The Coffee Expert: The Surprising Link Between Coffee & Your Mental Health! James Hoffmann

Steven Bartlett 0:00 You're the former world barista champion. So we have cups of coffee here from different suppliers. So coffee number one...

James Hoffmann 0:07 Yeah, I'd be surprised if that was expensive. I'd be a little bit outraged if that was expensive. That's kind of weird. That's really interesting. If you want the best experience for coffee, this one.

Steven Bartlett 0:19 I can reveal, that is... James Hoffman.

James Hoffmann 0:22 Of the most famous people in the world when it comes to coffee.

Steven Bartlett 0:25 James has close to two million subscribers on YouTube. The most popular piece of coffee broadcasting on the planet. You've committed a huge portion of your life to coffee. What advice have you got for me?

James Hoffmann 0:36 Okay. London has some of the best coffee shops in the world. Don't get an espresso machine for that.

Steven Bartlett 0:40 Coffee pods.

James Hoffmann 0:41 They're a microwave meal.

Steven Bartlett 0:42 How long does it take to decay?

James Hoffmann 0:44 The minute you open that bag, it's on its way out, and it will happen really quickly.

Steven Bartlett 0:47 You walk into the Starbucks, what do you order?

James Hoffmann 0:49 If I'm being fully weird...

Steven Bartlett 0:50 Be fully weird.

James Hoffmann 0:51 Fine. Then I'm going to...

Steven Bartlett 0:53 Say I've got £100 for the machinery.

James Hoffmann 0:55 Coffee grinders are the right investment. They are more important than the machine.

Steven Bartlett 0:59 What's your favorite cup of coffee?

James Hoffmann 1:01 If I'm honest, it is...

Steven Bartlett 1:03 Are we addicted?

James Hoffmann 1:05 It's the world's most popular psychoactive drug. But if you look at the science, coffee seems to be healthy and has a really positive impact wherever it's been measured. It's a great source of fiber. It is like having another vegetable with your diet. People tend to perform better on cognitive tests. It looks like coffee drinkers survive longer. The problem with it is that coffee has this really depressing future.

Steven Bartlett 1:24 Why? Quick one. This is really, really fascinating to me. On the backend of our YouTube channel, it says that 69.9% of you that watch this channel frequently over the lifetime of this channel haven't yet hit the subscribe button. I just wanted to ask you a favor. It helps this channel so much if you choose to su- subscribe. Helps us scale the guests, helps us scale the production, and it makes the show bigger. So if I could ask you for one favor, if you've watched the show before and you've enjoyed it and you like this episode that you're currently watching, could you please hit the subscribe button. Thank you so much. And I will repay that gesture by making sure that everything we do here gets better and better and better and better. That is a promise I'm willing to make you. Do we have a deal?

Steven Bartlett 2:12 James, you've committed a huge portion of your life to a drink, to a bean, to coffee.

James Hoffmann 2:20 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 2:22 Why?

James Hoffmann 2:23 Uh, I love it. It brings me intense pleasure, like the whole thing. I think I fell in love with it 20 years ago and, uh, I tried working in wine. People get falling in love with wine, right? Like people...

Steven Bartlett 2:32 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 2:33 With the drink, with the culture, with where it's grown, all that stuff. The same can be true with coffee and turned out to be true for me. And, uh, I'm, uh, kind of obsessed with learning, and coffee is so big. People see it as kind of niche, what I do is a, a niche, but it's this global thing. It's in every culture. There's everything from botany, to science, to like health, all the rest of it is wrapped in this one thing. So I can spend lifetimes learning about it and never be done. It, it, it's just huge fun and it's one of those things that's capable of incredible surprise. People's expectations of coffee are very low often. And, and when you kind of show them what it can be, that's a very satisfying moment that never gets tiring.

Steven Bartlett 3:12 Because I just thought of coffee as a drink that everyone seems to be pretty addicted to. But I imagine your perspective on, on that is a little bit more, um, artistic and expansive.

James Hoffmann 3:23 I mean, yes and no. Coffee's existence kind of blows my mind. It's a thing that we all do, that for over 100 years now, it's been normal to have the ground up seeds of a tropical fruit plant just sitting in your cupboard, and you're going to steep that in water and drink it. That's a weird human thing that we do. And it's just been a part of everyone's lives for as long as they can remember. Coffee's just there. But it turns out i- in sort of the last 20 years, we've had this boom of specialty coffee where we've kind of, um, showcased how interesting it can be. You know, it's not just this commoditized thing. And I think that bit has sort of changed consumption

James Hoffmann 3:55 around the world now, actually. I see it in every country. You know, people's opinions and expectations of coffee have shifted massively.

Steven Bartlett 4:02 When I first started drinking coffee, which I think I was quite late to coffee, and I think I'm quite a, a low level consumer of coffee. Part of the reason I was put off drinking coffee was because it appears that the entirety of society are addicted to it. And it might have this sort of first principle belief that anything that has a significant upside must come with a significant downside.

James Hoffmann 4:22 Sure.

Steven Bartlett 4:23 And, and no one can tell me what the downside was. So I was just very reluctant to engage in an addiction when I can see the upside. I can see people are more focused. They seem to be higher in energy. That's the appearance they have. But the, the downside was never clear. We are addicted, aren't we?

James Hoffmann 4:39 Do you know I don't like that word?

Steven Bartlett 4:40 Really? I can imagine.

James Hoffmann 4:40 But, uh, no, no, it's, you know, it's um... Yeah, it's the world's most popular psychoactive drug. It is the most widely consumed, so psychoactive drug. Yes, I would say it's absolutely bound itself into society now.

Steven Bartlett 4:52 A- are we addicted?

James Hoffmann 4:53 Yeah, I mean, addiction is complicated.

Steven Bartlett 4:55 Yeah.

James Hoffmann 4:55 I'm, I'm not an expert on addiction. I would say there's a level of dependency. If you stop drinking caffeine, you will suffer for 24 to 48 hours, and it might be a kind of big old headache. It might be something else. So you know, you will, uh, have symptoms if you stop consuming it. But, uh, you can stop consuming coffee and then go for years without an urge to consume it again. So I wouldn't say addiction's quite the right word for it. But yeah, we are, I would say, deeply dependent on it.

Steven Bartlett 5:22 Have you ever stopped drinking it for a prolonged period of time?

James Hoffmann 5:24 Not for a prolonged period of time. It's pretty hard for me not to, uh, sort of consume caffeine doing what I do. Like there's just a need to taste, a need to, you know, drink the stuff. I've stopped over a period of time, I've gotten sick. I've gone a week or two without it, but um, I've changed my attitude to caffeine generally. I'm, I'm much more careful around it because I think it is worthy of concern the amount of caffeine you consume. Like I'm very pro-coffee. I want people to drink and enjoy coffee, but at the same time, I, I am very nervous to encourage caffeine consumption that might be excessive

James Hoffmann 5:56 'cause that's definitely not good for you.

Steven Bartlett 5:58 Why?

James Hoffmann 5:59 Sleep.

Steven Bartlett 5:59 Oh, okay.

James Hoffmann 5:59 Like ultimately anything in this world that interrupts your sleep...... perhaps with the exception of children, is probably to be avoided, right? Like, sleep quality for every outcome, be it, you know, uh, body composition, longevity, all the rest of it, like, cognition. Uh, sleep's so important. And I feel like we, we didn't culturally prioritize the sleep the way we are beginning to now. You know, I think more and more people are talking about the importance of sleep. And it's really easy to get into a cycle, uh, with caffeine of drinking too much coffee in the day, you have poor-quality sleep, you're tired the next day. "I'll fix that with more caffeine, which will give you lower quality sleep at night." And that cycle can go on and on and on. I think that's very... That's a bad thing, basically. I, I would say that's to be avoided. So I'm pro cutting off caffeine early if you suffer with it in any way. And there's enough ways to track your sleep these days. I feel like everything's tracking our sleep. So you can tell if you've had a bad night's sleep. And if you drank a coffee late, maybe don't do that anymore because, you know, uh, uh, caffeine has about a five-hour half-life. So, you know, even 10 hours after you drank a cup of coffee, there's still a decent amount floating around in your system, enough that might, you know, delay onset of sleep or reduce the quality of your sleep.

Steven Bartlett 7:11 Isn't it bonkers that people offer you an espresso after dinner in restaurants?

James Hoffmann 7:15 Yeah, I don't, I don't get it. For some people, they find it very calming and they really enjoy it. They love it. They have no issue sleeping. I cannot touch c- uh, caffeine after, like, 3:00 PM. I have, like, a hard cutoff and I'm done. Um, but yeah, I find the, the, you know, just the idea that it's a, a digestive aid, I'm not sure that's super well-evidenced, uh, to be honest, uh, having looked into it anyway. But if people enjoy it, I'm not gonna get in the way of it. But for... And some people sleep like a baby afterwards. I'm always amazed by those people-

Steven Bartlett 7:42 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 7:42 ... who are like, "Yeah, coffee, I go to sleep." Like, how? How?

