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

Great information. Easy to read and understand.

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

Awesome read, especially for a beginner getting into roasting their own coffee. It was easy to read and very informative. I hate to have to give it a 4 star, but it left out a very crucial part to coffee, the grind.

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.

I really like this book,, it's been a lot of help for me through my coffee roasting journey. If things don't get too bad, although it's not looking good, I'll be getting some of the different types from the Philippines, Liberica, and Excelsa sound like something useful in finding the perfect blend for a good strong espresso. So far my favorite blend is Vietnamese Robusta, and a Brazilian peaberry both French roasted. I've also discovered some great tasting beans from Guatemala, and Nicaragua. I'll have to try to stock up while I can before everything gets a LOT worse than it already has. Wishing everyone the best of luck in their roasting journey, and life

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.

A solid read, I only wish the Chemical processes that happen during roasting where described in more Detail. All together a solid book to get started in Roasting.

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.

Great book, lots of information there

This book is good for a broad overview of coffee but not as much for actual roasting. It misses out completely on explaining important concepts like rate of rise, turn around points, etc. even worse it shows you a graph with some of these terms being used, but then completely fails to explain what they mean. I bought the book to learn about those concepts, but instead it focuses more on coffee as an industry and less on actual roasting.

Beautifully presented, easy to read book filled with well researched information and loads of author experience.

Does not explain in great detail how to roast coffee, very generic

Fundamentals are well explained.