Sunday, February 19, 2023

Ask Tom Anything - Feb 19th 2023

Terroir Book Launch

BH Unlimited Update, Feb 19th 2023

It's a double-launch for BH this week. Firstly, our Terroir book went out on Monday. We're delighted with the interest this book has sparked. If you want to take a peek inside, there's a great preview on our sales page here.

As you know, we've been busy filming and writing in collaboration with Scott Rao over the last few months for the How To Roast course. Scott's publishing experience was invaluable to us and we're proud to have his help in getting this book out there in the US and Europe. Here's what Scott posted about the book on launch day.

Terroir is a beautiful book put together by Barista Hustle, the coffee industry's best educational team, about how terroir affects the character of coffee and the success of a crop. The book includes gorgeous photography and interviews with experts such as Tim Wendelboe, Hanna Neuschwander, Willem Boot, Graciano Cruz, and Anabella Meneses. Terroir offers an incredible education about what contributes to the success and failure of a coffee crop, including farming techniques, soil management, coffee-tree diseases, and the effects of climate change. If you care about the factors you can control and the steps you can take to support a sustainable and delicious coffee, this book is for you.

Here's where to pick up a copy:
Order: Australia
Order: Global Shop
Order: USA & Europe

If you are up for stocking Terroir in your cafe or training centre, just head here to order a carton of 18 books at a 33% discount with $80 flat-rate UPS express to anywhere in the world. And for bulk wholesale orders, please email orders@baristahustletools.com.

Ask Tom Anything

There's another first for BH coming your way today. Do you remember a couple of weeks ago we sent out a form, collecting your questions for an AMA session on water chemistry? Our in-house water expert, Tom Hopkinson, has been busy collating his responses and filming his answers at the super cool Puerto Blest roastery in Buenos Aires. After watching this video, you're going to feel a lot more confident about managing your coffee water. The success of the session owes a lot to the calibre of questions that came through from our subscribers. There's everything here — remineralisation; managing corrosion; understanding the difference in minerals; plus a discussion on how different types of water affect the aromatics of coffee and plenty more.

Tom is a hugely experienced coffee person. Before coming to BH, his career traversed academia, roastery management, barista competitions — he even used to own a hipster cafe in Shoreditch. Tom is a biology graduate from Cambridge University. Later he became the General Manager at Prufrock Coffee in London, then moved to Ireland where he was the roastery manager at Cloud Picker in Dublin, then on to the Barn Berlin where he ran their training program. He's been runner-up in the Irish Barista Championships twice! Coffee Insurrection has a nice profile piece about Tom here actually. And more recently, he's been roaming South and Central America authoring Barista Hustle courses about coffee production.

When you watch this incredible AMA, what you'll notice most about Tom, aside from his ingeniousness, is that he's got absolute star quality in front of the lens.

Quick links

There's a really good summary here of the recent findings from Go Fund Bean's coffee wage survey.

Look out for our AMA session with Lucia Solis in our next Unlimited Update. Lucia has already filmed her responses to your questions and that footage is with the editors as I type. If you can't wait and you feel like a dose of Lucia's wisdom before then, check out these posts below, plus her excellent podcast here.
Long Fermentation Q and A with Lucia Solis
The Possibly Lactic Process
Yeast Best Practices

Coffee Education — Without the Advertising

BH provides a level of detail about coffee production that platforms like Youtube are unable to obtain, because we are a subscription service — our members pay us to produce the best, most detailed information for them, rather than creating videos that get the most views for an advertiser.

At BH we never do ads for other company's products on our website. There's no product placement in any of our courses, newsletters or blog posts. Our only income comes from what you pay for your subscriptions.

When you see machinery or coffee gear mentioned in any of our educational material, or featured in our course videos, we have chosen to use that equipment because we like using it, because we think it's historically significant in the evolution of the espresso machine, or because it shows you something you need to see about modern coffee culture. It's as simple as that.

As always, we're just an email away if you have any queries! Have a great weekend and we look forward to seeing you next time.

To the Boundaries of Coffee,
Team BH