The Joy of Coffee: The Essential Guide to Buying, Brewing, and Enjoying

If coffee from a can or jar is your idea of purgatory, The Joy of Coffee is the book for you. Its author, Corby Kummer, originally came to the subject of coffee while writing a series of articles for the Atlantic Monthly, and he found so much to say about the bean that he decided to write a book. Kummer began with some basic questions: “What matters most in buying coffee? How can you sort through the jumble of place names and whimsical labels on beans and blends? Is a dark roast better, more sophisticated, than a light roast? Is it essential to grind coffee beans at home?”

What he learned in response to these queries comprises the bulk of The Joy of Coffee.Starting with a tour of a coffee plantation and ending in the reader’s own kitchen, Kummer leads a lively and informative discussion of all phases of coffee production, from harvesting to roasting to brewing. He discusses different roasts and the different types of coffeemakers, and he even talks about caffeine consumption and methods of decaffeination that preserve the bean’s flavor. At the end of The Joy of Coffee is a chapter chock full of recipes for tasty treats that either go well with coffee or include it as an ingredient. Like a great cup of Joe, The Joy of Coffee is good to the very end.

With coffee bars springing up on every urban corner, this engrossing guide couldn’t arrive at a better moment. Kummer writes on food for the Atlantic very well, thanks, because he injects his own physical experience with his subjects into the exposition. Here, he takes us through the coffee bean’s progress from tree to tummy, eyewitness-style. He tells us what it’s like to pick coffee because he went and picked it, what it’s like to cup coffee (the method by which roasted beans are qualitatively sorted) because he cupped with the pros, what it’s like roasting coffee because he tried it at home as well as scrutinized it being done as a business, etc. He analyzes and advises on grinding and brewing methods; he appreciates espresso and its appurtenances; he describes the coffees of different growing countries; he discusses caffeine and its health effects; and then, he wraps the book up with coffee-complementary dessert recipes and a resource section. Kummer’s Baedeker of the exquisitely bitter brew is, as the old slogan says, good to the last drop. Ray Olson