Steven Bartlett 7:45 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 7:45 And there's big genetic differences, and I think we, we're starting to see those. And, and you can get genetic tests done that will give you an idea of your, uh, caffeine metabolizer kind of rate. Are you slow? Are you fast? But, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's one of those weird things where because how coffee is made can impact the quantity of caffeine in the end cup, you can't accurately predict how much caffeine's in a, uh, coffee from a coffee shop. Right? There's a bunch of variables that could happen that will produce a pretty big variance. So this incredibly popular drug, we don't know how much we're taking most of the time, which I think is kind of wild, uh, and maybe not a good thing. And so I'm, I'm kind of pro mindful consumption of this stuff, if that makes sense. Like, uh, just be aware of it and thoughtful about it, and still enjoy it. I want people to drink and enjoy coffee, but I, I want as much upside as possible, as little downside.

Steven Bartlett 8:38 You used the word drug there. With drugs, you get a sort of tolerance-

James Hoffmann 8:41 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 8:42 ... that requires you to have more and more of the thing to get to the same levels of, I don't know, psychoactive-ness. Is that the same with coffee, where if I have one coffee today, in a couple of months time, I'm gonna need two to get to the same level of, like, alertness?

James Hoffmann 8:58 Yes and no.

Steven Bartlett 9:00 Okay.

James Hoffmann 9:00 Uh, it seems to be that the benefits that we see of caffeine when it comes to cognition, uh, disappear with habitual usage. And actually adding more doesn't change it. That first coffee that feels so good is taking as sort of... Uh, instead of going from zero to one, it's taking us from minus one to zero. It's removing the kind of withdrawal symptom almost, and bringing us back to a kind of level of like, "Okay, I'm, I'm here now." And so if you really, really want maximum benefit from caffeine, be it cognition or sports or anything else, then actually having a period without coffee beforehand will give you the sort of greatest benefit afterwards. So there's a habituation, I guess.

Steven Bartlett 9:36 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 9:37 But it doesn't escalate the way that drugs do. Like, you, you don't need to suddenly be drinking six, eight, 10 cups of coffee to have an effect. You'll just feel weird. Uh, so yeah, a little bit though.

Steven Bartlett 9:47 Again, going back to my first principles, one of my first principles in life generally, and this is why I often avoid medicine, paracetamol, you name it, I will... I'd rather take the headache than, than start dabbling because I always think there's a cost to something. When I think about the way we live our lives in society, we literally... Many people will have three or four c- cups of coffee a day.

James Hoffmann 10:07 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 10:07 Some people even more. Some people will dr- just drink coffee all the way through the day, throughout work, and then have one on their way home from work as well. And I look at that objectively and go, "That's insanity." That this in- sort of the entire Western population is just, like, caffeinating themselves just to function. And then you hear phrases like, I, like, um, "Oh, I can't function, I can't function. I've not had my coffee yet."

James Hoffmann 10:28 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 10:29 And I just go, this is... You know. But I don't know enough about coffee to understand if that's just, you know, maybe there is a free lunch as it relates to coffee, or maybe sleep is the only...

James Hoffmann 10:40 I think sleep's the primary concern.

Steven Bartlett 10:42 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 10:42 Uh, you know, if you... And if you're not suffering any issues with sleep from your coffee consumption, then, you know, if you look at the science, and I, I'm not a scientist, I really... I like to read the research papers, but I'm not doing the research. But, uh, on almost every front, coffee seems to be healthy and have a really positive impact wherever it's been measured, and across a whole range of different stuff. So,

James Hoffmann 11:04 you know, as to why caffeine is one part of it, I think the fact that coffee contains a surprising amount of fiber is another one, or the quantity of polyphenols in there, if you're interested in the gut microbiome. Like, coffee seems to be really good for that. And I think we know more and more the microbiome, you know, uh, Tim Spector has taught us all, uh, the importance of that, that it impacts us in so many different ways. So on almost any front, if you've researched, is coffee good for, you know, longevity? Yes, you see a reduction in all-cause mortality that correlates to coffee consumption. Is it good for, uh, cognitive decline? Yes, you tend to see coffee consumption associated with, uh, l- less cognitive dec- decline in old age. Or liver function, cancer. All, all of these things seem to have, uh, a positive association with coffee drinking. But if it's messing with your sleep, I don't think it's worth it. That's just me. Uh, that's the, the line for me of like, it, it, it's not such an incredible benefit that that i- is worth the loss of sleep quality.

Steven Bartlett 12:03 Mm-hmm. Yeah, sleep has become just the most...... sort of the biggest obsession in my life over the last year.

James Hoffmann 12:09 I think for all of us. I think it's, it's just if you pay attention to this stuff-

Steven Bartlett 12:12 Yeah.

James Hoffmann 12:12 ... you can't help but begin to obsess over it. I hope healthily.

Steven Bartlett 12:16 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

James Hoffmann 12:17 But, you know?

Steven Bartlett 12:17 So to, to avoid the im- im- impact of coffee impacting our sleep, you think the best thing to do is... 'Cause I've just not been drinking coffee after, like, 1:00 PM.

James Hoffmann 12:25 Great.

Steven Bartlett 12:25 Okay.

James Hoffmann 12:26 I think that's a pretty good way to go. I think decaf is still a good option. I think people are kind of really negative about decaf because we have this caffeine-first association with coffee.

Steven Bartlett 12:33 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 12:33 A lot of people are like, "Why would I drink decaf? What's the point?"

Steven Bartlett 12:37 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 12:37 You know, you see a lot of death before decaf or whatever. But I, I think decaf can be really tasty, which is good. Like it's a nice delicious hot drink. And also, yeah, there's a little bit less of a downside if you are concerned about caffeine.

Steven Bartlett 12:48 I'm so, I'm so con- you and Tim Spector are the two people that have made the case... I'm thinking the first time I spoke to Tim Spector about coffee, he was a little bit, mm, on the fence w- as to whether it was healthy or not. He came back a second time, and I think there's been a little bit of a shift in him. He's now pro-coffee.

James Hoffmann 13:05 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 13:06 In terms of the gut microbiome, which I thought was super interesting. He says it counts as one of my 30-

James Hoffmann 13:11 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 13:11 ... fruit and vegetables-

James Hoffmann 13:11 Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 13:12 ... a week that I need to get, which was really surprising. So it helped my gut microbiome. He talked about the longevity impacts as well, which I thought was staggering that it can... The studies seem to show that it will extend your life.

James Hoffmann 13:22 Yeah. It's a reduction in all cause mortality. So you're just less likely to die early, I suppose, is the easiest way to think about it. Or that's what we see from the studies. And it's not that the studies aren't without flaws, but there's been a lot now and you tend to see people dying less often or less early, uh, when they drink more coffee. Not a huge amount of coffee. And this is a, if you ever go into the research, this is really important. Uh, a cup of coffee to you or me might look like this. A cup of coffee to a researcher is 120 mills of coffee, which is about half of this. So you'll see loads of studies say three cups of coffee, three cups of coffee is when you see these benefits. That's not a liter of coffee. That's more like three to 400 mills total a day of say, filter coffee or one or two or three espressos, single espressos. So the, the definition of a, a cup from all these studies is really confusing and problematic and I think encourages excess coffee consumption. Uh, but yeah, three cups of coffee for heart disease, for, uh, all sorts of things is, is, is seen to be associated with, uh, improvement in outcome.

Steven Bartlett 14:28 Why might that be? What is it about the bean, the coffee bean that is causing health benefits?

James Hoffmann 14:34 That's, that's probably above my pay grade.

Steven Bartlett 14:36 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 14:36 I would, I would probably, at this point, I'm probably aligned with Tim in that it's a great source of fiber and polyphenols. That it's just, it is like having another vegetable into the diet. It's more diversity of diet. Uh, I think one study showed that for some people in the US like cups of filter coffee were their primary source of dietary fiber. Now that's kind of wild and not really how things should be, but it is a significant source of fiber if you think about it that way. Uh, uh, you know, a large cup might be three grams of fiber, which doesn't seem like much until you start tracking your fiber intake and you realize, oh, that's a, that's a, a decent contribution for a drink. Um, so yeah-

Steven Bartlett 15:11 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 15:11 ... I think that's the biggest part of it. I don't think caffeine has been shown to be neuroprotective necessarily. So I think people are trying to understand the mechanism more. Caffeine's been studied separately and, and is much easier to study because you can dose it, you can look at the effects of that. To really do a study on coffee consumption is really hard. You can't really do a randomized controlled trial where you raise people from say, 15 to 60 years old. You control their diet, exercise, sleep, and you just randomize the coffee consumption 'cause then you might see something that you could really say coffee is good or bad. We can just look at these large epidemiological studies and say, "Well, trying to control for diet and exercise and cigarettes and all these other things, it looks like coffee drinkers survive longer or have less issues." And it might just be that he- healthy people are just attracted to coffee. We don't really know which, which way around that is.

Steven Bartlett 16:03 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 16:03 There's no strong mechanism. But at this point I'd probably be aligned with, with Tim on this one that I think it's primarily gonna be the gut.

Steven Bartlett 16:10 The fiber point's super interesting 'cause he said to me that we're like as a society, extremely fiber deficient.

James Hoffmann 16:15 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 16:15 I think the number he said that we needed was about 20... was it grams of fiber a day? With-

James Hoffmann 16:19 I think so. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 16:20 So if coffee's giving us three or four of those grams, that's almost sort of 25% of our, um, requirement, which is pretty staggering. And I never really thought of coffee as a source of fiber.

James Hoffmann 16:31 Neither did I until he told me. I, it just didn't cross my mind that this, you know, it's, it's a drink. You know, it's not like a thick-

Steven Bartlett 16:37 Yeah.

James Hoffmann 16:37 I lived the life of like fiber is, is miserable cardboardy bran cereal.

