Kevin SinnottThe Art and Craft of Coffee: An Enthusiast's Guide to Selecting, Roasting, and Brewing Exquisite Coffee

I love this book!I saw Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World at a coffee bar while on vacation. While browsing that book on amazon, I saw this book also and bought it on my kindle fire. I have been brewing and drinking coffee for years and never even thought about a study of how to brew coffee well. I thought get a coffeemaker, add grinds and water and you're done. Was I ever wrong! When I got back home from vacation, I stepped up my game!Excellent coffee starts with the bean, how it is picked (give it one year to be fresh) how it is roasted locally (give it a week or two, and some people roast at home) how it is ground (I now grind at home right before brewing) how is is brewed or extracted (I already had a French Press which I use more often and I also got a new excellent brewer) and my coffee enjoyment has gone up light years!Highly recommend this book to learn so much more and to become a coffee enthusiast! I thought I knew coffee, but this took my game to a whole new level!This book is a start to opening my world. Highly recommend!

I have been drinking premium coffee/espresso for about 20 years and roasting myself for about 3 years. I thought this book was a very terse, to the point primer on coffee. Easy reading and short with great advice about coffee sourcing and roasting basics. Even though I have a little experience with coffee, I still learned quite a bit from this book.I am taking 1 star off for the following reasons.1. In the Kindle edition the pictures are not synced properly with the captions. A caption will show up after you have flipped 3 pages past the pictures.2. In the roasting section he described espresso roast as being beyond Vienna. I have many friends that roast and neither I nor they roast their espresso that dark. I am in contact with about 10 home roasters, none of them ever roast beyond Vienna and usually target Full City + since that is the easiest to benchmark. I usually do Full City myself for a LeLit PL53 grinder with a Simonelli Nouva HX machine, depends on the beans I might go a little darker. Later on in the "espresso" section he says that better espresso can be achieved with a lighter roast. Maybe the editing is not so good.3. He attempted to make the case that roasting yourself can be more expensive. This may be dated information or his bean source is very expensive. I generally pay about 6.50 to $7 including shipping per pound, sometimes a pay up to $15 a pound but very rarely. Premium at the supermarket runs at about 1.10/ounce or $16.60 a pound. Even with 10% loss after roasting I'm still almost half the cost. My worst roasts are generally better than super market premium coffees (which are generally stale and charred anyway ) and my typical roasts are better than most local roasters where I live.

This book provides a great overview of coffee in general. For advanced folks, it probably adds little value but for a beginner like me looking to advance my skills, it was well worth the dollars. I was tired of my Keurig coffee and wanted to make better a cup of coffee myself. This book covers the entire process from types of beans, origins, roasted, unroasted to brewing techniques, grinding, etc. There are so many nuances to making coffee that you don't realize it until you read more about the subject. I often refer back to this book for brewing techniques.I definitely feel like it has improved my skills and would recommend this for anyone looking to move beyond k cups or generic ground coffee.

This is the most complete and thorough book on coffee I have ever seen. You learn about the industry, the terminology, and how it relates to your own home brewing. I gained much knowledge in many areas, but most importantly I've learned what goes into making a great cup of coffee for myself. Sinnott writes in a clear and understandable manner, while also managing to entertain the reader. The only challenge in reading the book was the urge to stop reading and go make some coffee.

This book is succinct but very informative. I'm more of a beginner with coffee, but I shared details of this book with friends of mine who are much more advanced and they found some of this information new to them. So I think it's good for beginners and more advanced folks.I have so far learned about which countries have coffee that I would probably like most. And I have learned how to best make french press coffee and cleaning and maintenance tips. The book also got me interested in trying to make turkish coffee at home which I plan to do soon.Also information on history of coffee was quite interesting to me from this book.Informative, and helpful.

Long story shortened I have had a significant amount of professional experience with coffee. I learned more and was totally engaged while doing it reading this book that I thought would be possible. I'm back to being thoughtful about my coffee experience and drinking good coffee again. Marvelous!

This coffee book was the perfect resource for us to start the home-roasting process. The format of the book is nice, user friendly, and a pleasure to read. Very informative. We have it on our coffee table in the living room (no pun intended), and find that it gets picked up frequently and perused by visitors.

This is a very good basic manual on all aspects of coffee: provenance, kinds, roasting, brewing and serving. This is very useful on all those aspects. The only negative aspect I have, the recipes for brewing for some apparels are exgerated, unless you like very strong coffee: Base on those informations, it's a good start to find your own adjustments and recipes.

A general reading covered all basics in coffee making, but do need to be aware that some needs an update.

I bought this book to learn more about the different species of coffee and I must say that I am not disappointed. Sinnott really covers all aspects of coffee brewing in this book. He starts out with an explanation of how the most common bean species differ from one another and how each region has its "signature" taste before he moves on to a detailed explanation of both roasting, grinding and brewing. What I find really great is that Sinnott does not write "This is right; that is wrong", but instead list the pros and cons of each roasting/grinding/brewing method.Overall a very good book if you like coffee and want to broaden your horizon - be warned, however, you will suddenly want to experiment with creating your own blends and crave tasting that pure Kenya AA, or Yemen, or perhaps a good Sulawesi, or ... or ... or ...

great tips and pointers

A very informative book detailing the background to all types of coffees, where and how they are grown and what types of roasting and brewing makes the best use of them. It also covers all the machinery (roasting grinding and filtering) to help the reader make the best choices of their preferred blend.Whist very informative it is from America and focuses on products available there. It also, perhaps goes too deeply into the home roasting process for many "normal" coffee drinkers.All in all though a very interesting book and recommended.