Coffee Roaster's Handbook: A How-To Guide for Home and Professional Roasters

The author knows coffee. This book is well written and presented with lots and facts and pictures.

Excellent information and in depth knowledge

4/5

The Coffee Roaster’s Handbook by Len Brault was a pleasure to read. This book provides all the necessary information for anyone interested in beginning their journey into green bean roasting, but is also very useful for someone who has been roasting for a while but would like to enhance their knowledge and skills. In addition to the wealth of practical information, it will be appreciated by coffee lovers (or even coffee dabblers) who are interested in issues that affect sustainability of the industry. The information regarding fair trade, organic labels and the social and economic challenges faced by small coffee growers throughout the world was eye-opening. This alone will change how I select and purchase my stock. The detailed background on coffee history, cultivation, and global impact was a pleasure to read. The visuals and photographs are beautiful and informative. I highly recommend this book.

I have been buying coffee from Len Brault since 2006. My UPS driver saw that I had just purchased an espresso machine and suggested that I go down the street and visit Len. At the time, he was working out of a basement office space in a medical and lab building. No windows, a little creepy and weird. I think there was a sign on the door that said Clockwork Commerce. What does that have to do with coffee? I knocked, Len opened the door and we started talking about coffee. The room was filled with coffee that he was importing from Vietnam and the Philippines. He asked me what kind of coffee I liked. I knew that I liked espresso, but I completely lacked the vocabulary to even try to communicate what I wanted. He translated my gibberish into a taste profile and gave me a bag of a Vietnamese espresso blend. He talked about front palate and back palates. I started to call Len "Coffee Yoda" in my head. I smelled the coffee he told me to buy and it smelled like chocolate mocha sauteed in butter. WTF? I thought it was flavored coffee initially. Len gave instructions about how to figure out how to make the coffee with my equipment. And he explained that I needed to experiment and take notes. The message was: "Make better coffee with science." It was the best espresso I had ever had even with my consumer machine.The Coffee Roaster's Handbook is like talking to Len. I am not sure when Len started roasting and blending exactly, but I realized that he was really good at it when he recreated that Vietnamese espresso I mentioned earlier himself, after a family feud ended the production of the blend in 2009. His version has the same body and taste profile, but turned up to 11.I feel like I now have the vocabulary to really talk about coffee after reading the book. There is a very good explanation of the whole process from choosing beans to cupping and recording the results. He provides a method for exploring roasting and quantifying and recording the results.I am not going to pursue roasting myself because I want to continue to be married. Fortunately for me, Lens Coffee is only 10 minutes away.

Superficial coverage, general. May be good for brand new beginner roasters. James Hoffmans books are quite a bit better in my opinion. Haven't seen Scott Rao's books.

Excellent! Quick read. Exactly what I was looking for.

I really enjoyed Len's approach to giving a high-level explanation of most things coffee. His passion for the craft is evident throughout the pages, as he provides a tour of the beginnings of coffee, to selecting an appropriate roaster, to how to profile your roasts, and much more. I really appreciated that the book didn't come across as a long-winded advertisement for Len's other coffee endeavors, more as if he intentionally avoided writing of them in order to provide a launching point of instruction for an eager coffee hobbyist or potential entrepreneur.I would highly suggested picking up this book if you're interested in roasting or learning more about coffee in general.