Pete Licata, 2013 World Barista Champion and R&D Coffee Consultant for Nomad Coffee Group, has announced the release of hist first book, How to Get the Best from Your Coffee.
The book focuses on pour-over filter brewing, though Pete says most of the details can also be applied to batch brewing, immersion, and espresso.
“My first book was inspired by a conversation I had with some students a few years back, where they asked me specifics about filter brewing and I had a lot of preferences, but little to explain why I had those preferences,” Pete says.
“I want the audience to be fearless to explore with coffee, and to trust their own senses. The book is meant to pull back the veil on a lot of details about filter coffee brewing and generally to build better understanding about what is going on and why.”
Pete says he spent two years exploring filter brewing with the intention of making a simple, easy to apply book for coffee professionals, baristas in particular.
“The time to brew is a bit longer than espresso and there are numerous variables which have been easy to overlook or even misunderstand. It takes quite a bit of time to repeat tests for filter brewing, so that type of commitment for knowledge may [have] discouraged some from digging in deeper,” Pete says.
“My book covers a lot of unconventional ways to look at brewing, separating terminology sometimes, and breaking down something as simple as brew device material into three measurable components to compare the results of a brew against.”
The book divides the topic into four fundamentals:
- water chemistry and temperature,
- brew device material, shape, and filter,
- grind particle size profile,
- and dose size, brew ratio, turbulence/agitation, and water contact time.
“Each chapter will hopefully create awareness of some great specifics and create a better vision of how brewing variables can be manipulated to achieve great results,” Pete says.
How to Get the Best from Your Coffee is available as an eBook from www.licatacoffeeconsultants.com and will soon be available in print from Veneziano Coffee Roasters.