Moment 158: What is The Best Cheap Coffee? Coffee Expert Reveals In Blind Taste Test: James Hoffman

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/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, um, so one of the things I can assess pretty quickly is how darkly the coffee's been roasted. When you have, uh, the longer you leave coffee in a roasting machine, the darker the colour of the beans will be. And for a long time, I think people associated darker roasts with, 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.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  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, uh, harsh. But, uh, nothing's particularly fruity or floral smelling. So it's just for me, a kind of gauge of where things are going to be. So there's going to be an expectation with that of bitterness.

• 0:57Steven Bartlett?

  In, 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?

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it totally does. We, we, we are, it's why dogs sniff really fast, that you're looking for change, your sense of smell works quite well on change. Uh, 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.

• 1:26Steven Bartlett?

  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?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Do I, yeah.

• 1:37Steven Bartlett?

  Because your brain, your nose, I guess, is habituated to though.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  There's a good hack, if you ever want to break apart how like 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 flick, like 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.

• 2:06Steven Bartlett?

  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 Pepsi 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.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33Steven Bartlett?

  What the results are going to be. So coffee number one.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:36Steven Bartlett?

  Have a taste and a smell.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  So that's a, to me, a pretty standard kind of commercial coffee taste. It's not a lot going on there, relatively high in bitterness to me. I'd say that's a fairly bitter cup of coffee.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:09Steven Bartlett?

  No, it didn't taste, actual station coffee.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  You can say that. You can say, yeah, I'm going to just lead you into saying terrible things and I'll say nothing.

• 3:17Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. It tasted like it came out of like a vending machine or something to me.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd be surprised if that was expensive. I'd be a little bit outraged if that was expensive.

• 3:25Steven Bartlett?

  What would you rate that one out of five?

• 3:28Steven Bartlett?

  Let's do 10.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  For me and what coffee can be, I'd say that's like a two.

• 3:35Steven Bartlett?

  I would say that was a five out of 10.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:44Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Let's go for number two.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Now, this want to be a little bit more divisive for a lot of people because it's got a little bit more acidity. And it's like a little bit, we should be able to describe it as salmonous 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, the 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, brew 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.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:37Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's got a more of a personality, hasn't it? The aftertaste is a little bit, something going on there.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 4:42Steven Bartlett?

  And what would you rate that out of, out of 10 in your preference?

• 4:45Speaker 01

  There's things I'd like to change about it. So like six, seven, somewhere there. Like, um, but it, it has, I think, better raw materials in it that that does appeal to me.

• 4:56Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, I'm gonna say six as well. Okay. I can reveal.

• 5:04Steven Bartlett?

  That number one.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:07Steven Bartlett?

  Was McDonald's coffee.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  That's not surprising. That's, that's kind of what I would have expected McDonald's to taste like.

• 5:13Steven Bartlett?

  And it was, that cup of coffee cost us one pound thirty.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  So probably the cheapest thing here. I feel like McDonald's are aiming at the kind of cheaper end.

• 5:23Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, your assessment there was probably fair. You did originally give it a two out of 10.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  I, I feel not bad about that, but it's fine.

• 5:29Steven Bartlett?

  There you go. So, um, number two, you talked about there being sort of a bitterness to it and then, um, like a.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Little bit more acidity in this. Tastes like the raw materials are of a higher quality, certainly than number one.

• 5:44Steven Bartlett?

  That is an independent local coffee shop.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:48Steven Bartlett?

  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.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:01Steven Bartlett?

  Very different taste.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  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. It feels a bit fuller, a bit, a little bit richer, a bit earthy at the same time for me.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  It's fuller, isn't it? It is a little bit fuller. The first one was quite watery to me. Yeah, and that's in part going to be how it's made, in part how it's roasted, in part, you know, where it's from. 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,

• 6:34Speaker 01

  yeah, like a reasonably commercial grade coffee. I wouldn't say it tastes bad. Roast a little dark.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's another kind of,

• 6:45Speaker 01

  yeah, three, four, three, actually. There's a 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.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  You're doing a swirling, I can see. You're doing real. I try, 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.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  But it is definitely a darker roast, so more bitterness, again, quite full.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  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.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  That's kind of weird. It's a little bit vegetably to me, if I'm honest.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  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, which was the one you gave five out of 10, is Pratt. Is it? Yeah. Wow. And number five.

• 8:05Steven Bartlett?

  Three, sorry, number five.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:08Steven Bartlett?

  Is Starbucks.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Is it?

• 8:10Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 8:12Steven Bartlett?

  So of the high street chains then, the coffee that you rated highest in our taste test.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:18Steven Bartlett?

  Was Pratt.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:19Steven Bartlett?

  Second was Costa and then third was Starbucks.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  But I would say from my point of view, the variance between them is surprisingly small.

• 8:28Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Uh, they're not, I don't think they taste particularly different to each other in a, in a big way. I think the independent 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, 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.

• 8:54Steven Bartlett?

  I agree. I wouldn't really, I mean, there, there are, and 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.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:06Steven Bartlett?

  And interestingly, the, um, the price variance is the independent costs three pounds. Costa's three pound twenty, Pratt's three pound twenty and Starbucks is three pound sixty.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Really?

• 9:16Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  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 like 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, that you're going to make? And, you know, they make great margins. You, you, 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, you know, the price is set by the chains. And I think that's changed now and, 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, uh, you know, a real frustration for me.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  And, and that's why I'm always going to bat for independents because it's not like you're going to spend more. You can get a better product by someone who cares deeply about it. And, and I think it's, there's a risk in going to an independent if you're traveling and, you know, Starbucks, the, the model's built on, I know where to queue, who to talk to, where to stand after I place an order. Wh- 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, you know, I'm, I'm very pro independent coffee shops.