The Best of Jimseven 2004-2015

by James Hoffmann

This is James Hoffmann's self-published book containing the best articles from 11 years of blogging on jimseven.com. Being a digest of the best content from his blog, it's an incredibly insightful treasure for anyone who loves coffee.

The hard copies of Best of Jimseven are limited. Also, this is the only once sold out, we cannot get more copies.

Genres: Nonfiction

251 pages, ebook

Published March 1, 2017

About the author

James Alexander Hoffmann is an English businessman, author, barista, online influencer and coffee consultant.

Reviews

[Peter Anderson]

If coffee is your hobby and/or you’re passionate about coffee this is essential reading. James Hoffmann has compiled 92 of his blogs covering four sections: On Espresso, On Coffee Brewing, On Coffee Business & On a Coffee Career.
It’s not a book for beginners to coffee but for coffee lovers it’s a fabulous read & Hoffmann’s unbiased opinions make this a very interesting read.

[Joe Maggs]

James said this wasn’t a book to read cover to cover but I certainly had no trouble doing so and believe it stands up very well in the course of it. James’ insights into the world and business of coffee, no matter when in the last 15 years or so that they were written, remain fascinating and enlightening to me. Even though I’m not an espresso maker nor really much of a drinker, his writing on the topic and its intricacies was compelling and I’m sure something I’d make reference to should I decide to go two-footed into that challenge. It’s a shame the section on brewed coffee felt a little short and lacking much new information but I shouldn’t really expect that from a compilation of old blog posts! His thoughts on the importance of water to your coffee again ignited a dilemma in my head as it rightly should. Finishing with his thoughts on coffee business and a coffee career was, as always, original and insightful, despite me having no intention to pivot to baristadom. Really it’s all down to coffee being a real hobby of mine and James being the one true expert on the subject, so always a pleasure to hear what he has to say.

[Sheng]

This book reveals how the specialty coffee industry, the methodology for improving coffee, and the business challenges and related thinking have evolved since the start of this century. I very much enjoyed the not-so-distant historic account from the perspective of a leading figure in the industry. The largely empirical nature of coffee making is not so dissimilar from my own field of machine learning, and it was interesting to find the many analogous problems in the approaches such as the reliance on folklore, superstition, and spurious reasoning.

What’s even more interesting to me is how open and willing to share the coffee people appear to be working in a competitive industry. This sharing mindset really shines through in the content and the writing of this book. It allows ideas to be validated, examined, challenges and ultimately improved.

[Lars]

Collected blogposts about coffee. You will read it in his voice 😂