases as roast time increases.* Starbucks lightest roast (blonde) is darker than anything most specialty roasters would sell* Three keys to coffee palate: acidity, fruity flavors, and texture* Plastic pour-over coffee brewers are the cheapest but also beat glass and metal when it comes to heat retention.* There are five taste sensations (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami) but there are other tastes experienced such as astringency, piquancy, spicy heat, and metallic.* There’s something called “swallow breath” where after you swallow you instinctively blow a little air in your nose which allows you to better perceive flavor by involving the olfactory sense.* The perception of flavor involves sequential activation of the taste receptors followed by the olfactory receptors so that the input from the taste receptor can then prime the olfactory sense to more readily discriminate a certain category, like detecting citric acid on the tongue might prime the olfactory sense to more readily pick out citrus-like aromas.* Your perception of flavor is best when the thing you are tasting is closer to body temperature* You don’t plunge the french press to the bottom of the carafe.* Bitterness of an espresso gets more pronounced upon chilling and upon dilution.* Surprised to learn Hoffman doesn’t own an espresso machineHere are some things I didn’t like:* Can be a little rambling* Sometimes comes across as snobbish, elitist or preachy like going off on coffee varieties without really explaining any meaningful context so it hits as “look how smart I am” rather than “here is something useful to know” or by always suggesting the buyer should spend more, for their coffee or their gear, or lecturing about how you shouldn’t use bottled water (anyone here from Flint Michigan or Jackson Mississippi agree?, or maybe you have a high arsenic well in India?)* Photos are uninspiring at best* No references provided, the information is just the word of a coffee guru* British spellings* He offers a recipe for making water, which seems to be an extreme level of preciousness for brewing coffee. 2.45g Epsom salts and 1.68g baking soda per liter of distilled water, in case you are wondering.* A good bit of filler, like several paragraphs of discussion of “smart scales” with neither a recommendation for using them or an indication of what possible you could ever need a Wi-Fi enabled coffee scale for.* You can spend “hundreds or thousands” on a hand grinder* The part of the book dedicated to gear you need for brewing coffee does not talk at all about coffee or espresso makers at all, saving that discussion for the “how to brew coffee section” which is organizationally a bit awkward* Step by step brewing instruction section is formatted oddly on kindle. The overview section doesn’t list brew times, and the detailed section has the steps numbered in both the photo and the instruction so each number appears double.* V60 instructions between pour 1 and pour 2 don’t specify at what point pour 2 starts, do you let pour 1 completely clear, or do you add pour two as soon as there is enough room?* Advice sometimes seems arbitrary, for instance the v60 and the Melitta Bentz are treated as essentially the same with respect to how you brew coffee in them, but he recommends a plastic v60 because of the “thermal retention” but for the Melitta Bentz he recommends ceramic because the plastic doesn’t ‘feel delightful to own’ even if the ‘thermal retention’ is better on plastic.* There are three flat bottom filter based units discussed, two of them so similar there is no difference in the brewing instructions, but there is no discussion at all about the Vietnamese Phin system.* He claims that the character of the chemex brew is dependent upon the filter, but in my experience switching to a metal reusable filter for this system I found it makes no real difference in quality at least for my taste.* In his iced coffee section he suggests that 1/3 of the water should be account for by ice so that you only brew with 2/3 the normal amount, but in the actual recipe he uses 2/5 of the normal water amount as ice.* His decision not to include a cold brew coffee recipe is weak given that he didn’t want to “steal” somebody else’s recipe, as if his methods for brewing some other kind of coffee are somehow highly innovative and unique to him. For reference he tells you how to use an automatic coffee maker elsewhere in this book. Weak. In case anyone wants a recipe the following one is from The NY Times Essential cookbook (newest edition blue cover): 1/3 cup ground coffee ground medium coarse, 1 1/2 cups cold water or to taste, milk for serving (optional). To brew: stir together the coffee and cold water in a jar, cover and let stand at room temperature overnight of or for 12 hours. Strain the brewed coffee through a filter, fine mesh serve or a sieve lined with cheese cloth. To serve, fill two glasses with ice, divide the coffee concentrate between them, add water to the desired dilution and stir. If desired add milk.Neutral observations:*He says you should want to pay more for you coffee for fair trade and sustainability and avoid big brands that work to minimize price. A noble sentiment which may be spoken from a position of privilege.* 40% of the book is making espresso, 60% is everything elsePossible errors:* The graph of water hardness/alkalinity lists “ppm CaCO3” as units for both x and Y axis.* He claims distilled water is more “corrosive” to your coffee brewing equipment than soft water, without giving any evidence or rationale how that would be possible.* Essentials section: “Scales accurate to 0.0i g, where the last “digit” should be 1 not “i”, recurring error. Is this a British thing?* When giving ranges of water temperatures for different roasts of coffee, the values he gives in the text do not match those he gives in the inset chart. For instance medium roasts are to be brewed with 90-95C water in text and 85-95C in the figure; dark roasts are to be brewed at 80-90C in the text and 80-85C in the figure. Assuming both are discussing kettle water temperature as specified in the text, figure makes no specification.* Claims that “plastic has better heat retention than metal” seems dubious. If you’ve ever unloaded a hot dishwasher and had wet plastic items that were cool to the touch but the metal items were dry and so hot they burned your hand, you’ll know plastic probably does not have better heat retention. It may be a better insulator? IDK* “Across its different range” should probably be “ranges” in the V60 section* Text for V60 brewing table says “IMPORTANT: These numbers are the **total cumulative weights, not individual pours” but the table actually provides both per pour weight and cumulative weight.* In how to brew with the Clever Dripper section: “Clever do offer a few variations of their brewer, but I’d just stick with the classic choice” maybe this is correct grammar but it sounds clumsy and could be avoided by structuring the idea differently eg “There are a few different models of the Clever dripper but I would just stick with the classic choice”* Typo: espress-omachine cleaner in the maintenance section talking about automatic coffee makers.* The iced coffee section says to make 1/3 of the normal amount of water the ice, so you only brew with 2/3, but in his recipes he always has you use 2/5 as ice.

