Here are 100 books that Coffee fans have personally recommended if you like
Coffee.
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Coffee was a hobby that went off the rails. I moved to Hawai‘i to study coffee horticulture in graduate school and became a generalist coffee scientist by the end of it. My coffee library contains over 100 books, and it is incomplete! I approach coffee as an academic, but I’ve owned some retail companies that have taught me to talk and think about coffee in a way that doesn’t scare people off. Coffee is what I love, and I love talking about it with other people.
I love this book because it captures the experience of coffee tasting as it really happens and explores it from a social science perspective. What I love most about the book, though, is how much I disagree with some of its content; it is wonderful to love someone’s perspective and effort without always seeing eye to eye. Reader beware: the first part of the book is heavily academic, but it clears out and eventually becomes easy reading.
Draws upon the situated work of professional coffee tasters in over a dozen countries to shed light on the methods we use to convert subjective experience into objective knowledge.
Coffee was a hobby that went off the rails. I moved to Hawai‘i to study coffee horticulture in graduate school and became a generalist coffee scientist by the end of it. My coffee library contains over 100 books, and it is incomplete! I approach coffee as an academic, but I’ve owned some retail companies that have taught me to talk and think about coffee in a way that doesn’t scare people off. Coffee is what I love, and I love talking about it with other people.
These two volumes are some 1400 pages of coffee science goodness! Yes, there are chemical structures, lists, tables, and unfamiliar words. However, those typically help make things clearer (though it won’t always be the case).
The range of topics is immense, written by experts from around the world. I love that I can start almost any research quest with these books, and I’ll walk away with a good foundation on the topic.
Coffee is one of the most popular drinks in the world but how does the production influence chemistry and quality? This book covers coffee production, quality and chemistry from the plant to the cup. Written by an international collection of contributors in the field who concentrate on coffee research, it is edited expertly to ensure quality of content, consistency and organization across the chapters.
Aimed at advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers and accompanied by a sister volume covering how health is influenced by the consumption of coffee, these titles provide an impactful and accessible guide to the current research in…
Coffee was a hobby that went off the rails. I moved to Hawai‘i to study coffee horticulture in graduate school and became a generalist coffee scientist by the end of it. My coffee library contains over 100 books, and it is incomplete! I approach coffee as an academic, but I’ve owned some retail companies that have taught me to talk and think about coffee in a way that doesn’t scare people off. Coffee is what I love, and I love talking about it with other people.
If I only had one science-y book that focuses on coffee quality, it might be this one. I love it because it covers topics that consumers, baristas, and roasters want to know about. It isn’t too big and, thankfully, not too expensive.
I also love that it includes some chapters on sustainability, economics, and markets. So, it isn’t just hard sciences that are discussed, but practical information on the coffee industry at large, as well.
The Craft and Science of Coffee follows the coffee plant from its origins in East Africa to its current role as a global product that influences millions of lives though sustainable development, economics, and consumer desire.
For most, coffee is a beloved beverage. However, for some it is also an object of scientifically study, and for others it is approached as a craft, both building on skills and experience. By combining the research and insights of the scientific community and expertise of the crafts people, this unique book brings readers into a sustained and inclusive conversation, one where academic and…
Coffee was a hobby that went off the rails. I moved to Hawai‘i to study coffee horticulture in graduate school and became a generalist coffee scientist by the end of it. My coffee library contains over 100 books, and it is incomplete! I approach coffee as an academic, but I’ve owned some retail companies that have taught me to talk and think about coffee in a way that doesn’t scare people off. Coffee is what I love, and I love talking about it with other people.
I love this book because it is so depressing. This book does an amazing job of exploring and explaining the economics of the coffee industry, especially as it affects farmers. It paints a grim picture (hence the depression), and it does not try to sugarcoat anything. The global coffee industry is incredibly complex, and this book tries to explain it to us.
I struggled with some of the economic concepts (this book, too, opens with a deep dive into economic academia). However, for the most part, those struggles didn’t interfere with my understanding of the essential ideas in the book.
I’ve been working in coffee for nearly 20 years, and teaching people about coffee for most of that. I love sharing how interesting, diverse, and fun the world of coffee is, and I want people to enjoy and value the coffee they drink a little more. It is a passion and a career that’s taken me around the world, and continues to reinforce the idea that just a little effort or interest in your morning coffee has surprisingly large rewards. The books on this list inspired my own passion for coffee and I hope they do the same for you.
This is the book that started my obsession with coffee. It is really a travel book, using the spread of coffee from Ethiopia through to the rest of the world as its guide. It’s a fun read, and fascinating to see the way coffee was become entwined into so many different cultures in many different ways.
In this captivating book, Stewart Lee Allen treks three-quarters of the way around the world on a caffeinated quest to answer these profound questions: Did the advent of coffee give birth to an enlightened western civilization? Is coffee, indeed, the substance that drives history? From the cliffhanging villages of Southern Yemen, where coffee beans were first cultivated eight hundred years ago, to a cavernous coffeehouse in Calcutta, the drinking spot for two of India’s three Nobel Prize winners ... from Parisian salons and cafés where the French Revolution was born, to the roadside diners and chain restaurants of the good…
I’ve been working in coffee for nearly 20 years, and teaching people about coffee for most of that. I love sharing how interesting, diverse, and fun the world of coffee is, and I want people to enjoy and value the coffee they drink a little more. It is a passion and a career that’s taken me around the world, and continues to reinforce the idea that just a little effort or interest in your morning coffee has surprisingly large rewards. The books on this list inspired my own passion for coffee and I hope they do the same for you.