Steven Bartlett 16:41 Yeah. (laughs)

James Hoffmann 16:41 That's fiber in my brain. And the idea that this was fiber was inconceivable to me. But, you know, then I read the studies and, uh, it was fascinating.

Steven Bartlett 16:50 What about mental health? I've always wondered, you know, I think even things like depression, anxiety, I've always assumed a little bit that coffee because of the caffeine is gonna be bad for anxiety.

James Hoffmann 17:01 I would certainly say, not a doctor, but I would certainly say that if, if you, someone suffers with anxiety, cutting out caffeine would be something to test and to see if there's benefits to cutting caffeine out. There, there are a bunch of studies done on it. They're not uniform in their outcome. Some found different results for caffeine consumption. And I think because you're trying to study what is ultimately quite a generic term that covers a lot of different experiences and, and, uh, challenges that people face. So yeah, I, I wouldn't say consume it regardless. Don't think about it. I think if, if you struggle with anxiety, it would be certainly be worth considering cutting it out.

Steven Bartlett 17:36 What about depression?

James Hoffmann 17:37 I think the same sort of thing is true there. I, I think there have been studies that correlate caffeine consumption to depression, and I think there are people who have used it and have found benefit from it. Uh, again, it's one of those ones where I, I just wouldn't blindly consume caffeine assuming a benefit to mental health. If I have mental health challenges, I think it's, it's a place to check.

Steven Bartlett 17:57 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 17:57 And it's pretty easy to check. Cut it out for a month, it'll suck for a few days, but you know, you may see benefits or you may not. But...

Steven Bartlett 18:05 Another sort of complicated tenuous, uh, link has been made towards c- cancer with coffee.

James Hoffmann 18:09 Mm-hmm. Most of the meta studies now seem to come down on for almost every cancer, there's a lower incidence associated with coffee consumption.... this ... now, again, that's not universal. Some studies have found differently. Again, they're just really hard studies to do effectively, I think. I think that's the challenge of it. I have certainly not seen anything that makes me, uh, concerned about drinking coffee, uh, from that perspective anyway. I think there's a, a l- you know, whatever impact it may have, I think would be pretty minor compared to something like, uh, cigarettes. And I, I, you know, I remember, uh, you said on the internet some time ago, uh, you think in, in 10 or 20 years time-

Steven Bartlett 18:49 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 18:49 ... people will see coffee consumption the way they see cigarette consumption.

Steven Bartlett 18:53 Yeah, I did. I remember saying that two years ago.

James Hoffmann 18:55 Yeah. A- and I, and I, to some extent, there's something in that. I, I think we are getting more thoughtful about caffeine consumption, and I think caffeine is gonna be the root of it all-

Steven Bartlett 19:03 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 19:03 ... rather than coffee as a whole.

Steven Bartlett 19:04 Yeah, that's what I should've said. I should've said caffeine. Yeah.

James Hoffmann 19:06 And I, and I-

Steven Bartlett 19:07 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 19:07 ... think there is change, and I think, you know, w- we're definitely seeing that. I don't think ... I, I think there's enough health benefits in the coffee itself-

Steven Bartlett 19:15 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 19:15 ... that we would benefit from keeping it around. You know, I don't think there's any health benefits associated with cigarette smoking. But I, I think coffee will have some benefits, but I think our attitude and our relationship with caffeine is going to change. I think you're right about that.

Steven Bartlett 19:27 Yeah, that's really what I was getting at. I, I, I almost didn't as disas- uh, couldn't pull apart coffee from caffeine because I'm a muggle on this subject matter. But what I really mean is, that addiction to this drug of caffeine and how it's like running everyone's life and we need three cups or four cups a day just to be normal and to show up to work and think straight, I go, "Jesus Christ." Like, a- as is always the case with these sort of health revolutions, we kind of go to one extreme, then we go to the other. There's the counter movement. There'll be like the big decaf movement. There's now, because of neurodiversity and anxiety concerns, there's this jitter-free, crash-free caffeine movement emerging in things like matcha and et cetera. So, hmm. Is d- decaf, is ... Are you seeing a rise in people choosing decaf and-

James Hoffmann 20:14 The great frustration of decaf is that decaf drinkers are typically very poorly served by the coffee industry.

Steven Bartlett 20:20 Okay.

James Hoffmann 20:21 For a bunch of reasons, coffee shop owners tend not to invest in decaf. Uh, a lot of coffee roasting companies don't really care about decaf, despite the fact that decaf drinkers are the ones who are drinking it just for the taste.

Steven Bartlett 20:30 Yeah.

James Hoffmann 20:30 They are the purest coffee consumer actually, 'cause they just want the flavor. They don't even want the caffeine, just the flavor.

Steven Bartlett 20:36 Madness. (laughs)

James Hoffmann 20:36 So, you know, it, it, it's always been an important thing for me over the years, uh, that decaf be good. But yeah, I'd love to see more decaf consumption going on. I, I, I think decaf can be really delicious and good if it's done properly all the way through, from sort of farm to cup. But it, it's not as available as it should be to most people, which kind of hurts me.

Steven Bartlett 20:56 What about, um, Alzheimer's? Randomly something I've got increasingly more interested in over the last couple of years, I think from doing this podcast and speaking to health experts. But it, it has almost felt like this mystery disease that strikes some people for a reason that we haven't yet, quite yet figured out. Perfectly healthy people can suddenly get the news that they have Alzheimer's. Is there a relationship from these studies that you've seen between Alzheimer's, um, and coffee?

James Hoffmann 21:20 Yes. And I'm gonna sound like a broken record. Where you see once again up to about three cups of coffee a day saw an association with reduced cognitive decline and reduced incidents of Alzheimer's. So, i- i- it's, uh, again, I- I'm not saying that coffee is causing this.

Steven Bartlett 21:35 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 21:35 I'm saying in the studies, the people who drank coffee had better outcomes. But you can't just say, "Because they drank coffee."

Steven Bartlett 21:44 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 21:44 That's a really important disconnect in these kind of things that doesn't happen often enough.

Steven Bartlett 21:48 I had, um, Dr. Daniel Amen on the podcast, and one of his ... He's like a neuroscientist that scans, I think he's scanned a quarter of a million brains now. He is one of the only people that has really expressed a concern about the impact that coffee has on the brain because he says it reduces the amount of blood flow to the brain-

James Hoffmann 22:06 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 22:06 ... and that is a net negative thing. Have you ever heard about that, that point of view before?

James Hoffmann 22:12 I haven't heard much about that. Most of the studies I've read that looked at cognition see that kind of lift that caffeine will give you, um, in that, you know, people tend to perform better on cognitive tests after caffeine than, or with caffeine than without. Um, I'm surprised in that I, I had thought caffeine was a vasodilator, which would, in theory, allow more blood flow around, but maybe it's not. Uh, you know, I haven't scanned a quarter million brains, uh, so I- I'm not an expert on this one. But that's the first time I've heard someone talk about blood flow to

James Hoffmann 22:40 the brain and coffee specifically.

Steven Bartlett 22:42 You know, w- I used to believe that coffee was basically giving me energy.

James Hoffmann 22:46 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 22:46 And then it was actually d- Daniel Amen, Dr. Daniel Amen that helped me understand what's actually going on.

James Hoffmann 22:52 Right.

Steven Bartlett 22:52 He says it's just like blocking something.

James Hoffmann 22:53 Yes. It's, it's, it's stopping, uh, a compound called adenosine working in your blood, and adenosine calms you down, lowers your heart rate, makes you feel tired and sleepy. And caffeine just gets in the way of that receptor and stops it working. And so a lot of people, uh, experience a kind of accumulation of adenosine, and so while they're consuming coffee, their body's trying to put out adenosine, lower the heart rate, calm them down, it's not working. And eventually your body clears the caffeine and you have a kind of crash afterwards where you suddenly just feel extremely tired because finally your receptors are clear to receive the amount of adenosine that's in your blood. So yeah, there's, there's a kind of downside that way. Again, big doses tend to come with bigger crashes, you know? I think a lot of people now are pushing the idea that you should delay caffeine consumption a little bit later in the day. Uh, I think Huberman is big on like no coffee for the first 90, 120 minutes after waking to help sort of mitigate this effect and sort of clear out everything in your bloodstream before you start inhibiting adenosine, uh, reception.

Steven Bartlett 23:50 Is that why people get like crashes and stuff like that? 'Cause a lot of drinks that are coming to market now that are like caffeine-based products are promising you that you won't get crashes and jitters. So I was wondering if they're-

James Hoffmann 24:01 Right. You see a lot of people pushing L-theanine in there as a product which seems to have a synergistic effect and, and help people feel a little calmer while sort of maintaining the benefits from that. I think the evidence is reasonable on that but, um, again, those products tend to be a bit more sort of thoughtful about the amount of caffeine in them and I, and I think the amount of caffeine is really kind of key. You, you know, um, you might have something with say 100 milligrams of caffeine. That's a, that's a pretty acceptable dose. You might find that in a single espresso or in say a small cup of filter coffee. If you take a pre-workout-... that's often 300 milligrams of caffeine. And so there's all these ways that we can consume caffeine quite easily. Coca-Cola is pretty low, I think like 50, 60 milligrams of caffeine in a can or a bottle of Coca-Cola. But you can easily end up drinking 200, 250 milligrams in coffee as well. If it's a, uh, lower quality coffee, it tends to have more caffeine in it. If it's brewed as a sort of very strong filter coffee, it's just knowing how much you're taking it that I think is kind of key.

