Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
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Sip, Left Coast Roast BY HANNA NEUSCHWANDER TIMBER PRESS, AUGUST 2012 281 PAGES This company-by-company look at 55 specialty-aimed roasters in Oregon, Washington and Northern California is long overdue. The Left Coast, after all, has long been viewed as the incu- bator for better brews, so it's a wonder it has taken so long to see a smartly written, info-packed book that gives coffee lovers the low-down on the businesses that have pushed roasting forward. Neuschwander, a former barista at one of the text's featured companies (Portland's Extracto), separates the region by city and then devotes a spread to each included roaster, offering the same deference to early boundary-pushers like Kobo's in Portland as she does to Sightglass, Heart and other blogger-beloveds. That approach is a refreshing contrast to the old-guard versus hip- barista divide that so often seems to bubble below the surface of today's specialty scene. True, the book doesn't offer the complete West Coast roasting picture (Los Angeles, which isn't cov- ered, is in many ways the new trendsetter on the Pacific side of the country), but after learning more about these 55 operations, consumers and coffee pros alike will better understand how the country's high-end roasting scene developed—and where it's headed from here. A rundown of notable coffee titles that were published in the past year or will be showing up on shelves soon by Dan Leif From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive BY PAIGE WEST DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS, MARCH 2012 315 PAGES This in-depth investigation of the global journey taken by coffee harvested in Papua New Guinea's remote highlands region isn't going to be enjoyed by everyone on this end of the specialty coffee chain. For one thing, the work was put together by a Barnard College anthropology professor, who spends a good deal of time discussing straight-from-the-lecture-hall notions like political ecology and international trade policies—not exactly what your part-time baristas will want in the break room. But more off-putting to some coffee folks will be the book's central premise: Many of the marketing techniques and compensation/certification "schemes" so loudly trumpeted by specialty coffee players are actually compounding the problem of poverty at origin (or at least in one part of Papua New Guinea). However, if roasters and café owners can handle some strong jabs at a few of their long-held branding beliefs, they'll find a book that highlights the realities of the modern pro- duction chain like few others and brings fresh analysis to the ways we represent and think about our relationships with far-away farmers. continued on page 26 24 COFFEE ALMANAC 2012 Read, REPEAT