The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 158: What is The Best Cheap Coffee? Coffee Expert Reveals In Blind Taste Test: James Hoffman

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

In this moment, world renowned coffee expert, James Hoffmann, tests and chooses the best high street coffee. James guides you though everything you need to know to assess coffee like a professional, this includes looking at the roast of the coffee, the smell and finally it’s taste and different tones. He also outlines the benefits of supporting your local cafe rather than getting your morning cup at a major coffee chain, as you can get a better cup of coffee from someone who cares nearly as deeply about coffee as you. Listen to the full episode here - Apple- https://g2ul0.app.link/TM29O0GTTIb Spotify- https://g2ul0.app.link/7i0901DTTIb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos James: https://www.jameshoffmann.co.uk/

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio.

And thirdly to Amazon Music who, when they heard that we were expanding to the united states and i'd be recording a lot more over in the states they put a massive billboard in time square um for the show so thank you so much amazon music um thank you to our team and thank you to all of you that listen to this show let's continue we have five different cups of coffee here from five different suppliers. You're smelling them all. When you're smelling them, is there anything you're noticing just from smelling them? Yeah. So one of the things I can assess pretty quickly is how darkly the coffee's been roasted.

The longer you leave coffee in a roasting machine, the darker the color of the beans will be. And for a long time, I think people associated darker roasts with better coffee. Oilier beans looked kind of fancier whereas it swung the other way and lighter roasts now are considered better or more expensive because they kind of preserve more of the inherent qualities of the raw materials um so these are all reasonably dark roasts just from smell so i can kind of the smells i'm coming off there are more in the kind of heavier, not burnt smells. Well, some of them actually smell a little bit burnt and kind of harsh, but nothing's particularly fruity or floral smelling. So it's just for me, I kind of gauge of where things are going to be. So there's going to

be an expectation with that of bitterness. In perfume shops, they give us sometimes coffee beans to smell to kind of try and wash out our nasal senses, I guess. Does that work? Yeah, it totally does. We are, it's why dogs sniff really fast, that you're looking for change. Your sense of smell works quite well on change. And so yes, you will get what's called suppression. If you smell the same kind of smells over and over, they become less and less intense. It's why people end up wearing too much of the same perfume they've worn for 20 years, because they can't, literally can't smell it anymore. We can.

They can't. And it's also evidenced when you go for a run. And then because you can smell yourself, you have to ask your friend if you smell. So you go, Dave, do I stink? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because your nose, I guess, is habituated to that. There's a good hack. If you ever want to break apart how something like Coca-Cola smells, if you take a component smell of Coca-Cola, like lime, right? Because Coke just tastes of Coke to

people, but it's actually lime, neroli, cinnamon, orange, nutmeg. And if you smell a bunch of cinnamon and then smell Coke, it smells weird because you've deleted cinnamon from Coca-Cola's flip aroma profile. And you can do that with, say, lime and smell, and it's like, whoa, I've thrown the balance out by kind of deleting that and suppressing that it's a dull but fun kind of trick the interesting thing with talking about coca-cola there is i remember those coke and pepsi studies from back in the day where people would rate pepsi as tasting better unless they had it in a coke can so when they could see the brand of the coca-cola they rated it better but when they could see it in a plastic cup they rated peps better. And I wonder here as well, because you don't know what these coffees are. You don't know what brands they are. Neither do I. What the results are going to be. So coffee number one,

yes. Have a taste and a smell. So that's, to me, a pretty standard kind of commercial coffee taste. There's not a lot going on there. Relatively high in bitterness to me. I'd say that's a fairly bitter cup of coffee. And that's coming, I would say, mostly from roast. And if something's good or bad, it can be bad because it wasn't made that well that day. It could be bad because it was not great raw materials. And finding why is sometimes tricky. I wouldn't say it's particularly expensive cup of

coffee no it didn't taste um petrol station coffee you can say that i like that you can say yeah i'm gonna just lead you into saying terrible things and i'll say nothing yeah it tasted like it came out of like a vending machine or something to me yeah i'd be surprised if that was expensive i'd be a little bit outraged if that was expensive. What would you rate that one out of five? Let's do 10. For me and what coffee can be, I'd say that's like a two.

I would say that was a five out of 10. Yeah, I think it's kind of fair. I probably should be fair and call it a four out of 10 because I've tasted way worse than that. Okay. Let's go for number two. Now, this one would be a little bit more divisive for a lot of people because it's got a little bit more acidity in it. It's like a little bit of sourness almost. Like it's a little zingy tasting.