Steven Bartlett 24:57 And why, why does that matter? Is that again about sleep or is it just because if you take huge doses then there'll be significant consequences, like crashes and stuff like that?

James Hoffmann 25:06 Yeah. I, I think it's the, the more you dose, the longer it's going to take to clear from your system, the more that will be in your blood come time to go to sleep. You know, I, I think the, the lethal dose of, of caffeine is really pretty high. A few people have got there, sadly.

Steven Bartlett 25:17 Really?

James Hoffmann 25:18 But it's, it's, it's a huge amount of coffee. It's usually done with like pills or other sort of forms of caffeine consumption. To do it with just cups of coffee is like, I think 50 or 60 cups of coffee in a very short timeframe. A very strong coffee would be about what, what was necessary for a small person to hit a sort of caffeine toxicity. So it's quite hard to do. Um-

Steven Bartlett 25:35 And you'd die of a cardiovascular issue or just poisoning?

James Hoffmann 25:38 I think it's more unpleasant than that-

Steven Bartlett 25:39 Oh, really?

James Hoffmann 25:40 ... as I recall. Yeah. I think it's a sort of neurological thing as well. It's not... I don't think it's a good death, if I'm honest. Uh, not that there are... you know, maybe there are good ones. But yeah, I don't think it's a good way to go.

Steven Bartlett 25:51 Coffee was originally a snack.

James Hoffmann 25:53 Kind of.

Steven Bartlett 25:53 Kind of?

James Hoffmann 25:54 Yeah, the coffee fruit was.

Steven Bartlett 25:55 Okay.

James Hoffmann 25:55 So, uh, it's kind of... Uh, most people don't think of coffee as fruit. And coffee fruit grows on these trees, they're usually about two meters tall, full of these sort of ripe red cherry looking things. We call them coffee cherries. They're about the size of a grape, but inside there's these two seeds, kind of like a peanut facing each other, and they take up most of the fruit. Uh, so if you eat them, they're not very satisfying. They're mostly seed, bit of skin, and a little bit of kind of fruit flesh, for want of a better term, on the inside. But it is delicious. It's kind of like a tangy watermelon taste. Coffee fruit's very delicious. I recommend. If you can try it, definitely try it. Um, caffeine exists in coffee primarily as an insect repellent. That's why the plant produces it, so that if an insect attacks the fruit, it gets a whack of caffeine and it's like, "Nope," and it leaves the fruit alone. So that's its function in nature. Other plants produce caffeine. There's some interesting stuff about how, uh, caffeine improves the memory of bees, which helps with pollination, uh, as kind of... So some flowers produce caffeine, uh, than they think for that reason. But the, the caffeine in fruit, in coffee trees specifically, is basically insect repellent, which is why the higher you grow c- uh, coffee, the less insects there are and actually the lower the levels of caffeine you tend to see the plant produce.

Steven Bartlett 27:05 You became a competitive coffee...

James Hoffmann 27:09 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 27:09 I don't know, what do you call it? Do you call it a player? Barista?

James Hoffmann 27:11 Barista.

Steven Bartlett 27:11 You became a competitive coffee barista when you were what, 25 years old?

James Hoffmann 27:15 Yeah, about that. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 27:15 And then by 27 you were named the World Barista Champion.

James Hoffmann 27:19 Yes. I, I think I went hard. Uh, you know.

Steven Bartlett 27:22 (laughs)

James Hoffmann 27:23 A couple of things. Yeah. Well, I really fell in love with it, you know what I mean? Like, like I got into coffee at like 23. I didn't like coffee, didn't drink coffee. And then I read a book, uh, called The Devil's Cup. That just-

Steven Bartlett 27:33 This book.

James Hoffmann 27:34 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and it's a fun book. It's, it's... I don't know how well it's aged, but it's just travel writing. So he traces the route that coffee took from Ethiopia to Yemen through kind of, uh, Turkey into the Mediterranean, how it spread around the world. And what got me about that book was like coffee's in every culture, and it's different. Italian espresso culture is totally different to Scandinavian coffee culture, totally different to Australian coffee culture, or, you know, what coffee culture is in the US. And I was like, "Well, this drink's kind of interesting." Like, it's a part of every society now. And then I started to drink it and I fell in love with it, and I just went deeper and deeper and deeper. And, um, yeah, in 2007 I won the World Barista Championships.

Steven Bartlett 28:11 So if you're the former World Barista Champion-

James Hoffmann 28:14 (laughs) Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 28:15 ... and I

Steven Bartlett 28:16 am a muggle, which I am on coffee and many things, what do I need to know? What are the like, the biggest myths and misconceptions about the drink of coffee that someone like me should be aware of? I'm trying to have better coffee. I'm not, you know, I'm not ne- I'm never going to be like a coffee snob, but I'm, I want to make... I want nicer coffees that are good for me, that are healthy, um, and that taste great. What do I need to know? What are the misconceptions?

James Hoffmann 28:45 There's, there's probably less misconceptions now than ever, I would say. Like the, the... I think more people are coming round to the idea that coffee is not just a bitter, painful experience that you go through to get to the caffeine on the other side, like it's a little trial each morning that we come to enjoy. I think people now understand more and more that there is an astonishing sort of range of flavor in coffee. 20 years ago, there wasn't. 40 years ago, there was no diversity of flavor in coffee. Coffee was brown and mean and miserable, and that was it. And now you can have coffees that taste kind of fruity and floral. You can have coffees that taste earthy and rich or chocolatey or whatever else. Like, so I, I think the thing that I want to kind of get out into the world is whatever you enjoy, I'm pretty sure there's something you could enjoy more, because there's so much out there, there's so much diversity. That's the first thing. I think that the second thing that I think people do understand is that, you know, coffee's kind of made three times in a weird sort of way. Coffee's made at the farm level, and we would understand that with wine. Like a, a grower grows the grapes, they make the wine at that point, and the producer of raw coffee carefully grows fruit, harvests the seeds, processes them carefully, and you can do a good job there or a bad job, and you've kind of got a peak quality moment there. Coffee is made again when you roast it. It's transformed completely from a kind of green plant smelling thing into one of the most aromatic things in the world. And then it's made again when you make it. And in each of these stages, you can lose the quality completely. You can do a terrible job roasting it and make it taste awful, and you can do a terrible job brewing it and make it taste awful. And I think for a lot of people, coffee making was not particularly a skill. Coffee making was not complex or hard, and it shouldn't be complex, but it, it's easy to get wrong. And I think you can be disappointed by a coffee that you've made without really understanding why. And a lot of what I'm interested in is like, okay, you don't need to understand everything about this process. You need to work out what are the most important things to understand and get those right, and then you're most of the way there.... I don't think the, the kind of average consumer is necessarily uninformed or confused, but potentially overwhelmed by choice still.

Steven Bartlett 30:50 Well I, I see a variance in the price.

James Hoffmann 30:52 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 30:52 So I assume there must be a variance in what I'm putting in my mouth. Or-

James Hoffmann 30:55 100%.

Steven Bartlett 30:56 Or, and, um, I'm not sure what's marketing and what's, you know, quality.

James Hoffmann 31:00 Yep.

Steven Bartlett 31:01 Um, I've brought five different cups of coffee.

James Hoffmann 31:04 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 31:05 From five local shops, outlets, et cetera.

Steven Bartlett 31:10 And I'm going to... I don't know which ones are which, so my team got me these five cups of coffee. Jackie's just bringing them in now. So we have five different-

James Hoffmann 31:19 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 31:19 ... 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?

James Hoffmann 31:26 Yeah, like, um, so that one of the things that I can assess pretty quickly is how darkly the coffee's been roasted. Y- when you have, uh, the longer you leave coffee in a roasting machine the darker the color the beans will be.

Steven Bartlett 31:35 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 31:36 And for a long time I think people associated darker roast 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. Um, so these are all reasonably dark roasts just from smell. So I can kind of, the, the smells I'm coming off there are more in the kind of heavier, not burnt smells, although 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, a kind of gauge of where things are going to be. So there's going to be an expectation with that of bitterness.

Steven Bartlett 32:12 In, in perfume shops they give us sometimes coffee beans to smell to kind of-

James Hoffmann 32:16 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 32:16 ... try and wash out our-

James Hoffmann 32:17 Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 32:17 ... nasal senses, I guess. Does that work?

James Hoffmann 32:20 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 s- 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.

Steven Bartlett 32:40 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 32:40 They can't.

Steven Bartlett 32:41 And it's also evidenced when you go for a run and then, 'cause you can smell yourself, you have to ask your friend if you smell.

James Hoffmann 32:49 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 32:50 So you go, "Dave, do I stink?"

James Hoffmann 32:51 Do I, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 32:51 'Cause your brain... your nose, I guess, is habituated to the-

James Hoffmann 32:54 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? 'Cause 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 flavor.

Steven Bartlett 33:12 Oh, interesting.

James Hoffmann 33:12 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.

Steven Bartlett 33:21 The interesting thing-

James Hoffmann 33:22 Anyway.

Steven Bartlett 33:22 ... with, uh, talking about Coca-Cola there is, I remember those Coke and Pepsi studies from back in the day where-

James Hoffmann 33:27 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 33:27 ... people would rate Pepsi as tasting better unless they had it in a Coke can. So when they could see the brand-

James Hoffmann 33:34 Interesting.

