James Hoffmann British Author From Stafford

Early life

James Hoffmann was born on 11 December 1979 in Stafford and is British. He spent his youth in the Lake District in North West England and later studied at Durham University. Before coffee became his profession, he tried several other lines of work. He took shifts as a croupier at a casino in Leeds and spent time in the wine trade. In 2003 he also put out an EP of electronic and acoustic tracks under the name King Seven.

Career

Hoffmann entered the coffee business in the early 2000s, selling Gaggia espresso machines in the Selfridges department store. A chance meeting there with a television producer led to an appearance on the Derren Brown programme Trick or Treat. In 2004 he began writing a blog called Jimseven, and he later moved to the machine maker La Spaziale, where he served as national training manager for the United Kingdom.

He started entering the UK Barista Championship in 2005 and won it the following year, which earned him a place at the World Barista Championship, where he finished fifth in 2006. He won the national title again in 2007 and then took the world title in Tokyo the same year. His winning signature drink was built around a pairing of tobacco and almonds. He left La Spaziale in May 2007.

In 2008 he co-founded Square Mile Coffee Roasters in London with his business partner Anette Moldvaer. It was among the first wholesale specialty coffee companies in the city and went on to become the largest. The roaster moved from Cambridge Heath to Hackney and then, in late 2018, to Walthamstow. In 2010 Hoffmann and Tim Williams ran a temporary coffee bar in Shoreditch called Penny University, which served only filter-style coffee and no espresso drinks. Square Mile took over the London cafe Prufrock Coffee in 2017 and in 2022 worked with Cometeer on frozen concentrated coffee, its first product sold in the United States. By September 2022 the company had 37 employees.

Writing and media

Hoffmann has published three books. The World Atlas of Coffee appeared on 23 October 2014 through Octopus Book Publishing Group and covers coffee from 29 producing countries. It sold about 320,000 copies, with a second edition in 2018 and translations in eight languages. In 2017 he self-published The Best of Jimseven, a collection of his blog writing financed through an Indiegogo campaign. His third book, How to Make the Best Coffee at Home, was issued by Mitchell Beazley in 2022 and won Best Coffee Magazine/Book at the Sprudgie Awards in January 2023.

He has run a YouTube channel since 2016. The channel looks at the specialty coffee trade, compares equipment and tests brewing methods. According to the data on file, it had about 2.41 million subscribers in October 2025. He funds part of the channel through Patreon, which lets him buy products for review himself, and records mostly in his own studio.

Other ventures

In 2014 Hoffmann co-founded Longberry Publishing with Ben Szobody and Jacob Forrest. The company produced a coffee journal in print and digital form before closing in 2018 after two issues. In 2015 he worked with ChefSteps and Ben Kaminsky on a twelve-part video series about coffee preparation, and the producers received a James Beard Award nomination for their instructional videos. He also founded Tens Hundreds Thousands, a business selling limited edition coffee products.

Since 2013 he has collaborated with the Italian equipment maker Victoria Arduino, part of Nuova Simonelli. The partnership produced the Mythos One grinder in 2013, the Black Eagle VA388 espresso machine in 2015 and the Eagle One machine in 2020. In 2021 he advised Myracle Kitchen, a subsidiary of Nurture Brands, on Barista Mylk, a plant-based milk alternative made with oats, fava beans and coconut cream and designed to work for latte art.

Recognition

Beyond his 2007 world championship, Hoffmann was nominated at the Streamy Awards in November 2022 in the cinematography category for his channel. At the 2023 Sprudgie Awards he took the book prize mentioned above and was runner-up for Best Coffee Video/Film. Press coverage has described him as a leading figure in Britain's third-wave coffee movement.