Reviewer: alanwill
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Wish I got this book before many of the others I did get
Review: As should be no surprise from anything James Hoffmann this is a quality piece of material. I've always appreciated James's pragmatic and practical style. He's never trying to sell you and sticks to the facts with very little fluff. There's many other books out there on this subject but IMHO none are as well written as this one.

Reviewer: Captain RF
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Watch some of his YouTube videos as well
Review: How To Make The Best Coffee At Home is a small coffee table book by typography and color palette, but there is worthwhile content.I suggest reading S. Tunnell and James Carter’s reviews first, both are easily found under the “See more reviews” link found after the first five reviews here on Amazon.That common language thing intrudes occasionally, but all the mad dogs and Englishmen, occasional spelling, and wry humor don’t get in my way. I recommend watching some of his excellent videos for additional insight.In terms of coffee we have better available now than previously. Even so, water, coffee availability, equipment, and skillset(s) are seriously variable, and James Hoffman offers ways to get good results.I have many of the usual coffee makers and toys, including some that are older, even antique. Art and science are involved. A decent scale really helps. That infernal moka pot is more art to the Clever Dripper’s more recipe based “science”. I don’t bother with espresso.Both Hoffman’s book and videos offer guidance on equipment and methodology. Some equipment is too expensive for my tastes but using his suggestions have improved my home product, from vile to acceptable in one case and more consistently better in the others.

Reviewer: Eric Hermann
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Love this book on coffee
Review: Love this book. Its an easy but very informative read. Great pictures and diagrams/charts to describe the coffee brewing process. I will keep this as a reference guide for a long long time!

Reviewer: Dan capiz
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Si ertido. Claro y por el maestro Jeff hoffmann

Reviewer: Heidi Bigl
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Anything by James Hoffman is excellent, and this book does not disappoint. Not too much science, easy to read and understand. Perfect for beginner and advanced coffee makers/lovers. I first bought a copy for myself, and this is my second copy I am giving as a gift alongside a bag of coffee beans.

Reviewer: Ricardo Cunha
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Pena não estar traduzido do para o português pois isso o restringe àqueles que não dominam o idioma. Passa muito conhecimento para quem ama se aprofundar. O autor é uma grande autoridade no preparo do café. Recomendo sua leitura tanto aos “coffee livres” como aos baristas experientes.

Reviewer: Sandra E.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I bought this book as a present and my boyfriend liked! He says it has very interesting information and that it also has very nice pictures. His dad is also reading it and he liked it 🙂

Reviewer: Felix
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Sehr schönes,informatives Buch