Steven Bartlett 33:35 ... 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, you don't know what these coffees are, you don't know what brands they are, and neither do I-

James Hoffmann 33:46 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 33:46 ... um, what the results are going to be. So coffee number one...

James Hoffmann 33:50 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 33:51 Have a taste and a smell.

James Hoffmann 33:57 (inhales) So that's a, to me a pretty standard kind of commercial coffee taste. There's not, uh, a lot going on there. Relatively high in bitterness to me.

Steven Bartlett 34:07 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 34:07 And so that's a fairly bitter cup of coffee. Um, and that's b- 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, and finding why is sometimes tricky. I wouldn't say it's a particularly expensive cup of coffee.

Steven Bartlett 34:24 No, it didn't taste like-

James Hoffmann 34:24 Um-

Steven Bartlett 34:25 ... petrol station coffee.

James Hoffmann 34:27 You can say that.

Steven Bartlett 34:27 (laughs)

James Hoffmann 34:27 I like that. I like, you can say, yeah, I'm gonna just lead you into saying terrible things-

Steven Bartlett 34:31 Yeah. (laughs)

James Hoffmann 34:31 ... and I'll say nothing.

Steven Bartlett 34:32 Yeah, yeah.

James Hoffmann 34:33 Um-

Steven Bartlett 34:33 It does, it tasted like it came out of, like, a, um, vending machine or something to me.

James Hoffmann 34:36 Yeah, I'd be surprised if that was expensive. I'd be a little bit outraged if that was expensive.

Steven Bartlett 34:40 What would you rate that one out of five? Let's do 10.

James Hoffmann 34:44 (laughs) Um, for me and what coffee can be, I'd say that's like a two.

Steven Bartlett 34:50 I would say that was a five out of ten. (laughs)

James Hoffmann 34:54 Yeah, I think that's kind of-

Steven Bartlett 34:54 Because I don't really know-

James Hoffmann 34:55 ... I think that's kind of fair. I probably-

Steven Bartlett 34:56 Yeah.

James Hoffmann 34:56 ... should be fair and call that a four out of ten because I've tasted way worse than that.

Steven Bartlett 34:59 Okay.

James Hoffmann 34:59 Let's go for number two. Now, this one will be a little bit more divisive for a lot of people 'cause it's got a little bit more acidity in it. It's like a little bit of, it's a bit, I might describe it as sourness almost, like it's a little zingy tasting. Generally acidity is, 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, the sweeter it will ultimately be. But you do get more acidity in higher growing 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, brews a little bit better. I'd like it to be a less kind of sour thing. It's a little bit old obviously, it 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 s- it's got a little characteristic to it, like it tastes of something is a little bit fruity in there.

Steven Bartlett 35:52 Yeah, it's got a per- more of a personality, hasn't it?

James Hoffmann 35:54 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 35:54 The aftertaste is a little bit something going on there.

James Hoffmann 35:56 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 35:57 And what would you rate that out of, out of ten in your preference?

James Hoffmann 36:00 There's things I'd like to change about it. So like six, seven, somewhere there. Like, um, but the, the, it has I think better raw materials in it that, that does appeal to me.

Steven Bartlett 36:10 Okay, I'm going to say six as well. Okay. I can reveal-

James Hoffmann 36:14 Mm-hmm?

Steven Bartlett 36:19 ... that number one-

James Hoffmann 36:20 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 36:22 ... was McDonald's coffee.

James Hoffmann 36:24 That's not surprising. That, that's kind of what I would have expected McDonald's to taste like.

Steven Bartlett 36:28 And it was... that cup of coffee cost us 1.30 pound.

James Hoffmann 36:33 So probably the cheapest thing here. I feel like McDonald's are aiming at the kind of cheaper end.

Steven Bartlett 36:38 Okay, your assessment there was probably fair. You did originally give it a two out of ten.

James Hoffmann 36:42 I, uh, I feel not bad about that, but it's fine.

Steven Bartlett 36:44 There you go. So, um, number two.You talked about there being sort of a bitterness to it in an indep- um, like a-

James Hoffmann 36:51 A little bit more acidity in this. Tastes like the raw materials are of a higher quality. Certainly the number one.

Steven Bartlett 36:59 That is an independent local coffee shop.

James Hoffmann 37:02 Yep.

Steven Bartlett 37:03 And that cup of coffee is double the price-

James Hoffmann 37:06 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 37:06 ... of the McDonald's one, at about £3 per cup. Let's move on to number three.

James Hoffmann 37:12 Okay.

Steven Bartlett 37:16 Very different taste.

James Hoffmann 37:20 For me, it's more akin to number one than anything else. Like, it's, it, 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, but at the same time, for me. Um...

Steven Bartlett 37:32 It's fuller, isn't it? It, it-

James Hoffmann 37:32 It is a little bit fuller and that-

Steven Bartlett 37:33 The first one was quite watery to me.

James Hoffmann 37:35 Yeah. And that's in part gonna be how it's made, in part how it's roasted, in part, you know, where, 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, a reasonably commercial grade coffee. I wouldn't say it tastes bad. Roasts a little dark. Yeah, it's another kind of, um ... yeah, three, four. Three, actually, there's just 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.

Steven Bartlett 38:09 So that is Costa Coffee.

James Hoffmann 38:10 Interesting. There you go.

Steven Bartlett 38:12 Number four. You're doing a swirling, I can see. You can do it in a real ...

James Hoffmann 38:19 I try, I, I like to slurp usually, do a little aeration, but down a microphone, it's brutal.

Steven Bartlett 38:24 (laughs)

James Hoffmann 38:25 Um, okay. So that's, um, probably the darkest roast of all of them. I would say, it doesn't taste like the raw materials are particularly bad. And so I can have a guess at who that's from. Um, but it is definitely a darker roast, so more bitterness. Again, quite full. Um, so, you know, my gut says that's the sort of Starbucks style thing to me.

Steven Bartlett 38:47 Try the last one as well then, before we-

James Hoffmann 38:49 Okay.

Steven Bartlett 38:49 ... reveal.

James Hoffmann 38:50 Before I get into trouble? That's kind of weird. Um, it's a little bit vegetably to me, if I'm honest. Um, 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. Yet I like it probably less than this one here, so I'd probably be back to like a four again.

Steven Bartlett 39:12 So number four-

James Hoffmann 39:13 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 39:13 ... which was the one you gave five out of ten-

James Hoffmann 39:15 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 39:16 ... is Pratt.

James Hoffmann 39:16 Is it?

Steven Bartlett 39:17 Yeah.

James Hoffmann 39:17 Wow.

Steven Bartlett 39:18 And number five-

James Hoffmann 39:18 And five's ...

Steven Bartlett 39:20 Three. Sorry, number five-

James Hoffmann 39:23 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 39:23 ... is Starbucks.

James Hoffmann 39:24 Is it?

Steven Bartlett 39:24 Yeah.

James Hoffmann 39:25 There you go.

Steven Bartlett 39:26 So of the high street chains then-

James Hoffmann 39:28 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 39:29 ... the coffee that you rated highest in our taste test-

James Hoffmann 39:32 Yep.

Steven Bartlett 39:33 ... was Pratt.

James Hoffmann 39:34 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 39:34 Second was Costa, and then-

James Hoffmann 39:37 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 39:37 ... third was Starbucks.

James Hoffmann 39:39 But I would say, from my point of view-

Steven Bartlett 39:41 Yeah.

James Hoffmann 39:41 ... the, the variance between them is surprisingly small.

Steven Bartlett 39:43 Yeah.

James Hoffmann 39:44 Uh, uh, they're not, I don't think they taste particularly different to each other in a, in a big way.

Steven Bartlett 39:49 Yeah.

James Hoffmann 39:49 I think the independent stood out a long way from the others, right?

Steven Bartlett 39:52 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 39:52 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 experience.

Steven Bartlett 40:09 I agree. I wouldn't really, I mean, there, there are, I mean, I can taste differences, but-

James Hoffmann 40:13 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 40:13 ... but it's not as a profound difference as the McDonald's taste and then the independent taste, which was really full of personality.

James Hoffmann 40:20 Yep.

Steven Bartlett 40:21 And interestingly, the, um, the price variances, the independent cost £3. Costa's £3.20, Pratt's £3.20, and Starbucks is £3.60.

James Hoffmann 40:30 Really?

Steven Bartlett 40:31 Yeah.

James Hoffmann 40:31 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, 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?"

Steven Bartlett 40:46 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 40:46 "That you're gonna make ... And, you know, they make great margins. You, you're not buying 20 million paper cups a week."

Steven Bartlett 40:52 Mm.

James Hoffmann 40:52 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.

Steven Bartlett 41:00 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 41:00 And, 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. And, and that's why I'm always gonna bat for independence, because it's not like you can s- spend more. You can get a better product by someone who cares deeply about it. And, and, and I think it's, there's a risk in going to an independent, if you're traveling-

Steven Bartlett 41:23 Mm.

James Hoffmann 41:23 ... and, you know, Starbucks, th- 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 'cause 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. (paper crinkles)

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Steven Bartlett 43:43 You, you have, uh, quite a lot of businesses. Um-

James Hoffmann 43:46 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 43:46 ... I, I, I've read somewhere that you'd started I think 11 or 12 different companies.

James Hoffmann 43:49 Getting on for that, I think, at this point now.

Steven Bartlett 43:51 What are, what are those businesses?

