The Little Coffee Know-It-All

I just got this new book, 128 pages including index. First impression: very little about a lot of things. About everything just the very basic knowledge, like the first paragraphs of a wikipedia entry.

And a LOT of exclamation marks! It seems the author uses these to give extra meaning to the hurried words and whaddayaknow, exclamation marks take up very little space!

I looked top a few items from the index that I have been focusing on a lot in the past, to see what the author has to say about roasting for instance:

"Home roasting machines aren't as sophisticated as commercial machines. This isn't to say you can't create an excellent coffee at home, just that you may not get to explore the finer points of roasting too much."

So there you have it! Now you have learned more about roasting! Wasn't that much easier than you thought? You can now impress the h*ck out of your friends at the next BBQ party! People don't call me "Mr Coffee" for nothing friends, and soon they will call you that too!

That last paragraph was not a direct quote but it reflects the way the book is written.

On the one little page about refractometers, the author struggles to make sense of the subject and it seems clear to me that he never actually held one in his hands. He concludes, with a strange un-edited paragraph:

"So, there you have it, the knowledge necessary top measure the TDS in your coffee brew. All you need is an instrument and calibration curve (which likely is already built into or calculated by the instrument). Of course, once you know you the TDS of your brew, you need to calibrate that number to your personal preference for the brew. Otherwise, what the heck does TDS mean?"

Obviously, he is himself still struggling with that last question.

My advice: do not buy this booklet.