mathof2 Hoffmann is also different from the other influencers being discussed on this thread in that he hasn’t put all his eggs in the YouTube basket.
He is also not heavily shilling products for financial gain. The amount of shilling going on in the coffee world has increased substantially, so much so, I have been reluctant to make YouTube videos for a long time now. Home Barista is an ideal place for things to be shilled hard because of the North American Market, it’s happened before, is happening now (big time and don’t try and guess the machine) and it will happen in the future.
This shilling and influencers is hugely bad for the world of coffee, especially here in the UK:
- The Chinesium shill (wonder what happened to all the UK coffee resellers, what a shame we have no bricks and mortar companies, if a company set up selling machines and grinders it would do really well etc..). These Chinese companies that sell direct genuinely don’t care…often if you get a bad product you’re stuck with it
- The Chinese burr shill….they are generally not great in big grinders, there, I’ve said it. Lots of fancy words like DLC thrown around etc..perhaps they will become better…perhaps some are good. However don’t trust the likes of Hedrick to know and the Chinese only tell you what they want to generally. Only time will tell
- Useful product development grinds to a halt, sure the easy stuff gets done, but not the difficult stuff, and certainly not the stuff you actually need, but don’t realise you need. It’s all sh*t and shinola as my dad used to say
- so much more but CBA to type it
Grinders - Imagine, we now have a world where it’s OK for grinders to stall on really lightly roasted hard beans, even ones costing £4,000. or grinders you have to run then add beans gradually…this is unbelievable, how on earth did we ever get here and where is the pushback??
Machines that work by magic, with the manufacturers spouting obvious contradictions which are totally unchallenged
Roasters (people) that spring up from nowhere and are brilliant, but have zero experience
Closed forums and groups for products, rather than openness and people don’t seem to worry about that, believing whatever reasons the manufacturer gives. e.g. Ah well “non owners will simply dilute the discussions with irrelevancies”. This is easily solved by making the forums read only but visible to non owners and having a specific area where non owners can ask questions.. Of course the closed forum is about “control”, if you are excommunicated from it, you cannot read anything and in some cases have no support/warranty. I have spoken to many people this has happened to!!
And “we” (royal we) are letting it happen….It’s partly why I set up this place.