James Hoffmann 43:53 Um, that's a good question.

Steven Bartlett 43:54 (laughs)

James Hoffmann 43:54 Uh, my first business, uh, I started back in 2008 just after I won the World Barista Championships, um, which was a coffee roasting company. Um, and that still is, I suppose, my primary business today even if I don't run that anymore. There's, uh, uh, an amazing MD in there and, uh, I just sort of try not to start fires and be useful where I can do. Uh, over the years we've started other things, uh, distribution companies kind of importing stuff or, uh, we have a coffee shop, we've done training businesses, kind of education, that kind of stuff, uh, equipment businesses, kind of the big commercial espresso machines in there. I started a, a coffee, coffee recruitment business, uh, that I ultimately sold a little while back. Um, I'm trying to think of other thing. I've started a magazine, I've started a bunch of other stuff. And then there's, you know, getting into YouTube that's become a weird business in and of itself that I didn't plan to start but is now a kind of all-consuming business.

Steven Bartlett 44:45 With,

Steven Bartlett 44:46 with the YouTube business you must have learned a lot about what people are interested in as it relates to coffee. 'Cause you'll see you talk about certain things and people just seem to gravitate towards those subject matters.

James Hoffmann 44:56 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 44:56 What, what is it that people care so much about a- as it relates to coffee and your audience care about?

James Hoffmann 45:00 That's a great question. Uh, because I think coming into this I, I, for years and years, as people did back then, wrote a blog. And I wrote a blog to sort of share information about coffee 'cause it was great for me to learn and also there's a benefit to sharing. I think if you give, things come back to you in the world. And then people stopped reading blogs and I started making videos. And I think having worked in the coffee industry for 20 years we had tried to talk to people about coffee and nothing really hit and people weren't really interested and they didn't like the way we talked about it and suddenly YouTube I found a way to connect with people. And it turns out we vastly underestimated how broad and how deep people's interest in coffee is. Yeah, people care about, "Which machine should I buy?" And that remains a question that I will be asked I think for the re- end of my days as-

Steven Bartlett 45:42 Excuse me, so which machine? (laughs)

James Hoffmann 45:44 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well-

Steven Bartlett 45:45 No, I'm gen- genuinely want to know which machine I should buy because-

James Hoffmann 45:47 Well, I don't know, right? It depends what your needs are, like, uh-

Steven Bartlett 45:49 Okay, my needs-

James Hoffmann 45:49 ... what's your budget? Like, what do you want to spend?

Steven Bartlett 45:51 Budget's big. (laughs)

James Hoffmann 45:52 What kind of experience do you want, right? Like-

Steven Bartlett 45:53 But I love an espresso.

James Hoffmann 45:55 Right.

Steven Bartlett 45:55 And I want a qu- I like speed and I want q- ... I mean, I'm like everybody. (laughs)

James Hoffmann 46:00 Right.

Steven Bartlett 46:00 I want it to be super fast and really nice. (laughs)

James Hoffmann 46:02 So the, the problem with espresso specifically-

Steven Bartlett 46:04 Okay.

James Hoffmann 46:05 ... is that good espresso is a little bit tricky and it means to get really great espresso at home you kind of want to have it as hobby. And if that does not appeal to you, then don't get an espresso machine for home because you will spend a ton of money and you... I can get you the best machine in the world, put it on your counter. After a week you'll be like, "Oh, you just can't be bothered. I don't want to do this." And I think suddenly the $2.50, £3.00 that the independent business charges you, you're like, "Oh, that's great. I will happily pay you to go through the pain of making espresso." Because it's messy, it's slow, it's convoluted, it's tricky, it's frustrating and as a hobby really rewarding, but as a way to caffeinate yourself in the morning, not the best.

Steven Bartlett 46:44 What about an Americano? Like a great Americano?

James Hoffmann 46:47 Like, like a great filter coffee?

Steven Bartlett 46:49 Yeah.

James Hoffmann 46:49 There's, there's definitely options there and, and you can buy a, a, a machine and grinder and spend, wha- ... you can get an incredible setup for like £500.

Steven Bartlett 46:59 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 46:59 Bearing in mind espresso machines, an incredible setup will be 2, 3, £4000. If you're looking at the, like, the, the top end of stuff. You can go all the way up to t- ... I can spend 10, 10, £15,000 of your money if you'd like me-

Steven Bartlett 47:11 Jesus me, thanks.

James Hoffmann 47:11 Uh, if, if that's, that's where the budgets sort of top out in, in-home espresso. But it's kind of, at that point it's like home, home audio where people just, they want the best possible thing-

Steven Bartlett 47:21 Yeah.

James Hoffmann 47:21 ... and if they have the budget, that market exists.

Steven Bartlett 47:23 I'm moving into a new house so I'm, like, right in the moment now of thinking about h- how to solve this morning coffee problem, so I'm trying to find something that I can maybe install. And, and the thing with me is, I don't, I ain't got a huge amount of time so I kind of just want an iPad. I, I-

James Hoffmann 47:38 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 47:38 ... ideally I'd just speak to it and say, "Please give me coffee," and it would just come out, you know.

James Hoffmann 47:44 Yeah, we're not there yet.

Steven Bartlett 47:45 Okay. (laughs)

James Hoffmann 47:45 We're not there yet. The coffee industry is improving, the automation side is improving. By and large there's sort of super automatic stuff where you just push a button and everything happens and coffee comes out. There's a bunch of dull technical challenges that mean they can't make as good a coffee as you could do if you were willing to do a little bit of work.

Steven Bartlett 48:00 Mm-hmm. I thought so.

James Hoffmann 48:01 And that's, like, I'm not gonna lie to you, that's just the truth of it. They're getting better and there are more and more solutions, um, and there's some great high kind of convenience, uh, solutions to coffee but if you want to have fresh coffee made at home and just be as good as possible, I'm gonna ask you to do tiny bits of work. Just, just pour beans in a grinder, put grinder, ground coffee into a little machine and push a button-

Steven Bartlett 48:25 Which machine?

James Hoffmann 48:27 Well, uh, it depends on your aesthetic at this point then, right? Like, there's some really nice filter coffee ... it depends how much coffee you need.

Steven Bartlett 48:32 How much-

James Hoffmann 48:32 Like, how much, how much do you need in the morning?

Steven Bartlett 48:34 I've got, say I've got £100, £200 to solve this coffee problem.

James Hoffmann 48:38 In total?

Steven Bartlett 48:39 In total, t- for the machinery.

James Hoffmann 48:42 Okay. So the bad news-

Steven Bartlett 48:44 Uh-oh.

James Hoffmann 48:44 ... is, is that ... well, good and bad news. Coffee grinders are the, the right investment.... right? Uh, they are more important than the machine. You can give me a 20 quid filter coffee brewer from Amazon, but if you give me a decent grinder, I can get some pretty good coffee out of it.

Steven Bartlett 49:00 Oh, really?

James Hoffmann 49:00 If you give me a 20-pound coffee grinder and a five-grand machine, I can make pretty terrible coffee.

Steven Bartlett 49:06 Oh, okay.

James Hoffmann 49:06 Average coffee at best, right?

Steven Bartlett 49:08 Okay.

James Hoffmann 49:08 So the grinder, how, how it cuts the coffee e- essentially you'll often see people have little whirly blade grinders, you push a button, it spins madly, just smashes it to pieces. But there's no real control of the size of the pieces. So some will be tiny particles, other will be big rocks. Really hard to evenly brew tiny pieces the same way you'd brew a massive piece of coffee. And so you get a kind of bitter, sour coffee as a result of it. Good coffee grinders have spinning discs inside that cut to a specific size. So all the coffee's pretty much the same size, mostly, and that's much easier to work with. But they cost more money 'cause they need better motors and nicer cutting discs and that kind of stuff. Not crazy amounts, but, yeah, you are looking at like, oh, at least, uh, 100 to 200 pounds for a good grinder.

Steven Bartlett 49:52 Okay.

James Hoffmann 49:53 And I'd love to tell you it wasn't the, the case, and grinders are getting... it used to be like 500 pounds for a good grinder at home. It's coming down all the time. Uh, but yeah, I'd say I'd need like 150-

Steven Bartlett 50:03 Okay.

James Hoffmann 50:04 ... maybe off you.

Steven Bartlett 50:05 Okay.

James Hoffmann 50:05 And then I can get you a really great grinder that should last a lifetime and make you cafe-quality coffee. It's not a, it's not a... you know, it just couldn't do it 500 times a day the way a coffee shops one could. But that's where you're going to spend money. And then you could just get a simple pour over cone, a little f- and just pour water, uh, onto coffee on top of a mug and life would be real easy that way.

Steven Bartlett 50:25 Going back to this, this point though about what you've discovered about people's interest in coffee from the YouTube journey-

James Hoffmann 50:29 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 50:29 ... the first thing you said there was people want to know what machines and stuff.

James Hoffmann 50:31 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 50:31 And then I interrupted, so please do.

