7 Buzzworthy Coffee Books For Your Holiday Wishlist

Coffee books: who doesn’t love ’em? We’re huge fans around these parts, so much so that we’ve published several guides on the topic. In 2012, we crafted an essential book guide for the coffee nerd. In 2014, we listed even more coffee books to geek out on. We still strongly recommended the picks in those guides up above.

But how to top it for 2015? We thought we’d preview seven new coffee books that are coming soon to a bookseller near you. Will they all be great? Truly, whoocs.* But we do know it’s an exciting time to love coffee, even for all us book readin’ eggheads.

The Little Coffee Know-It-All: A Miscellany for growing, roasting, and brewing, uncompromising and unapologetic

We’ll be totally real with you: we haven’t read Dr. Shawn Steiman’s book The Little Coffee Know-It-All, and when someone tells us to “consider this book your advanced degree in all things java,” it doesn’t really boost our confidence. But who knows? Maybe it’s really good! It comes out in a few short days, so we’ll find out soon enough.

So you think you know your coffee? Consider this book your advanced degree in all things java. You may think you know the how and why of roasting and brewing, but you nerds know nothing yet. This goes even further into everyone’s favorite beverage. With even deeper history, techniques, science, and tasting guides than some of the other guides, you’re going to obsess over this book for the ultimate coffee lover. The Little Coffee Know-It-All is not for the faint of heart.

Release date: December 15, 2015

Tea, Coffee & Chocolate: How We Fell in Love with Caffeine

Tea, coffee, and chocolate…if only there was a way to combine all three. In book form. By gum, it looks as if author Melanie King is doing it! King has written on historical health claims in the past, and we’re looking forward to picking this up.

In her mouthwatering new book, Melanie King offers a concise cultural history. All three beverages hail from faraway places: tea came first from China, coffee from the Middle East, and chocolate from Central America. Physicians and politicians alike were quick to comment in newspapers and popular periodicals on their supposed perils or health benefits. Readers learn that coffee was recommended in the seventeenth century as protection against the bubonic plague. Tea was thought to make women unattractive and men “unfit to do their business,” while a cup of chocolate was supposed to have exactly the opposite effect on the drinker’s sex life and physical appearance. As consumption of these newly discovered delicacies grew, merchants seized on the opportunity by setting up coffee houses or encouraging ever-more-elaborate tea-drinking rituals.

Release date: December 15, 2015

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Buzzed: Beers, Booze, and Coffee Brews: Where to find the best craft beverages in New England

Writer Erik Olfgang pens this title which promises to direct you to the best craft beverages in New England, including tips on etiquette in various drinking establishments. There’s also a lot of talk about “liquid vacations,” which sounds a little risque.

Plan a liquid vacation with this hip new guide to the most delicious and inspired artisanal distilleries, breweries, and coffee shops in New England. This craft beverage book taps not only into New England’s burgeoning craft beer industry but into the region’s longtime coffeehouse culture, and the up-and-coming world of craft distilling. With the everyman perspective and wit of Anthony Bourdain, Erik Ofgang, an award-winning food and travel writer at Connecticut Magazine, takes readers on a rollicking tour of New England’s craft beverage scene. Focusing on craft beverage clusters (areas where breweries, distilleries, and great coffeehouses can be found in close proximity to one another) Buzzed profiles the heroes of the beverage world and tells readers all they need to know about visiting a particular drinking establishment. In addition readers will learn about solid side trips at each location that will keep the nondrinking members of your family or group happy. The book contains all the information you need to make your liquid vacation a success.

Release date: January 5, 2016

Hollywood Café: Coffee with the Stars

Film critic Steven Rea compiles an enormous collection of rare photographs from the golden age of cinema depicting legendary actors enjoying coffee in-between takes. It’s a lovely book for fans of coffee, fans of classic films, and fans of life itself.

Put on a pot of your favorite coffee, perk up, and enjoy nostalgic black-and-white photos that celebrate screen icons from the Silent Era through the eighties, making and drinking their own cups of joe, java, pour-overs, and percolated brews. Hollywood Café bridges the vibrant coffee culture of right-now with the glamorous coffee culture of the star-studded past. A dream cast of nearly 200 stars—Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Clara Bow, Charlie Chaplin, W. C. Fields, Robert Mitchum, Rita Hayworth, Bob Hope, Michael Caine, Jane Fonda, Ava Gardner, Jackie Gleason, Lucille Ball, Elvis Presley, Jayne Mansfield, Sammy Davis Jr., William Holden, Lauren Bacall, John Wayne, and many more—is captured on the set, on the run, in costume and out, behind-the-scenes and at the kitchen table, refilling and refueling, sipping and savoring, drinking the good stuff, just like us.

Release date: January 28, 2016

Coffee Culture: Hot Coffee + Cool Spaces

Robert Schneider’s Coffee Culture is a hand-curated collection of beautiful photography from gorgeous cafes around the United States.

Coffee Culture: Hot Coffee + Cool Spaces is a full-color presentation of coffee shops crafting great coffee in interesting spaces with good design aesthetics. The author has selected thirty-three coffee shops located in cities across the United States, including Ann Arbor, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Oakland, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and Seattle.

Photography by an eclectic group of photographers captures the feel and personality of each coffee shop. The concept of space is often extended from the shop interior to the neighborhood – interweaving coffee, art, architecture, design, and historic preservation.

Release date: January 30, 2016

Kale and Coffee: A Renegade’s Guide to Health, Happiness, and Longevity

Kale and Coffee, authored by internet celebrity Kevin Gianni, is about his journey from fad-diet to fad-diet, ultimately finding a balance.

Kale and Coffee is the often hilarious, picaresque tale of how Gianni went from skinny, raw-food vegan faddist to bloated, out-of-shape omnivore before finding the middle way to an imperfectly healthy and (more) balanced life. The journey takes him from the Peruvian Andes to salt flats in Mexico to a pig farm and a butcher shop near his northern California home. Along the way, he has his brain scanned and his pantry tested for toxic metals, does an all-water fast, runs the grueling Tough Mudder endurance race, and obsesses on the secrets of the world’s longest-lived people.

Release date: July 5, 2016.

Real Fresh Coffee: How to Source, Roast, Grind and Brew Your Own Perfect Cup

World Barista Champion Gwilym Davies and Espresso Room founder Ben Townsend are teaming up to publish a guide to coffee from seed to cup.

Coffee is the most popular drink worldwide with around two billion cups consumed every day. More and more people are turning to good quality, fair trade coffee (premiumization); evident by the number of independent coffee shops opening up in towns and cities as well as the number of us playing home barista as the choice of specialist beans and professional coffee-making gadgets grows. This book is the ideal companion for those who want to understand more about how to source and brew quality coffee. Good coffee and wine have much in common, not least how the terroir of the crop affects the flavor profile of the finished coffee from different geographical areas, so that you can choose your beans with confidence. Whether you enjoy light and bright, warm and mellow, or dark and aromatic flavors, discover how to roast and grind your own beans and use the brewing guides to refine your coffee-making skills.

Release date: July 1, 2016

Zachary Carlsen is an editor and co-founder at Sprudge.com. Read more Zachary Carlsen on Sprudge.