#james hoffmann

This man is delightful, he owns a coffee roasting company and does a few BTS videos about coffee production. He does reviews of coffees, coffee products, coffee making equipment, and other related things. This man made espresso on a river boat, drank 70 year old coffee in a park with a viewer, and is just... A delight. This man is delightful.

Watch the video, let the way he smiles at 11:30 just infect your soul.

Did requests on an anonymous local app again about a year ago, this time to try out Rebelle and my new tablet

This entire post was catalysed by James Hoffmann going to Milan and trying Starbuck's Oleato drinks (olive oil infused). Link: https://youtu.be/XewgO7j6y-E

Which, side note, this feels like the most Italian thing to come out of Italy since Aeneas ate a table and, on that basis, I'm here for it 🇮🇹

I made something like it in my kitchen.

Equipment:

Moka pot (3 cup -130ml/4.4oz- or preference)

Aerolatte wand (I'm sure you could use a whisk if you wanted)

Coffee grinder (mines a cheap-ish vevok chef)

A kettle and stovetop (for the coffee)

Ingredients;

Asda own brand barista style oat milk or your other favourite milk alternative*

Taylors or Harrogate Rich Italian coffee beans

Filippo Berro extra virgin olive oil

Boiled tap water (what do you want from me?)

My three cup moka pot:

I have the Italian tricolour bialetti because I'm just extra like that when it comes to Italian things, and also it was cheaper than the standard one when I bought it. A Moka pot is a Moka pot. Buy the one you like and works for you if you're shopping for one.

If you don't know how to use a Moka pot I follow the method of James Hoffmann's video on it on YouTube. I don't bother with adding a paper filter as I prefer the mouthfeel of a metal filter. Link: https://youtu.be/BfDLoIvb0w4

Coffee:

Taylor's of Harrogate Rich Italian roast beans with the yellow bag and the 4 on the front. Fiver a bag at the supermarket. Really nothing fancy. Any coffee you like, Moka pots prefer darker roasts in general though.

This is advertised as a medium roast (hence the 4/6 number on the front) but it's a lot darker than other medium roast.

Tip: Do buy beans and grind yourself if you can, it's cheaper long term as beans are cheaper than pre-ground and you get a far superior brew that's worth the effort.

Reasoning: I wasn't using anything fancy for a test plus this stuff really shines as a thick heavy medium dark roast without being ashy brewed in a Moka pot as standard.

Oat milk Vs regular, and is barista edition worth it:

In the James Hoffman video where he tries these things he does mention that most of the drinks he tries come as standard with oat milk. Apparently the people at Starbucks think that's the way to go. It makes sense. Adding oil to cows milk is going to taste really fatty and gross.

Do get the barista style oat milk if you can, if you just buy standard oat milk it won't foam as easily and the mouth feel is different unless you're whip it within an inch of its life.

I see no reason you can't use another milk alternative. I'd avoid soya as that would make it sour but almond might add some sweetness to cut the oil. Haven't tried it. Let me know if you do, please.

Coffee grind:

Ground at number 1 setting on my vevok chef hand grinder. If you paid less than £100 for your hand grinder just go as fine as you can or whatever works best for you usually in a Moka pot. Shouldn't be espresso fine, but finer than v20 or AeroPress grind.

Base recipe:

My 'mokuchino' recipe is usually 2:1 barista style oat milk to hot/boiled water whipped up with an Aerolatte wand. Before it's whipped the water and milk usually takes up about 1/3 of my cup, after its foamy about 2/3 of it. Tinker with what you like.

I just added like a quarter of a teaspoon of bog standard Filippo Berro Extra Virgin Olive Oil to that water:milk mix and whipped it into foam.

I pour the Moka coffee on top when it's brewed (all of it, I use a 3 pot because I want more coffee in my coffee- my standard coffee shop order is a 3 shot oat milk cappuccino and that's what I'm recreating here). This is the right recipe for me for a pint mug.

Oil amounts:

The amount of oil in those drink James Hoffman was trying looked like way too much. Olive oil leaves saltiness on the palate which I think is what's counteracting a lot of the bitterness and the sharper sour notes cheap coffee gives you sometimes too. Hence why he was having drinks with a shot of olive oil and I added a quarter of a teaspoon. Your bowels and throat will thank you for cutting the dose; link: https://www.shefinds.com/collections/starbucks-customers-reporting-stomach-issues-olive-oil-infused-coffees/

My drink experience:

So on first drink you don't notice it. It's a smoother but no real taste. Like the difference in mouthfeel between cadburys and galaxy milk chocolate. That makes it a hit in my book.