James Hoffmann 50:33 No, no, I mean, uh, for, for me the strategy initially was... so I, I, I... my bigger umbrella goal of YouTube is that I want people to enjoy coffee more for a bunch of reasons, and I want them to see it as a more valuable piece of their life, so that at some point they might be willing to spend a bit more money on it. That's, that's the sort of top line goal. What I'm then trying to do is find them, and reviews are a great way to sort of find people. Someone will be like, "Which is the best espresso machine to buy?" They find me. If I entertain them, uh, if I build trust with them, I hope they'll keep watching and then I can take them on a journey, uh, into coffee and I can open up new kind of avenues of exploration for them. That's the kind of goal. That's what I'm trying to do. So in part we do that through machinery reviews and equipment reviews, in part through kind of techniques. So if you've got a French press, cafetiere, what is the best way to use that? I want to be there to help you do that. But it's, it's... a lot of it's about building trust so that down the line we can go and talk about something totally different and you'll listen and you'll trust me.

Steven Bartlett 51:30 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 51:30 And, and that sort of trust is super important to me in t- in terms of like building an audience. Um, because coffee has this really depressing future. Uh, climate change is bad for coffee. Really, really bad. And to some extent maybe we don't deserve to have coffee after we've ruined the planet. I'd hear that argument. But as temperatures increase around the world, coffee needs cooler temperatures to grow. And the only way you can sort of get cooler temperatures as the world heats up is to go higher up the mountain. It's already mountain grown, it's already growing at 1,500 meters, 2,000 meters. The problem with mountains is that the higher you go, there's generally less of the mountain, you know?

Steven Bartlett 52:06 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 52:07 It means there's less area around the world that can grow specialty coffee, grow great quality coffee. So the future is there'll be less great coffee in the future. Cheap coffee will be around for a while. It doesn't need the same kind of conditions. But great coffee has a difficult future ahead of it. And there are millions of people whose livelihoods depend on that. And, and that's... it's not a great system, so to speak. It's like we... there's a lot of problems with how coffee production, uh, is incredibly unfair towards the people who produce it. But i- if we are to remain customers, we need to be comfortable spending a little bit more on coffee in the future. And if you enjoy coffee, spending an extra pound a bag, two pounds a bag, if you really enjoy it, fine. No problem at all. You know what I mean? I will keep coffee as a part of my life. But, but, uh, that, that's kind of one of the motivating factors for me. I want more people to enjoy it just 'cause I like bringing pleasure to people. Like, why... that's great, you know what I mean? But in the future, I, I want coffee consumers to still be there through the challenges that coffee production faces.

Steven Bartlett 53:09 What about these pods, the coffee pod machines that a lot of people are, um, using

Steven Bartlett 53:14 and that are getting more and more popular?

James Hoffmann 53:15 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 53:15 Wake up in the morning, grab the pod, whack it in there, boom, hit button. Shh, drink.

James Hoffmann 53:20 Out comes coffee. Yeah. Um, the best analogy I can make is they're, they're a microwave meal. And microwave meals are what they are. They are of a quality, they are super convenient. There's a fair amount of waste attached to them and, um, you could probably do better with a little bit of effort and it would cost you less.

Steven Bartlett 53:39 Do you, do you use those pods?

James Hoffmann 53:41 Not really. Not the... like I... there are some, uh, and there are... that are kind of separate and different. I, I don't want to get into right now. Um, I think a lot of the sort of small Nespresso kind of style capsule ones are very popular. I just wish they were a bit more recyclable. There's a bit of waste associated with those. But ultimately they're very expensive. Actually for what you're... you're paying a lot of money for that and you're paying for the convenience, I think. The... for the same price per kilo, you could buy some of the best coffees in the world for what you're spending on a capsule 'cause you're l- you're spending money for five grams of coffee 'cause that's what it is. Uh, but the convenience is, is very strong and it's been so success-... I can't argue with convenience. We love a little convenience. But the possibility of, of quality is far greater once you move beyond those. You know what I mean? Like anytime we go convenience, we have to sacrifice something and it's usually quality and it's usually value ultimately. We're going to pay more for that convenience. So I get it. I get not wanting to make espresso but wanting something like espresso in the mornings. They've really succeeded in sort of filling that market. But they are to me

James Hoffmann 54:50 still a kind of microwave meal.

Steven Bartlett 54:52 Is there any culture that doesn't drink caf- coffee?

James Hoffmann 54:55 No, everyone drinks, everyone drinks coffee. People have tried to ban it a few times. It was seen as a kind of seditious drink that was kind of, uh... So from a political perspective. Uh, they tried to ban it here in the UK briefly, I think, uh, King James, I want to say, tried to ban it. Doesn't last very long. We tend to get pretty grumpy if you try and ban it. Uh, it had a sort of... They asked the Pope to ban it at one point and he was like, "No, it's great." And so he, he didn't do that. That was hundreds of years ago. But yeah, coffee was often linked to, uh, politics in the early days. So London was the greatest coffee drinking city in the world for a while. From 16, late 1600s, coffee just comes here to the city of London and takes over. Because up until that point, we were drinking a lot of weak beer. That was the sort of safe, uh, high calorie, high B vitamin kind of drink that we drunk. And we were all a little bit drunk most of the time from drinking a couple of liters or three liters of weak beer a day. Coffee arrives and it's this safe drink that is totally the opposite to beer. It is stimulating and it transforms London society of the time. And, uh, we get obsessed with it. Coffeehouses appear everywhere. There is, uh, the story that in the Square Mile in the early 1700s, there were 2,000 coffee shops. Now that's, that's excessive. It wasn't that many. It was probably... But it was several hundred. Like, they were everywhere. And they quickly diversified and sort of specialized into specific things. And so, uh, very famously, Lloyd's of London, the insurance broker started as a coffee shop called Lloyd's of London. And people did business at the tables, those became offices. And to this day, runners in there are still called waiters. And, and so that just happened to specialize in shipping insurance, that coffeehouse. Others specialized in politics. O- others specialized in literature. They became known as penny universities because you could pay a penny to get into a London coffeehouse and you would gain the education just from listening to people talk of a university degree. And so they were these incredible places for a while. Uh, eventually our colonial interest shifted to tea and the coffeehouse went into the decline in sort of 1700s, 1800s. But for about 100 years, London was the most incredible coffee drinking city in the world.

Steven Bartlett 57:05 When coffee came to the UK-

James Hoffmann 57:06 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 57:07 ... and when it came to the western world, was there a productivity boom?

James Hoffmann 57:09 Yeah, 100%. Uh, huge change in culture. Massi- 'cause we were no longer drunk all the time. Um, so yeah, it arrives in London, I think, in 1652 is th- the first, uh, coffee shop that's right just near Bank tube station. You can see a little blue plaque on the wall if you go looking for it there. Uh, yeah, we, we absolutely fell in love with it. It became a part of industry, culture, politics, everything. Like, it w- it supercharged the nation. There are people who argue that, uh, you know, we, we awake from this drunken stupor and then are like, "Well, what's the rest of the world got to offer?" And we go and become the colonial, you know, horror show that we were, uh, after that. And you can blame coffee for that. But, uh, it's a bit of a stretch. But, uh, yeah, it, it was a massive shift in society.

Steven Bartlett 57:51 I, I think for most of my life assumed that tea didn't have caffeine in it. I don't know why, I just always thought coffee, caffeine. I think 'cause they sound similar.

James Hoffmann 57:58 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 57:59 (laughs) But then I, I heard at one point that tea also has caffeine in it as well.

James Hoffmann 58:02 A little bit. Nowhere near the quantities, uh, of coffee, but, you know, if you're drinking 10, 12 cups of tea a day, it's probably worth paying attention to how much is in there and how you steep your tea and all that kind of stuff will have an impact on how much caffeine's

James Hoffmann 58:14 in there.

Steven Bartlett 58:15 And what's your, what's your favorite cup of coffee? You get... Must get as- asked this all the time.

James Hoffmann 58:19 I do get asked this all the time, and I still after 20 years don't have a great answer. I drink a lot of filter coffee. Uh, so you-

Steven Bartlett 58:25 What is filter coffee?

James Hoffmann 58:25 So filter coffee is not from an espresso machine. So it's going to be brewed either in a filter coffee machine or by hand. You'll see a lot of people pouring water over coffee. Uh, the drink is gonna be the same kind of strength as an Americano, but it's a sort of, it's a, it's a weaker thing. I'm, I'm not obsessed with espresso the same way. I want a cup of black coffee 'cause I want to take my time. Because as you taste a cup of coffee, if it's a great cup of coffee, as it cools down, its, its flavor kind of opens up and becomes really interesting and complex. And so I like the idea that I can sit for 10, 15 minutes and if I want to, have a really enjoyable kind of journey of flavor. That, for me, is, is the, the kind of great bit about coffee. Yeah, I'll drink an espresso sometimes if I want a little short shot of something tasty. But, but the idea that I can, if I want, have 10, 15 minutes to myself to enjoy this thing and see some benefits afterwards, that's a wonderful thing. So I like coffees from all over the world. I feel like I'm forcing myself, uh, into a tiny space here. If I could only drink coffee from one country for the rest of my life, it would probably be coffees from Colombia. Uh, they just have a real spread of flavors, but some really just incredible coffees come from that part of the world. But there's amazing coffee from just, just about every producing country. If you're within the Tropic of, uh, Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, that kind of belt around the Earth, then you can probably grow coffee above certain altitudes. And almost every country that is in that band does grow coffee. So there's a lot of different places that grow it. Um, and there's gonna be great coffee in all of those places. And there'll be cheap and low quality coffee in all those places too. But yeah, there's... The, the range, the, the spread is massive.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:00 Do you pour sugar and milk into your coffee?