It is hard to pick just one of Scott Rao’s books as they have become the industry standard. If you want to learn more about how the best cafes approach coffee brewing, to steal the best bits for your home brewing, then this is a really great place to start.
FROM THE AUTHOR: When I began in the coffee business fourteen years ago, I read every book I could find about coffee. After reading all of those books, however, I felt as if I hadn’t learned much about how to make great coffee. My coffee library was chock-full of colorful descriptions of brewing styles, growing regions, and recipes, with a few almost-unreadable scientific books mixed in. I would have traded in all of those books for one serious, practical book with relevant information about making great coffee in a café. Fourteen years later, I still haven’t found that book. I…
I’ve been working in coffee for nearly 20 years, and teaching people about coffee for most of that. I love sharing how interesting, diverse, and fun the world of coffee is, and I want people to enjoy and value the coffee they drink a little more. It is a passion and a career that’s taken me around the world, and continues to reinforce the idea that just a little effort or interest in your morning coffee has surprisingly large rewards. The books on this list inspired my own passion for coffee and I hope they do the same for you.
Coffee preparation is often accused of being a bit nerdy, but what if you lean into that? This book is a deep exploration of coffee brewing from a passionate astrophysicist. With a rigorous approach to coffee you can learn new and surprising things, and this book is having rippling effects on coffee shops and coffee lovers worldwide.
The Physics of Filter Coffee by astrophysicist Jonathan Gagné is perhaps the most significant book ever written on the science of coffee brewing. In the book Jonathan discusses the physics of percolation, extraction, and grinding, as well as water chemistry. He takes the reader down such rabbit holes as pouring-kettle design, optimizing turbulence while pouring, the impact of fines on percolation, the physics of paper filters, and the geometry of various brewers. He also presents some original ideas about coffee brewing and backs it all up with reams of facts and data. The most wonderful thing about The Physics of…
I have found coffee, or in fact just about any aspect of it, from pour-over to espresso, to be endlessly challenging and rewarding. My first visit to coffee farms was in 2004, to Ethiopia and Kenya. Since then I’ve been to dozens of farms in nine or ten countries. There is something about coffee people; they are wondrously generous about sharing their expertise, if they think you care and if you know the right questions to ask. Before going deeply into coffee, I was a professor of history, and I've continued to publish on topics as diverse as Stalin, the witch hunts in Europe and North America, and the body in the Anglosphere, 1880-1920.
Jonathan, with whom I worked on an earlier book on coffee with authors from around the world, presents the history of coffee in a wonderfully readable way. His book is filled with charming and informative photos and graphics. A professor at the University of Hertfordshire and a truly nice guy, Jonathan is an expert above all on Italian coffee. He is in demand, particularly for talks on coffee’s past and present in Europe.
Coffee is a global beverage: it is grown commercially on four continents, and consumed enthusiastically in all seven. There is even an Italian espresso machine on the International Space Station. Coffee's journey has taken it from the forests of Ethiopia to the fincas of Latin America, from Ottoman coffee houses to `Third Wave' cafes, and from the simple coffee pot to the capsule machine. In Coffee: A Global History, Jonathan Morris explains how the world acquired a taste for coffee, yet why coffee tastes so different throughout the world.
Morris discusses who drank coffee, as well as why and where,…
I went to college in Portland, Oregon when the Pacific northwest’s coffee boom was just getting started. My love of coffee turned academic as I began to research and write what would turn out to be a prize-winning book on the early history of coffee and coffeehouses in Great Britain: The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse (2005). I’ve continued to publish articles on coffee history and the history of sociability ever since, and I regularly teach a research seminar on the history of coffee at McGill University. Now I serve as president of the board of directors for an international research group on the history of sociability.
Mintz’s book is about sugar, but it is still a key work in the history of coffee. It served as one of the major inspirations for my own study of the reception of coffee in early modern Britain. Sugar was a key ingredient in coffee by the later seventeenth century and would become a staple in the hot drinks consumed by the English working class. Mintz shows us how this symbiotic relationship between sugar and coffee developed, and he places the construction of an Atlantic slave system and the industrial revolution at the heart of his story. This is a classic work of both anthropology and history; it inspired a whole new way of thinking about the Atlantic world and the history of consumption at a time when both of those fields were still newborn.
A fascinating persuasive history of how sugar has shaped the world, from European colonies to our modern diets
In this eye-opening study, Sidney Mintz shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life, and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar, and reveals how closely interwoven are sugar's origins as a "slave" crop grown in Europe's tropical colonies with is use first as an extravagant luxury for the aristocracy, then as a staple of the diet of the new industrial…
When writing my book, it seemed only natural for me to bring poetry into the love story I’d created. I fell in love with poetry in high school, and it has always felt like a more powerful, compact, and intense way of expressing deep emotions. And it’s so much more complex than hearts and flowers, hence my title for this list! I wanted to use a poem that summed up the intensity of a physical encounter between new lovers. And Rilke was perfect for that. The other books are favourites, books I’ve had for years, and they’ve been good background for my writing in general.
This book is by a friend of mine, so holds a special place in my heart, because she’s so good. I also helped edit and format her book. She’s an artist and an author and her poems are mostly written in a coffee shop called Revel. They’re short, with deep and true images of everyday life—love, coffee, and everything in between—as seen by an artist.
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