As it cools to drinkable you really taste the fresh mown grassy-ness of the olive oil. It's weirdly nice. It leaves just a bit of itself on the top of your palette and sits there after the coffee is down your throat.

It also draws out hitherto undiscovered sweetness in a dark roast coffee, and even a little acidity. Not a lot. Just enough to cut through the oily texture so you don't feel greasy. Like it's more of a light to medium roast than dark medium roast. But it keeps the rich full bodied mouth feel and chocolatey taste of a medium-dark roast. Much more milk choc than dark though. There's also a touch of citrus that is definitely from the oil, like the back of the throat feel of the smell of fresh mown grass.

As it cools further you get more oiliness and it really rounds out the bitter sharpness of the coffee that you get from cheap darker roasts as they cool down. Not bad oiliness. It's a 'i just ate an olive before this sip of coffee' oiliness. And even more acidity that you can taste now you don't have the usual mouthful of ash. It leaves the slight sourness in your mouth that tickles as it dissipates. It's a green sourness though, and it's oddly pleasant. I can feel the oil on my lips though. Just a bit. And it is definitely not unpleasant.

If you let it go cold (room temp) you get a lot of acidity. I mean a lot. More like tea than coffee and also a salty aftertaste which weirdly doesn't make me want another drink though. It is not bitter at all. It's full bodied from the texture of the oil, acidic, bright and sweet.

An hour later: yeah, don't drink it cold. It tastes like I'm starting with a sore throat or I've shouted too loud. An astringent taste in the back of my throat. I'm not thirsty even though the saltiness lasted like 20 mins.

Conclusion:

I think this is how you get all the benefits of dark coffee with the brigness of light coffee. Even stone cold it's not unpleasant. I would drink it down at just lukewarm though so you don't get the salty aftertaste and harsh feeling in your throat. It's a very springlike flavour, fresh grass, birds singing, sun bright in the sky kind of coffee.

Honestly, I wouldn't do it to every cup but with your morning brew. Add it. It'll set you up for a pleasant drink as you look out the window and enjoy the early morning signs that spring is in the air, very cheaply, and that tiny bit of olive oil might just help your digestion a bit especially if you're a little sluggish in the morning (not medical advice, YMMV etc).

Is this whole thing utterly ridiculous and so Italian it bleeds red white and green to the bouncy strains of Inno di Mameli? Absolutely🤌

But I see the logic.

Let me see if I can walk you through how I think the development of the idea went.

We all know that generally Starbucks coffee hasn't been so much roasted as cremated and tastes accordingly. That's not a value judgement. It's just a statement of fact. I like medium/dark roast coffees. The Taylors Rich Italian beans i used here are my daily coffee at home. If I had a Starbucks, Caffe Nero, and a Costa in front of me I'd hit Caffe Nero for my fix. I like dark roasts.

That's what I'm getting at here. But Starbucks tastes like ash and the shattered hopes of a plant that tried really really hard and still flunked out of taste school (to me). And if it tastes like that to me, whose palette for coffee is about as refined as a sledgehammer, there is no way Weird Coffee People™️ would be caught dead drinking it with ANY other option on the table (including carrying their own beans and an AeroPress with them).

So we have a company that is famous for the kind of coffee you can use as paint stripper, who temper that with enough sugar to give a horse diabetes (please don't test this, it's a metaphor not an idea), trying to do something to draw in more footfall.

Like, let's be real here. A 16oz Starbucks cappuccino is like 93% sugar and milk by volume. It's a coffee milkshake designed to be so sweet you can't taste the coffee.

We also know that fat in milk and salt both temper sourness and bitterness of over or under extracted coffee. Which means the skill level required to pull an espresso shot that you're going to add a slightly salty fatty thing to before you drown it in sugar and more fat goes to zero. Perfect for a chain store.

So...

Bitter cheap coffee burned to a crisp before it ever reaches the cup, plus sugar, plus more sugar, probably over and/or under extracted, plus oat milk, plus olive oil equals- a very nice drink that anyone who drinks Starbucks is going to think is a revelation.

The olive oil is doing 90% of the heavy lifting of the coffee flavour in a cup you add it to.

How to make burned robusta taste like a light-medium specialty coffee? Add olive oil and oat milk.

Now I've tried it, I have to say. Italy has had coffee for a good few centuries and olive oil for millenia at this point.

At this point the cultural identity of Italy, especially from the outside, is that if you poured out Scipio's helmet it would be the source for three mythical rivers of coffee, olive oil and tomato sauce.

This combination was inevitable. It feels like something that should have been drunk by Da Vinci, Puccini and Luis XVI because someone imported an Italian thing to Versailles and just said it was French; coughoperacough.

I have an image of an Italian telling me (with Italian hands) that of course it works, it's how nonna used to make.