James Hoffmann 1:00:03 I don't use sugar and milk. And I get why people do, because most coffee benefits from sugar and milk. Milk is a very, uh, it has a weird quirk. It's a bitter blocker. It inhibits bitterness. So when you put it into a harsh, bitter cup of coffee, it does soften that. We, of course, like sweet things. I think, uh, one thing to note when it comes to all of the studies that look at coffee and is coffee healthy, they'll be like, "Yes, coffee's healthy if you drink it black." And if you're putting a lot of cream and a lot of sugar into your coffee, there are... The health benefits very quickly taken away. You know what I mean? It's, it's not, quote unquote, "as healthy a drink." Uh, for me, putting milk or sugar into coffee kind of hides the flavors a little bit. And so I, I, I want to taste it without. I get why people want to put it in there. I don't have an issue with people sweetening or, or adding a little milk or cream. But y- you kind of lose some of what makes coffee so interesting.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:57 In...... this book.

James Hoffmann 1:01:00 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:00 How To Make The Best Coffee At Home. One of the points you make is quite surprising. You say that once a, um... 'Cause I used to think that coffee was a shelf staple.

James Hoffmann 1:01:11 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:12 I used to think you get it, you can grind it, you can put it in the cupboard, and it kind of lasts forever.

James Hoffmann 1:01:17 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:18 And it doesn't change. You make the case that I'm wrong.

James Hoffmann 1:01:21 It is sadly not the case. It's fresh food, unfortunately. The, the challenge coffee has is that we just can't see its change. If I dice up an apple and I leave it for, uh, a couple of hours, you can see the change in it. It's staling in a bunch of different ways. When you smash coffee into little pieces when you grind it to find powder, you kickstart a bunch of chemistry that you can't undo. And some of that's oxidation, where oxygen transforms things and turns fats a little bit rancid over time. You lose a bunch of the aromas locked inside the bean. It just gets less interesting tasting. If you want the best experience for coffee, grinding it fresh is, is the way to do it. Also, grinding coffee is one of the, like the best smells in the world. Why would you not have that as part of your life? Uh, and so yeah, coffee is fresh food, and if you treat it like fresh food, it tastes way better. And-

Steven Bartlett 1:02:08 How long does it take to decay? So if-

James Hoffmann 1:02:10 That's a good question.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:11 So if I had it in the, in the cupboard, you know...

James Hoffmann 1:02:14 Once you grind coffee, most people would easily detect a difference a day later.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:21 Interesting.

James Hoffmann 1:02:21 And, and they would say it tasted notably worse two days later. And so buying pre-ground coffee is buying high convenience, but the cost is you never got to experience how good that coffee was at the moment it was ground.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:33 So if I buy it in supermarkets-

James Hoffmann 1:02:34 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:02:35 ... it's gonna taste awful compared to in a-

James Hoffmann 1:02:37 Yeah, you've just-

Steven Bartlett 1:02:38 ... coffee shop?

James Hoffmann 1:02:39 Y- y- yeah. You get a lot less for your money in terms of flavor. It will have degraded. They can gas flush it and they'll, uh, you know, pack the bags with the inert gases and stuff. But the minute you open that bag, it's on its way out and it will happen really quickly. And so the downside is coffee grinders cost a little bit of money and they take up a little bit of space and they're another step in the morning between you and getting your caffeine in, in the system. I understand that. But if you want the best value for money, a, a, a bag of beans costs the same as a bag of ground coffee, even though the ground coffee has more cost in terms of manufacture. But the value of the beans is just way higher. It just tastes way better. And so having a grinder lets you get better value for money in the coffee that you buy going forwards.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:22 What do you think the future of coffee is? We've talked a little bit about the history of coffee, but where, where do you think the coffee industry and public opinion around coffee goes from here?

James Hoffmann 1:03:32 You know, I think we've fallen pretty deeply in love with coffee in a different kind of way in the last few years. I think the, the pandemic caused a seismic shift in coffee consumption around the world. People had grown used to going out to coffee shops, drinking good quality coffee. And, and that was part of their lives. And when the pandemic happened and people couldn't do that, the growth in coffee equipment at home was astronomical. This was, this was something people wanted to invest in and were not willing to let go of. I, I wasn't really sure pre-pandemic, if you said, "How much do people really love coffee?" I'm like, "Well, they like it a lot but, you know, maybe they'd let it go if it got too expensive." But in that moment where we took it away, people were like, "Absolutely not. Coffee stays." And, and, and that was really heartening to me. And that was all over the world. Every, every market, every country I spoke to people, they saw the same thing, huge interest in coffee at home. So I feel good about that. I feel like the, the promise of specialty coffee where we, where we've said... You know, the, the promise of specialty coffee where we've said, "Coffee can be better. It's a bit more expensive, but it tastes more interesting," people have enjoyed that and found that to be true. So right now I feel very good about coffee consumption from a, uh, longevity point of view for the industry. People want to keep drinking coffee. Like I said, the, the challenge on one side remains coffee production's future. It's gonna be increasingly difficult to grow great quality coffee in the future with climate change. We're already seeing the impact of that now. A changing wa- rainfall patterns, all sorts of other stuff is making coffee harder to grow. That's going to put the price of it up in the future for the high quality stuff. But for a while, I, I, I think it will sort of stay. I don't think we're willing to let go. I think we are gonna be, be paying more attention to caffeine in the future, and I think that's a good thing. I would en- encourage people to pay more attention to caffeine in the future, and that may decrease our consumption overall. And I'm also okay with that too. I'd rather people spent good money on two great cups of coffee a day than just five average ones just to get them through. Uh, like I, I'm okay with lowering consumption and increasing the quality of it. That works very well for me, uh, because I think it'll bring more pleasure to people ultimately. They enjoy the coffee they drink more. It's not this mindless cheap thing they endlessly consume. It's a moment of pleasure, and I think it can be this moment of absolute delight and interest and pleasure.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:49 If you were looking for your moment of pleasure walking through the streets of London-

James Hoffmann 1:05:52 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:53 ... where would you turn? Which shop would you go into? I mean, we're talking about coffee here when I say moment of pleasure. Just so... (laughs) Just in case you, uh, you thought something else.

James Hoffmann 1:06:01 Something subho. No. Um... (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:06:03 (laughs) Um, where would you turn? 'Cause I'm walking through London all the time and as a muggle I look up and I go, okay, all these logos, they're

Steven Bartlett 1:06:10 all saying coffee. Where should I be? Should I be going for a random independent and f- rolling the dice? Should I be going to a chain? What's your POV?

James Hoffmann 1:06:17 London has some of the best independent coffee shops in the world, you know? Like, and that's true of most major cities now. Like, incredible coffee isn't... is very available now if you know where to look. And I guarantee, that's the tricky bit-

Steven Bartlett 1:06:27 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 1:06:27 ... knowing in advance. By and large though, there's enough written about on the internet. If you search best specialty coffee in whatever city, you'll find a, a great list of 20 that will be a good experience. It might be a bit more expensive, but it will be, uh, I think a better coffee experience. I get... I, I buy coffee from chains when I have to. I get that. But given the choice, I would love to go and visit an independent business, see someone's expression, you know what I mean? Someone's aesthetics, someone's vibes, someone's experience. It can be different and why wouldn't I want to explore different and new? So I, I think it's just an opportunity for discovery. Loads of like, uh, bands that tour the world-... get obsessed with coffee because it's a great way to explore a city.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:06 Mm-hmm.

James Hoffmann 1:07:06 It's a great way to kind of find the new neighborhoods and just check places out and just have something fun and enjoyable in the day. Uh, uh, and I think coffee's a great way to explore new cities. And you talk to people who work in great coffee shops, they'll recommend you the best bars, the best restaurants. Like, that network is so easy to tap into there that it, it, it's the, the best hack. You throw me in a random city, I'll find a good coffee shop and ask the question, "Where should I eat?"

Steven Bartlett 1:07:29 Okay.

James Hoffmann 1:07:29 "Where's the best bakery?"

Steven Bartlett 1:07:30 Got a challenge for you here.

James Hoffmann 1:07:31 Okay.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:33 I throw you into a random city. Let's just call that city London.

James Hoffmann 1:07:36 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:37 And I put you in front of all of the chains.

James Hoffmann 1:07:41 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:41 They're all the same distance from your feet.

James Hoffmann 1:07:43 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:44 Which one does James walk towards and why?

James Hoffmann 1:07:49 Really difficult question. If I'm honest, if you made me buy a, a coffee drink... I assume I have to buy a coffee drink, right? Is that-

Steven Bartlett 1:07:56 Yeah, yeah. You can't just get a muffin. (laughs)

James Hoffmann 1:07:58 I can't just get, like, a muffin and a s- sparkling water and run away. Um...

Steven Bartlett 1:08:01 You have to get your favorite coffee from one of these chains.

James Hoffmann 1:08:03 Oh, that's much harder because otherwise I'd go to, like, Starbucks and get, like, a dessert in a cup and go. Because there is, you know, there's enough-

Steven Bartlett 1:08:09 Oh.

James Hoffmann 1:08:09 ... sort of fat and sugar in there that it's, it's a good time, you know what I mean?

Steven Bartlett 1:08:11 Okay.

James Hoffmann 1:08:12 Like, I, I can't deny there's a little bit of delight in, uh, a little frappuccino. Um, well, I like filtered coffee and so by and large I would typically probably end up at a Starbucks because they're one of the few that do filter coffee where it's sort of brewed as filter coffee, distinct and different from a,