Customer Reviews

Everything But Espresso: Professional Coffee Brewing Techniques

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I have been procrastinating buying this book due to the title. When it arrived from Amazon, it sat on my table for a week before I dived into it, and was totally surprised to find there are ideas and insights about coffee that is wider than the title suggests.

So here are my take on this good book: Get it even if you are only interested in Espresso!


THIS BOOK IS NOT...

* a recipe book
* about coffee roasting
* about coffee beans
* about advocating which method makes better coffee
* about tea, despite Scott (the author) liking it more than coffee :)


THE FIRST IMPRESSION

Scott's "Everything But Espresso: Professional Coffee Brewing Techniques" is about 70 pages of clear and concise information. Good strong hardcover and high quality binding give this book wonderful handling and tossing around. It is as good as the 100-page The Professional Barista's Handbook: An Expert Guide to Preparing Espresso, Coffee, and Tea. Reader don't have to worry about pages flying off the bind. When compared to the previous book, this one uses the same paper except thinner by about 0.04mm (measured with Mitutoyo digital Micrometer. I was curious), with slightly larger fonts, more spacing and good readability.

Despite styled (and smelled) like a textbook, the author kept things straight to the point and away from long theoretical analysis. This very focused book is full of charts, references, diagrams and photos; making quick browsing a joy with nuggets of good information every few pages. A handy glossary can be found at the end of the book.

The book quality is superb.


THE ESSENCE

The book talks about the most important factors involved when making good coffee with non-espresso methods, such as Siphon, Pourover, Drip and French press. A good addition throughout this book is the troubleshooting guide and suggestion of solutions.

The information within is crucial for making good coffee including espresso, and here's why:

The scientific approach in measuring and analysing coffee extraction and grinding can be widely applied at home, at cafes as well as in a laboratory.

The book is broken down to 3 main section:

Chapter 1 to 5 is an introduction to coffee extraction and how to improve coffee flavor.
Chapter 6 to 10 is a walk-through guide (with photos) of a few brewing methods.
Chapter 11 to 12 deals with water quality factor and storage.

* What I enjoy the most is I could pick-up all sorts of brewing insights by merely browsing.

The early chapters talks about grinding and extraction, including espresso. There are very few books that I can say "Wow!" on the first few pages, and for this book, it was page 2 - Turbulence and Agitation.

There is a relatively new machine (depending when you read this review) that uses bubbles for agitation to make better coffee. Supported by an extraction chart, Scott explains why agitation is important in getting higher extraction curve. By page-5, there are enough basic foundation to understand why some brewing methods produce different coffee taste & flavor clarity. A simple diagram illustrates the difference between brew methods when it comes to flavor clarity and body can be found in page 11.

In page-9, the author talks about how finer coffee particles influence bitterness with various brew methods including espresso. Supported by a standard distribution diagram of grind particle size of sharp-vs-dull burrs and microscopic photos of grinds, it is easier to build and refine the extraction model in ones mind.

Probably one the most wonderful thing about this book is the avoidance of going too deep with technicality and be totally scientific. Having said that, the most important and technical charts in the book are "Coffee Brewing Control" and "VST Universal Brewing Control" charts. It illustrates where good coffee is and what you have to do to get there.

There are wonderful series of photos illustrating various brewing methods and things to avoid. Good clear caption make understanding a breeze. I don't think it is necessary to read from cover to cover in order to make reasonably good coffee because ideas are packaged into short digestible groups, and supported by good photographs.

One downside is a few of the photos may be a bit too dark to discern the details. I suspect it's a minor printing issue.


CONCLUSION

This book belongs on a coffee bar or a coffee loving kitchen. It clearly does not tries to be everything for everyone.

Like Scott's previous book, this book built a brewing machine model in my head that allows me to weigh in the most important factors in brewing the best possible coffee. It gives me ideas where to start looking when there's a problem with my coffee or just merely exploring.

Have you ever thought about making good coffee at home? Well, this book is a good start.

I love it. Highly Recommended!

Everything But Espresso has all the neccesary information to learn advanced coffee brewing techniques. I'm a barista/barista trainer and I recommend this book to other baristas serious about improving their skills beyond espresso. It is in-depth but also written in a plain easy to understand english.