Home Coffee Roasting: Romance & Revival

This book is a museum piece. None of the current best home roasters is discussed, and all of the essential information plus current approaches are nicely available for free on places like sweet maria's coffee site and youtube videos.The author loves to hear himself talk. It's fatuous and verbose.On the Kindle, the book is a mess. Every other page references some information elsewhere in the book, and the links to the information double the time needed to read the book. It should have been organized to present information point by point without constantly referring back to appendices or other chapters. It's just very very badly written and organized.A terrible waste of money.

This book is absolutely brilliant - one of the best on any topic that I have ever read, from the content to the writing to the organization. While I bought it to learn more about home roasting, it goes far beyond those basics with astonishingly comprehensive coverage of coffee history, roasting processes and equipment, green bean varieties and production, and more. One amazing two-page chart summarizes a huge amount of critical information about styles and roasts all in one place. If you have any interest in coffee style, coffee roasting, coffee history, coffee equipment or anything like that, just buy this without a second's hesitation. (I think it may be valuable even for coffee professionals, as well as us amateurs.)

Interesting read, but very dated. Spends way too many pages talking about specific brand names, most of which aren't even available today given that this book looks to have first been written in 1975 and revised in 1996.Aside from that though, there is some very good information in here about the science, the process, and the types of beans and character around the world. The agriculture, science, and history of coffee probably hasn't changed much since this was originally written, so all of that information is highly useful.

Learning how to roast coffee at home this is the best primer all about coffee beans, history, roasting process and some dated evaluations of home coffee roasters. Page 68-69 is worth the book alone as it is a quick reference guide to Roast Styles. This is the Rosetta Stone of how to roast your coffee beans at home using the American Roast Scale.I would highly recommend this book as I read it cover to cover four times before attempting to roast my own coffee beans for the first time. It gave me the knowledge and confidence to know what I was doing and how to manage the experience to get a very successful outcome the first time!

Great book very interesting history of coffee origins and roasting techniques equipment, Good explanations of discribing roast profiles: Great discriptions of coffee flavor, taste, and aromas. Excellent presenation on coffee growing regions around the world and what coffees come from where. Good info on how coffee is grown & the various processes used to prepare green coffee beans for roasting. Good info on roast levels what look for listen to and smell to know where you are in the roasting process. Information on how different beans present different flavors. Talks about how stopping the roast at various light to dark roast profiles can changes things like coffee acidity, body, fruitiness, etc and can make the same coffee beans taste totally different it's just a matter of where you stop the roast.Overall I thought the book was a good read for coffee geeks, and coffee snobs. That's how my wife has taken to discribing me to ours friends since started my home roasting/brewing hobby about two years ago. I love home roasting and brewing it Provides me with a lot of satisfaction and enjoyment all during the day while drain my thermos & & keep my coffee cup full @ work. Once you get past the initial equipment investment you really can save some money home rosting & brewing over buying premium coffee from your local roaster or your favorite coffe shop. However, it does take time & dedicaton each week to roast our own. Also there is a slight learning curve to overcome so it may not be for everyone. Surf the web there is tons of info about home roasting coffee so you can see if it is really something you want to get into. I roast & brew about a 1 pound per week I love it it's a fun, helps me stay awake at work, and my coffee so Ii have been told tastes great & I certainly like it or I wouldn't go through the work of roasting grinding and brewing all of the time. I even roasted about 20 pounds of coffee and gave to friends and family asChristmas gifts. They loved it and almost everyone has asked for more. This book & several other resources available on the Internet have helped me improve my roasting techniques and broaden my pallet and tastes for varoius coffees and roasting styles. I hope this review was helpful. Now let's go home; roast, grind & brew a cup of coffee!

As a coffee connoisseur, I've moved from Starbucks, to grinding my own store-bought roasted beans, to becoming a home roaster. I purchased this book mostly to learn about home roasting techniques but I really enjoyed the historical overview of the origin of coffee roasting, how it evolved from region to region with different roasting methods and techniques, and the discussion of current day charactistics and differences in green bean production in different regions. I refer to it often when deciding on my next purchase of green beans to roast at home.There are some handy charts and guides for the home roaster. If you're interested in home roasting as well as gaining an appreciation of coffee through the centuries, this is an excellent resource.

I recently started roasting my own beans. I found this book to be informative beyond expectations, with much detail. Yes there is info on the web, which I'm aware of, but for reference all in one place. I feel it is a must have.

This book, quite simply, tells you just about everything you'll need to know to get started roasting coffee at home and will stay with you as you get to grips with the process.It covers the history of coffee roasting, a whole stack of different methods of roasting (ranging from a big metal spoon in an open fire to professional roasting equipment), it covers a good selection of consumer machines with their strengths and weaknesses. It describes the process of harvesting coffee and preparing it for roasting, it describes the roasting process itself in a lot of detail along with the tastes associated with different levels of roasting. It covers coffees from around the world, and describes methods of blending and cupping coffees.Quite simply, if you are even thinking about roasting coffee at home don't do anything until you've read this book.

There is enough information in here to get you roasting coffee to a good standard. The rest is down you, practice, keep notes and take photographs it all helps.A Good Standard is when friends ask you if they can have some of your roasted coffee. SMUG MODE for the day.It will take time and about 2kgs of green beans before it starts to come together. Read carefully a couple of times first. Once the bug bites there is no known cure .

Very interesting book about home roasting and coffee in general. I find the book interesting and very useful but a little bit chaotic as roasting bits are over whole book from the beginning. Great value btw

Comprehensive book very quick delivery

It does pretty much what it says on the cover, although it is pretty US-centric.