Generally, acidity is associated with quality in coffee, which is a real sticking point for a lot of people. It's down to the fact that when you grow coffee, higher you grow it the slower it grows the sweeter it will ultimately be but you do get more acidity in higher grown coffees some people don't want that in their coffee they really don't want sour coffee so that tastes like it's got better raw materials in there for me than this one roast a little bit lighter bruise a little bit better i'd like it to be a less kind of sour thing it's a little bit better i'd like it to be a less kind of sour thing it's a little bit old obviously it's sat around for a while but i would say it's a for me it's a better cup than this one like it's got a little it's got a little characteristic to it

like it tastes of something that's a little bit fruity in there yeah it's got a part more of a personality hasn't it the aftertaste is a little bit something going on there and what do you rate that out of out of 10 in your preference? There's things I'd like to change about it. So like six, seven, somewhere there. But it has, I think, better raw materials in it that does appeal to me. Okay, I'm going to say six as well. Okay.

I can reveal that number one was was mcdonald's coffee that's not surprising that's kind of what i would have expected mcdonald's to taste like and it was that cup of coffee cost us one pound 30 so pretty the cheapest thing here i feel like mcdonald's are aiming at the kind of cheaper end okay your assessment there was probably fair you did originally give it a 2 out of 10. I feel not bad about that, but it's fine. There you go. So number two, you talked about there being sort of a bitterness to it and an independent...

A little bit more acidity in this. It tastes like the raw materials are of a higher quality, certainly the number one. That is an independent local coffee shop. Yep. And that cup of coffee is double the price of the McDonald's one at about three pounds per cup. Let's move on to number three. Okay.

Very different taste. For me, it's more akin to number one than anything else like it's again it's a darker roast it's got a bit more body to it feels a bit fuller a bit a little bit richer a bit earthy but at the same time for me um it's fuller isn't it it is a little bit fuller and that first one was quite watery to me yeah and that's in part gonna be how it's made in part how it's roasted in part you know where it's from um price wise i wouldn't expect it to be much more than the mcdonald's if i'm honest that that tastes again like a um yeah like a reasonably commercial grade coffee i wouldn't say it tastes bad roast a little dark yeah it's another kind of um yeah three four three actually this is something about the

there's a sort of earthiness that i don't enjoy in coffee some people really like earthy flavors i really don't and that's just a preference thing so that is costa coffee interesting there you go number four you're doing a swirling i can see you can You're doing a real... I like to slurp usually. You did a little aeration, but down a microphone, it's brutal. Okay. So that's probably the darkest roast of all of them. I would say it doesn't taste like the raw materials

are particularly bad, until I can have a guess at who that's from. But it is definitely a darker roast. So more bitterness. Again, quite full. So, you know, my gut says that's a sort of Starbucks-style thing to me. Try the last one as well then before we reveal.

Before I get into trouble. That's kind of weird. It's a little bit vegetable-y to me, if I'm honest. It's not my favorite. Again, it's a little bit vegetable II to me if I'm honest It's not it's not my favorite again. It's it's within the world of coffee roasting. It's darker. It's not as dark as this one Yeah, I like it probably less than this one here. So I'd probably be back to like a four again So number four, yeah, which was the one you gave five out of ten is Pratt. Is it yeah Wow and then five three out of 10 is Pratt. Is it? Yeah. Wow. And number three, sorry, number five is Starbucks. Is it? Yeah. There you go. So of the high street chains then, the coffee that you rated highest in our taste test was Pratt. Yeah. Second was Costa and then third was starbucks but i would say from my point of view yeah the

variance between them surprisingly small yeah uh they're not i don't think they taste particularly different to each other in a in a big way i think the independence stood out a long way from the others right it was clearly different it has a lot more flavor and character going on which is good which is what you know i i like about coffee but um you know i think the the chains the brand experience may be different but at the root there's not a huge variance in the coffee i agree i wouldn't really i mean that there are i can taste differences but but it's not as a profound difference as the mcdonald's taste and then the independent taste which was really full of personality yep and interestingly the um the price variance is the independent cost three pounds cost is three pound twenty pretz three pound twenty and Starbucks is three pound sixty

really yeah it always blew my mind for years and years I would work with loads of like essentially startup coffee shop owners and their mindset would be oh I need to be at the same kind of price as Starbucks or maybe a little bit more. And you're like, what are you possibly thinking? That you have the same kind of supply chain that they do? And they make great margins. You're not buying 20 million paper cups a week. You know what I mean?

Like nothing makes sense. But people feel very tied to this idea that the price is set by the chains. And I think that's changed now and people are more comfortable charging above that. But for a long time, people were terrified to charge more than the chains, even if the product was noticeably better. And, you know, a real frustration for me. And that's why I'm always going to bat for independence, because it's not like you can spend more. You can get a better product by someone who cares deeply about it. And I think there's a risk in going to an independent if you're traveling. Starbucks,

the model is built on, I know where to queue, who to talk to, where to stand after I place an order, what kind of food I can get there. It's very safe. If I dropped you in Moscow and told you to get coffee, you'd go to a chain because you know how it works and you'd get it done. Independents feel like a risk, but the reward I think is often there for sure. And there's more independents and they're better than ever now. So I'm very pro independent coffee shops.