Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/131835
11111111111111111111 BUZZ BOOKS WITH COFFEE LIFE IN JAPAN By Merry White University of California Press, May 2012 240 pages, $24.95 W hen it comes to coffee markets in Asia, much of the specialty world's focus has lately been trained on South Korea (where café culture is exploding) and China (where Starbucks has expanded and opportunities seem abundant). That timing makes this heady but engaging read from White counterintuitive but relevant. The author is a Boston University anthropologist who has studied Japanese culture for decades, and throughout this exploration of the café scene in Tokyo and elsewhere across the nation, she reminds readers that Japan's coffee industry is not just another example of East emulating West. The country's first coffeehouse opened 100 years before the Seattle coffee boom, and by the 1930s Japanese emigrants were shaping coffee production in Brazil—and sending the fruits of their labor back to Asia. "Coffee … represents Japan's engagement with the world," White writes, "in its complexity and contradictions, as commodity and as beverage." As more nations plunge into specialty coffee, it's worth checking in with one truly early adopter and understanding how its methods and brands have actually shaped the coffee culture in America and Europe more than we might readily admit. THE BLUE BOTTLE CRAFT OF COFFEE: GROWING, ROASTING, AND DRINKING, WITH RECIPES By James Freeman, Caitlin Freeman and Tara Duggan; photography by Clay McLachlan Ten Speed Press, October 2012 229 pages, $24.99 J ames Freeman, who founded the infamously uncompromising Blue Bottle roaster-retailer in Oakland in 2001, has become perhaps the leading spokesperson of quality coffee in America today. He has a deep knowledge of brewing and the coffee chain, but he's also able to deliver thoughts and coffee advice to everyday customers in a quirky and engaging tone. This unique personality rests at the center of the book he recently released alongside his wife, Caitlin, who runs the baking arm of Blue Bottle, and James Beard award-winning food writer Duggan. Freeman's voice comes through in his coffee-to-music comparisons, his knack for storytelling (the text's take on the launch of the company will leave you with a grin) and his ability to drop in well-defended opinions. If more well-educated folks in the industry could learn to lose the technical speak when trying to connect with consumers and focus instead on experiences, humor and simple joy, their independent brands might be doing a whole lot better. 26 COFFEE ALMANAC • June 2013