Craft Coffee ─ A Manual; Brewing a Better Cup at Home

After more than 250 years of devoted coffee consumption, America’s preparation of choice is still black coffee. To get our morning fix, an increasing number of us turn to favorite independent cafés, where baristas use carefully selected beans and brew superior coffee by hand, often one cup at a time. Why is it that our homemade coffee rarely tastes as good?

Thanks to a small but growing number of dedicated farmers, importers, roasters, and baristas, coffee quality is at an all-time high. But for nonprofessionals, achieving café quality at home can seem out of reach. With dozens of equipment options, conflicting information on how to use that equipment, and an industry language that, at times, doesn’t seem made for the rest of us, it can be difficult to know where to begin.

Craft Coffee: A Manual, written by a coffee enthusiast for coffee enthusiasts, is a comprehensive guide to improving your daily brew at home. The book provides all the information readers need to discover what they like in a cup of coffee—and how to replicate the perfect cup day after day. From the science of extraction and brewing techniques to choosing equipment and deciphering coffee bags, Craft Coffee focuses on the issues—cost, time, taste, and accessibility—that home coffee brewers negotiate and shows that no matter where you are in your coffee journey, you can make a great cup at home.

Unlike other coffee books, Craft Coffee focuses only on coffee—not espresso—and profiles more than 10 different manual brewing methods, including multiple pour-over, immersion, and cold-brew techniques. Written in clear, accessible prose, Craft Coffee meets readers where they are and helps them get where they want to go.

Jessica Easto received a degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee and an MFA in creative writing from Southern Illinois University. Her writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Gapers Block, and more. She has been brewing craft coffee at home for more than eight years.

Andreas Willhoff is the director of education at Halfwit Coffee Roasters and the director of operations at The Wormhole, a Chicago craft coffee shop that has been recognized by Food & Wine, Sprudge.com, Fresh Cup, and CNN.com, among other places.