“I had a new employer, they’ve invested in me, they sent me for training, and I made it to the finals,” says James Hoffmann, sporting his unmissable custom-made, tortoise-shell round frames. “Everyone’s looking at me and I’ve just made a dick of myself.”

It was the 2005 World Barista Championship, he had just put his cappuccinos down, and the judges were horrified. “I wondered what happened,” he recalls, shaking his head. “Then, there’s this warmth of cappuccino oozing into my lap. It’s that feeling of public failure.”

Two years later, Hoffmann was the World Barista Champion.

He has a tall, towering figure, with silver fox hair and the goofiest smile in the world. I tell him it’s a struggle to describe who he is. He smiles, then hesitates. Hoffmann is the author of the World Atlas of Coffee, co-founder of Square Mile Coffee Roasters, a director at Prufrock Coffee, a blogger, and a YouTuber. “Most of my time is about trying to turn what is happening in coffee in general into condensed, useful information to help people make better decisions,” he says.

The second edition of James Hoffmann’s The World Atlas of Coffee is launching tomorrow. To help celebrate there will be a bunch of fun stuff going on over at Prufrock, we recommend getting over there and joining in the fun. pic.twitter.com/2NyhhofZGP

— Square Mile Coffee (@squaremile) 3 October 2018

As a pioneer of Britain’s third-wave coffee movement, Hoffmann, perhaps unsurprisingly, doesn’t like coffee from the big chains. He calls Pret a Manger’s filter “the single worst cup of coffee you can buy”. Likening his outlook on Starbucks with his impression of America, he says, “I love it when I go there, but at the same time, it sickens me.

“But actually, I’m totally down for, like, a good Frap,” he admits. Hoffmann is 39 and incredibly articulate, but his tone alters to that of a Generation-Z teenager when talking about Frappuccinos. “Come on, dude! Hot day, little Oreo in there.” I look at him, disappointed. “I — look,” he pleads his case. “I’m human, I’m wired to like fat and sugar.”

Growing up in the Lake District, Hoffmann lost his father when he was seven. His stepfather, “a classic baby boomer-entrepreneur”, was a crucial mentor to him. He started in the wine industry, but hated its “nepotistic, self-serving” nature. He then worked as a croupier in a Leeds casino, before moving to London as an espresso machine salesman at House of Fraser. (He now develops machines with espresso giant Victoria Arduino.)

“I didn’t drink coffee at this point, but I started reading about it. I learnt to like its taste, and got obsessed,” he says. He “fanboyed hard” after Norway’s Tim Wendelboe won the Championship in 2004, and still counts him as a huge influence. (They frequently collaborate now.) He also looks up to Intelligentsia’s Geoff Watts, Counter Culture’s Peter Giuliano, Stumptown’s Duane Sorenson — third wave’s Big Three — and has collaborated with Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck.

He mainly drinks filter coffee, prefers washed processes over natural, and gravitates towards paper-filtered pour overs. He isn’t a big fan of the Chemex, explaining, “The papers are really thick. The dual effect is that you have a tiny bit more paper taste, and it’s easy to get a weird airlock. The paper sticks inside the funnel, which stalls the brewing process.” He favours flash-brewed iced coffee over cold brew. “I can taste oxidation in most cold brews. I like brewing it hot and then icing it immediately,” he says. “It’s fresh, cold and refreshing, as opposed to something more muted and with slightly off notes I don’t enjoy.”

“If I’ll only get coffee from one country for the rest of my life, I’ll pick Colombia. It has a really broad spectrum of flavour,” says Hoffmann. “You can go from super heavy, chocolatey things up north, down to jammy, fruity things in the south, or the kind of crisper, more citric coffees of Nariño.” Having travelled all over the world, he holds Australian and Japanese cafe cultures in high regard. But he has never been to Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. I try goading him about it, but he cuts me off. “I know, don’t even start!”

He anticipates that a hard Brexit will be devastating to the coffee industry, and could result in lower quality — but more expensive — coffee as well as the closure of many cafes. He describes himself as an “open-borders guy”, pointing at a wall map next to us. “It’s ridiculous that you’re not allowed to walk over these imaginary lines we’ve invented. It’s a big rock of space floating around; who cares?”

He previously struggled to achieve a work-life balance. “I fell for the myth that if you’re not working, you don’t care about your business,” he says. “That’s bullshit.” Constantly chasing for something, he has never been satisfied. “I’m slowly accepting that I’ll always be slightly disappointed in myself.”

Though he’s still be working with coffee in the future, Hoffmann confesses his uncertainty about staying in London full-time. “I’m from a green place, and part of me misses that.” But one thing is for sure: with a man-crush on Donald Glover and tastebuds insured for an entire industry, his YouTube attempts to try the most peculiar coffee beverages from across the globe (“Because then, you don’t have to!”) will always make for hysterical viewing.