Coffee: Introduction

Given the title of this blog I thought it was about time I talked about coffee. So over a number of posts I'm going to introduce you to the frankly daft amount of coffee making equipment I own. First though I thought I'd start with a couple of good resources for anyone else who is interested in coffee, and to which I'll refer during these set of blog postings. So, among the many books I own are two entirely devoted to coffee.

The Coffee House - A Cultural History: This is a fantastic history of the introduction of coffee and the coffee house culture to England and mainland Europe. From the first coffee house in London opened in 1652 by Pasqua Rosée, to the modern proliferation of coffee house chains, such as Starbucks, there is very little of the history of coffee in England that is not covered by this book. A very interesting read, even if you aren't that interested in drinking the coffee!

Coffee: The title says it all, this book is like an encyclopedia of coffee (I assume the linked book is the same even though the ISBN numbers don't match). Whilst it does overlap slightly with the previous book it also provides detailed instructions for using many different types of coffee maker as well as quite a few coffee based recipes. I've found it very useful, even if only for working out what approach to making coffee I want to try next!

And for those of you without ready access to my collection of books there are a few useful/interesting websites as well.

The Another Coffee website is a great place to go to buy anything coffee related, from coffee to very expensive espresso machines through cheap but simple ways to make coffee. I could probably spend a small fortune on this site if I let myself.

Whilst not entirely useful, the "illustrated" coffee cups on World of Latte are lots of fun to look at, but if I ever make you a cup of coffee don't expect it to look quite that fancy!

Hopefully that has whetted your appetite for the coffee related blog posts that will follow over the next few days/weeks.